The Yellow Vests were again mobilized in Paris, Sunday 17th February. Between 1000 and 2000 protesters took part, in peace.
Between 1000 and 2000 yellow vests paraded Sunday in peace in Paris after the act 14 and three months to the day after the beginning of the movement, have found journalists from AFP.
Leaving the Champs-Elysees around noon , the demonstrators saw their ranks gradually grow towards the Champ-de-Mars , the final destination of this event declared in the prefecture and framed by an imposing police apparatus.
Around 4pm, almost all of them had dispersed and some were planning to return to the Champs-Elysees, according to an AFP journalist.
According to the Paris police headquarters, this first Sunday gathering of yellow vests brought together 1,500 people.
“Show that the movement does not run out of steam”
Saturday, the Interior Ministry had counted 41,500 demonstrators in France and 5000 in Paris, figures down from the previous week but challenged by the “yellow vests” which counted more than double (104,070).
Mobilised since the first day of action on November 17th, Martine Bonfilloup, 55, came Sunday “show that the movement does not run out of steam.” “Did you see that gasoline has increased? The middle class, we are taxed to the maximum, “she says.
Running under a bright sun, yellow vests sang a “happy birthday” in the streets of Paris to celebrate the three months of this unprecedented protest movement that weakens the executive.
Against the reform of high school and university
Alongside banners calling for the implementation of a citizens’ initiative referendum (RIC) or denouncing the “mutilation of civilians” by the police, some demonstrators brandished at the start of the procession of flags in the colours of the CGT, causing tension.
“Break the CGT! You serve nothing, you are the pacifiers of the government, “cries Julien Dubois, a 38-year-old Parisian.
“That the CGT comes with the Yellow Vests, I want but they hide their flags. They are useless. If the people are in the street, they did not do anything.”
Aged 16, Lola has come to protest against the reform of high school and university that she compared to a “selective sorting”.
“I have grandparents who do not earn much. They can not really live. I wanted to see with my own eyes the movement and show that there were also high school students.”
“Poor people in the street”
In front of the barricaded windows of the Plaza Athenee hotel, on the chic avenue Montaigne, protesters wryly launched “attention, poor people in the street”, while a sound system broadcast “The song of the partisans”.
“For the rich gold balls, for the people still noodles,” had written a protester on his yellow vest.
On the Champ-de-Mars, Ingrid Levavasseur, who recently gave up a list of “yellow jackets” in Europe, had to be exfiltrated from the procession in the face of the hostility of other protesters.
Saturday, the act 14 of the movement had unfolded without major incidents in Paris but was marked by clashes in Toulouse and Bordeaux.
