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Wednesday, June 15, 2016

More Strikes Coming in France



Anne Guerrier writes from Paris:

This is the best video to show what really happened yesterday. We have no aerial view to show that Paris thoroughfares were actually clogged for miles. A million people in Paris (1 person out of 60 in the whole country) and 300,000 more in the rest of the country. This video does give a good impression of the numbers though. You can also see the figures showing what happened in other cities all over France. 

The police never allowed us to reach our destination near the AssemblĂ©e Nationale, at Hotel des Invalides (which is Napoleon's grave) they split the march into three and blocked some young people at a street corner. We know now that orders were given for the police to immobilize the march at this particular point. This was provocation because the young in the marches we've had systematically smash 'banks and companies offices' glass windows. There was a hospital there for sick children which has ground floor glass walls and after 5 minutes being cornered there, inevitably, one of the young smashed those windows. The result is that the French press focused on the fact that our protest was about attacking children's hospitals. They didn't mention the figures of the peaceful demo that was following (although Paris hasn't seen anything like it in 15 years). 

You can see both the numbers and the atmosphere of the real demo on this video. There was a deliberate media blackout in France and elsewhere about this because it scares the shit out of the system. Lots of workers around the world are looking at us. Well we did it. We had that million-man march yesterday about decency, a reasonable living, the end of cannibal liberalism, for human rights at bottom. And we'll do it again. More strikes have been decided on. 

This is the Great Thaw.

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