French drivers don the fluorescent yellow vests in the event of breakdown or accident. Rona Lorimer takes us there. These blockades were, weirdly, sparked by a petition, launched online by a young self-employed woman, Priscillia Ludosky. In the video accompanying the petition she explains that she is a working-class mother from Seine-et-Marne and spends euros a month on gas. Sixty percent of that is taxes. It was not expected to be a movement that would gain much ground.
Traffic was slowed down and one driver, in a panic about not being able to get through a roundabout quickly enough, ran over a sixty-year-old gilet jaune protester. One criticism leveled against the protest—which defined itself as distinct from, and possibly against, trade union organizing—was that it took place on a Saturday and therefore did not aspire to a strike or blockade of any major segment of the working, weekday economy, as union struggle might have.
Another criticism was that the blockades were only partial in some places, which made for traffic jams but no major disruption. There were anecdotal dribs and drabs about who was involved, about people being very police-friendly on the picket, about its citoyen citizen character—lots of French flags and anti-migrant discourse. A toll station near Bordeaux was straight up burned down.
However, what was interesting about the seventeenth in terms of its strategy was that it had a wildcat character: it was not authorized by the police, and did not make any attempt to be.
Is a roundabout a stream or a place, or both? What about a toll station? Do roundabouts really have no symbolic dimension? And in the event that one fails to entirely block the traffic, is the effect symbolic or real or…? Still, one catches the drift. And yet, from a purely strategic point of view, road blockades are not new to the French left, having been a very important tactic in recent history. It was unexpected and curious that the November 17 mobilisation continued through Sunday, and then Monday, and then through the following week, considering that it had initially announced itself as a protest that would still allow people to go to work.
