Pierre Haski

Wednesday 13 April 2016 12.59 BST Last modified on Wednesday 13 April 2016 13.29 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/13/nuit-debout-france-occupy-wall-street-1968

Five years on from Occupy Wall Street, France’s young people are rediscovering the spirit of the revolutionary uprisings in 1968.

March is an endless month. On the symbolic Place de la République, in the centre of Paris, Tuesday was 43 March and Wednesday 44 March. That’s one of the ways the young occupiers of the Parisian square show that they have decided not to play the game any more, and vowed to set up their own rules.

The occupation of the Place de la République, an already emotionally charged spot with its spontaneous and ever-changing monument to the victims of the 13 November terrorist attacks, has been going on since 31 March, and still attracts large crowds. The movement, called Nuit debout, or “Night on our feet”, has become a major headache for the socialist government, which has tried without success to weaken it through a carrot-and-stick approach of policy announcements that benefit unemployed youth together with police harassment.

In an unexpected twist of history, the 2016 militants of Nuit debout have made theirs the emblematic slogan of the May 1968 revolutionary movement: “L’imagination au pouvoir”, power to imagination. In just a few days, a highly democratic movement where every decision is approved by a permanent general assembly, with no self-proclaimed or even elected leader or even spokesperson, has embarked on inventing a different society.

Everyone can speak for a limited amount of time so that no one monopolises the floor; commissions are meeting at every corner of the square to discuss the issues of the day, but also to organise food, security, sanitation and demonstrations.

And if the 1968 revolution was notable for being televised, the 2016 one is on Periscope. The video streaming application has been the star of Nuit debout: one man, Rémy Buisine, started non-stop filming of the scene with his smartphone and live broadcasting on Periscope. He reached a peak of 130,000 people simultaneously connected to his feed on Twitter or on the Periscope app, more than were watching mainstream news TV channels at the same time.

The Nuit debout has some aspects of a May 68 for the internet age, but with a major difference: the revolutionary students of half a century ago came of age during the trente glorieuses, the 30 glorious years of postwar economic growth, and wanted to crack open a conservative society; those of 2016 are, on the contrary, the children of 30 years of high unemployment, economic gloom and disenchantment with the way representative democracy works.

This movement didn’t come out of the blue. It was an extension of a more conventional protest campaign initiated by trade unions and youth organisations against a proposed reform of French labour laws. The government thought it had the upper hand when it managed to obtain support for a modified law by reformist unions, and hoped that the protests would slowly die down.

The occupation of the Place de la République, on 31 March, at the end of a day of protests and demonstrations against the law named after the labour minister, Myriam El Khomri, came as a surprise to politicians. Since then, they have been trying to understand why, years after Occupy Wall Street and the Spanish indignados, Paris is enjoying its own Occupy moment.

The delayed reaction of the French youth has a lot to do with President François Hollande. In 2011 and 2012, when Occupy was the rallying cry of many cities, giving rise to political movements such as Podemos in Spain, the French were looking forward to electing a Socialist president instead of the highly unpopular Nicolas Sarkozy. Why occupy when the polls will do the job?

The four years since have been painful for leftwing voters who have felt at best betrayed, and often disgusted by the ruling Socialists, to the point where all elections since have seen rising levels of abstention; four out of five voters don’t want President Hollande to run in next year’s presidential election.

The talk of Paris, for months, has been the reinvention of politics, away from traditional political parties seen as election machines but not a channel for citizens’ expression. Different forms of US-style primaries, one on the right scheduled for November, one on the left initiated by independent personalities including economist Thomas Piketty, and also one for everyone, are one of several attempts to reconnect politics and citizens.

The Nuit debout is a more radical approach to reinventing participative democracy. But that’s where the challenge lies. Every Occupy movement has shown the difficulty of translating mass support into political action, even the more successful example of Spain’s Podemos.

Still in its infancy, Nuit debout is wary of récupération – attempts by established politicians or intellectual stars, however sympathetic, to hijack the movement to their benefit. At the same time, on its own it will have difficulties going beyond the “living utopia” in the centre of the French capital.

But whatever happens, it will have sent the message loud and clear: the French political system is hopelessly alienated from large sections of its youth, and even a return to business as usual in the Place de la République will not mean the end of the trouble for the discredited political elite.

As night fell over Paris, thousands of people sat cross-legged in the vast square at Place de la République, taking turns to pass round a microphone and denounce everything from the dominance of Google to tax evasion or inequality on housing estates.

The debating continued into the early hours of the morning, with soup and sandwiches on hand in the canteen tent and a protest choir singing revolutionary songs. A handful of protesters in tents then bedded down to “occupy” the square for the night before being asked to move on by police just before dawn. But the next morning they returned to set up their protest camp again.

For more than a week, these vast nocturnal protest gatherings – from parents with babies to students, workers, artists and pensioners – have spread across France, rising in number, and are beginning to panic the government.

Called Nuit debout, which loosely means “rise up at night”, the protest movement is increasingly being likened to the Occupy initiative that mobilised hundreds of thousands of people in 2011 or Spain’s Indignados.

 Cherifa, a French student at Paris’ Louis-le-Grand high school, who is taking part in the night-time protests.

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Despite France’s long history of youth protest movements – from May 1968 to vast rallies against pension changes – Nuit debout, which has spread to cities such as Toulouse, Lyon and Nantes and even over the border to Brussels, is seen as a new phenomenon.

It began on 31 March with a night-time sit-in in Paris after the latest street demonstrations by students and unions critical of President François Hollande’s proposed changes to labour laws. But the movement and its radical nocturnal action had been dreamed up months earlier at a Paris meeting of leftwing activists.

“There were about 300 or 400 of us at a public meeting in February and we were wondering how can we really scare the government?. We had an idea: at the next big street protest, we simply wouldn’t go home,” said Michel, 60, a former delivery driver.

 Protesters debate issues such as national security, housing and proposed changes to French labour law.

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“On 31 March, at the time of the labour law protests, that’s what happened. There was torrential rain, but still everyone came back here to the square. Then at 9pm, the rain stopped and we stayed. We came back the next day and as we keep coming back every night, it has scared the government because it’s impossible to define.

“There’s something here that I’ve never seen before in France – all these people converge here each night of their own accord to talk and debate ideas – from housing to the universal wages, refugees, any topic they like. No one has told them to, no unions are pushing them on – they’re coming of their own accord.”

The idea emerged among activists linked to a leftwing revue and the team behind the hit documentary film Merci Patron!, which depicts a couple taking on France’s richest man, billionaire Bernard Arnault. But the movement gained its own momentum – not just because of the labour protests or in solidarity with the French Goodyear tyre plant workers who kidnapped their bosses in 2014. It has expanded to address a host of different grievances, including the state of emergency and security crackdown in response to last year’s terrorist attacks.

 Students occupying an amphitheatre in Lille give a press conference to announce the start of the Nuit debout protests.

“The labour law was the final straw,” said Matthiew, 35, who was retraining to be a teacher after 10 years in the private sector, and had set up an impromptu revolutionary singing group at the square. “But it’s much bigger than that. This government, which is supposed to be socialist, has come up with a raft of things I don’t agree with, while failing to deal with the real problems like unemployment, climate change and a society heading for disaster.”

Many in the crowd said that after four years of Hollande’s Socialist party in power, they left felt betrayed and their anger was beginning to bubble over.

Jocelyn, 26, a former medical student acting as a press spokesman for the movement, said: “There are parallels with Occupy and Indignados. The idea is to let everyone speak out. People are really sick and tired and that feeling has been building for years. Everything Hollande once promised for the left but gave up on really gets me down. Personally, it’s the state of emergency, the new surveillance laws, the changes to the justice system and the security crackdown.”

 

The government and the Paris authorities are being cautious about the policing of the movement. An investigation is under way into the alleged assault by a police officer accused of hitting a student at a Paris high school last month during a demonstration against the labour overhaul.

The government is preparing possible concessions to students and youths to calm those expected to attend another such rally on Saturday.

Each night at Paris’s Place de la République, the “general assembly” begins at 6pm and the crowd discuss ideas. Hundreds of demonstrators communicate using coded hand gestures: wiggling their fingers above their heads to express agreement or crossing their wrists to disagree.

 Michel, an artist who hopes to be a candidate in the 2017 French presidential elections, joins the protesters in Paris.

Various committees have sprung up to debate a new constitution, society, work, and how to occupy the square with more permanent wooden structures on a nightly basis. Whiteboards list the evening’s discussions and activities – from debates on economics to media training for the demonstrators. “No hatred, no arms, no violence,” was the credo described by the “action committee”.

“This must be a perfect mini-society,” a member of the gardening committee told the crowd. A poetry committee has been set up to document and create the movement’s slogans. “Every movement needs its artistic and literary element,” said the poet who proposed it.

Demonstrators regularly help other protest movements, such as a bank picket over revelations in the Panama Papers or a demonstration against migrant evictions in the north of Paris.

“Generation revolution”, was scrawled on the pavement. The concept behind the movement is a “convergence of struggles” with no one leader. There are no union banners or flags of specific groups decorating the protest in the square – a rarity in France.

Cécile, 22, a Paris law student at Thursday night’s general assembly, said: “I don’t agree with the state society is in today. To me, politics feels broken. This movement appeals in terms of citizen action. I come here after class and I intend to keep coming back. I hope it lasts.”