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RULES:
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
American government: we're deporting your friends and neighbors to third countries, burning your crops, poisoning your water supply, and delivering a plague unto your houses
Americans: What?! You can't do that! I'm going to write angry social media posts and participate in a quickly-forgotten weekend protest that disrupts little to nothing! Not this weekend though, I have work in the morning.
...and also re-elect you because the other guy said he'd make housing more affordable for everyone
And the other guy was a woman. Can you imagine?
A laughing woman at that. Killing children ain’t funny. We demand a dignified male troll.
For the home of the brave there sure ain't much wide spread bravery
I live in very, very rural France. Country-wide protests are happening because high-school students demand better... Well, better everything.
Yesterday I carpooled with my kid's teacher to protest in the "biggest" town (pop. 9,000) in the county. 700 people marched. Some drove over 60 miles one way to be there, when gas costs 2,35€ a liter.
In the past week two kids lost an eye, one an arm, one their lower jaw, because of police violence. (The eyes might not be beyond saving, I'm not sure.) Even middle-schoolers fight with their parents to be allowed to protest.
Country-wide headcount was 400,000. Our tiny march, every tiny local march did its part.
And that was a weekday, small protest. Saturday after next is a big one.
I'm really proud of the kids.
and that is the same country that wanted to ban social media for minors because social media was harming minors? huh, I do think something is indeed harming French minors, but I don't think it's social media!
The country didn't want that. The president and his cronies do, as an excuse to amplify mass surveillance.
The same president we're protesting against.
Yes. I agree. I used "country" as a metonym for the ones in charge of it.
Social media is definitely harming minors, just like it is harming everyone else.
Two things can harm minors at the same time.
"No Timmy, you were on esptein island so we're sending you to Iran, you're immune to anything bad happening to you ever"
They really do. 3 years ago my daughter was getting ready to take a school trip to France when protests broke out over something. I was worried about the trip and ended up learning a lot about how France protests. Here are some things I learned:
Protesting is considered important and this is taught to kids in school.
It's often a family affair, grab the whole family and go protest.
Protests are a happy, party-like environment with music and vendors selling food to protestors.
Leaders actually listen to some.extent.
American version:
Protesting is a right, taught in school.
Grab family, go to protest.
Protest turns violent because of hidden cops. Mom gets shot. Dad loses job. Family loses house.
Die.
My US experience:
Protesting it taught in school.
Peaceful protesting at school results in being expelled.
"Protesting is a right and everything great we have comes from it, but you will be tear gassed and condemned if you try"
Leaders actually listen to some.extent.
Do they? I haven't seem a lot of meaningful changes in France due to protests in the last 10-20 years. Perhaps you have a list of them that a directly due to protests? It seems like the ruling class, leadership and in general regular people just ignore protests as 'part of life'.
They do listen to some extent. Not always, obviously, but saying protests are basically useless is just wrong. The CPE was scrapped after protests in 2006, the écotaxe was abandoned after the Bonnets Rouges protests, the fuel tax increase was cancelled after the Yellow Vests, and the government backed down on several measures after the 2024 farmers' protests. You can argue protests do not always succeed, but pretending they achieve nothing just ignores what actually happened.
I remember hearing about French firefighters getting geared up, setting themselves on fire, and running at riot police lol.
Kids told about thursdays riots here in Bordeaux where the firefighters came and put out the burning trashcans etc, but they also cheered the protesters on!
Same side 😘!
My kid's teachers: "I can't help you build barricades in front of the school. I'm legally bound to teach my scheduled classes. It would be such a pity if your barricades were already built tomorrow before 7am, and I physically couldn't get inside. Or would 7.30 be better for y'all?"
Riot is in our culture ! We learn it at school !
Wish the rest of the world was more like the French. We'd be able to achieve so much change.
It is definitely a sign that humanity likes to kick itself in the nuts when even a country known for protesting still has a government that keeps doing shit that leads to protest and police still harm protestors.
We keep putting shitty people in power and then getting upset when they do shitty stuff.
And then the Brits hang this poster on their windows unironically
Anyone remember when the French farmers got pissed off at the government and used a manure spray to coat the president house outside and inside?
Oh and they did it again to clear their fields of "travelers"
Ha ha they do that in so many ways, nothings quite like it for a mayor to wade through manure, fish or whatever to get to work!
At some point I realised I have no idea how to evaluate protests in other countries. We have protests, and some extremely important, some are dumb as fuckshit, and some are just an excuse to riot. I know this, because I know the issues... but in a foreign country when they protest against bad conditions at school I have no idea how bad their schools are. Are they worse than our schools, or better? Are the problems extremely widespread, or somewhat rare, but amplified by some part of the media to seem widespread? No idea.
My rule of thumb is "are they yelling at the government for not doing stuff they are supposed to?" Yes. Ok then i support it. I'm right 9/10 times with the first impression.
The fact that places exist where they protest any incremental regression with extreme prejudice is awesome. Doesn't matter if their schools are currently "better" then other places. They hold a line that protects their schools and other services from the death of a thousand cuts we experience everywhere else.
In the Netherlands we got all cuts for social services off the table by the left parties working together with working unions who striked untill we got our way :3
I mean, right now there are students protests in France.
One student had his hand blown off by a police grenade launcher, and something like 50 officers were injured.
They don't fuck around
It's almost like you actually have to fight for your rights or something.
One thing I love about France is how they number their republics. This is now the fifth one. Some people are talking about abolishing it for a sixth. So, even Constitutional authority is subject to occasional "fuck this shit we can do better", and the idea of abolishing the Constitution of the Fifth Republic for a better one is nowhere near treasonous but honest democratic-republican politics. Compare that with the American dysfunction of having a document written 200 years ago as a snapshot of an expedient compromise between fops being vested with semi-divine aura.
Is it true what you wrote about British government? Anytime I talked with people from Britain, either I end up talking to a crowd that says "Islamists are taking over UK" or a crowd that says "Right wing is problem". I really never got what they are doing these days.
Is there something exceptional about english-speaking white people that makes them such effective bootlickers?
no, it's the French that are the exception, we German-speaking white people aren't very different from English-speaking ones either
If I was to defend any argument, it would be that Romance peoples (French, Spanith, Portuguese, etc.) are more likely to protest than Germanic people (English, German, Scandinavian)
I heard from a friend who worked in France for couple of years that people there basically complain and oppose any change. They were supposed to stop sending people their payslips on paper and move to digital ones and people still were mad about it, for example. At this point they riot about everything and the government simply ignores them and waits for the protests to die out. Which they do most of the time. At the same time people in Spain staged couple of peaceful protests and forced the government to pass new housing laws and call early elections. Being good at rioting is not the same as being good at defending your rights.
Spain's protests did include violence. A great deal of people fought off police and set up barricades to prevent that elderly woman from being evicted. The peaceful protests were also backed by the threat of escalation if nothing was done.
The paper payslips thing was also more than just about a payslip. The protests were about accountability - it's easier to change a database about how much work you did later than it is to change a physical paper given to you months ago. That's not a hypothetical, that's something that happens and not just in France.
Go back to your right wing misinformation chamber and stop spreading bullshit here.
A french friend of mine put it this way: "We the french always demand change, but we don't accept it"