French Protests: Raging Against Pension Reform

This week, I dive into the massive wave of strikes and protests that have surged in France over the past 3 months. At it’s peak, the protests swelled to over a million people, bringing young and old together on the streets.This is now the 12th week of action that has been underpinned by strikes and acts of civil disobedience organized by unions and workers across the country. 

We recorded this episode a couple weeks ago, and since then there have been some major developments to report. On Friday April 14th, France’s constitutional council approved President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms. This paved the way for Macron to sign these reforms into law, which he did the very next day, Saturday the 15th. The new law will go into affect in September. 

These hugely unpopular developments sparked a new round of protests during which many were arrested and fires were ignited across the country.  In the western city of Rennes (“REN”), the entrance to a police station was set ablaze. Trade union members also engaged in creative acts of civil disobedience by dumping gas and power meters outside a government building.

Protestors continue to call for raising taxes on the wealthy and employers rather than raising the retirement age, but these calls have been completely ignored.This morning Macron addressed the country about the new pension laws, stating that these changes “were needed to guarantee everyone’s pension” and that “gradually working more means also producing more wealth for our whole country.” During his address, people across the country banged saucepans together to drown out his words, their rallying cry being “Macron won’t listen to us? We won’t listen to him!”  France’s main labor unions have called for another mass protest on May 1st, International Workers’ Day. 

I’ve joined forces with my dear friend and fellow podcaster Desmond Price of the Independent Thought podcast to create a bi-weekly news segment called Under the Radar. In it, we discuss important news articles that deserve much more attention and amplification. As always, I’ll be highlighting stories that shine light on our capitalist hellscape, which are often the same stories that major corporate media outlets ignore or suppress.  We’ll be sharing the full discussion, including the video, with our Patreon supporters every other week.

And I want to add that this is where I’ll be sharing my own views and reactions much more readily than I tend to do during my interviews. If you