After weeks of student protests, is France about to witness a resurgence of the Yellow Vest movement? Protests, roundabout blockades and gatherings in front of gas stations and oil depots are among the actions planned for Saturday’s nationwide demonstrations. A map published on Thursday on the website 17octobregiletjaune.net listed more than 1,000 events plannd around the country to denounce rising fuel prices and support high-school students who have been protestingfor nearly a month to demand better classroom conditions.
Read more'We're fed up': Paris students rise up in a movement that shows no sign of slowing The initiative began with a viral TikTok video posted by a young man frustrated by rising prices at the pump. It was later backed by left-wing politicians including Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel and Green leader Marine Tondelier. Saturday's planned demonstrations were not initially linked to the original Yellow Vest movement, which began in 2018 with widespread protests over rising fuel prices before growing into a broader revolt against economic inequality that drew tens of thousands onto the streets.
The movement takes its name from the fluorescent yellow high-visibility vests that French law requires drivers to carry in their vehicles and which protesters wore during demonstrations. To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading.
To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Some of the Yellow Vests' former leading figures were initially wary of the latest protest action, including Maxime 'Fly Rider' Nicolle, whorecently announced that he would travel to Paris to demonstrate after changing his mind about participating. "No Yellow Vest was behind the (October 17 protests).
Now, as soon as people talk about fuel and discontent, they are immediately labelled 'Yellow Vests'. It's almost become a brand," said Jérôme Rodrigues, a prominent figure in the Yellow Vest movement who lost an eye after being struck by a rubber-ball grenade during a protest in 2019. During the 2018-2019 protests, nearly two-dozen people suffered the loss of an eye, mainly after being hit by rubber bullets fired by police.
In total, 2,500 protesters and 1,800 police officers were injured over the course of a year. France's crowd-control tactics drew widespread criticism, including from the United Nations, and have come under renewed scrutiny amid the high-school student protests. Rodrigues sees Saturday's demonstration as a continuation of the high-school student protests, saying students have faced police “repression” similar to that experienced by the Yellow Vests.
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