It started with a bang — several, in fact — outside my house on 28 September. The first student protest had started in French Guiana, an overseas territory in South America, three weeks earlier. By the time it arrived on my doorstep in the suburbs of Lyon this month, students at hundreds of 6th form colleges around France were protesting.
All the explosions made me worry that someone was shooting, so it was with a certain amount of relief that I opened my window to see a teenager running off with my bins, before ceremoniously burning them in front of the college across the road.
Over the weeks that followed, the protests intensified. Some mornings I found myself pedalling away from tear gas on my commute; on another I saw a couple of teens preparing a Molotov cocktail where my bins had been burned just days earlier. Once I’d established that the explosions weren’t gunfire, I wasn’t particularly concerned for my safety, but I did hope that they’d satisfy themselves with burning bins rather than something larger, like my car parked opposite the college. I found myself becoming accustomed to the (not altogether unpleasant) smell of firecrackers.
Lyon might be France’s third-largest city, but it rarely makes international news. That changed on Saturday, when it became the face of the protests. Photos of our tourist office going up in flames went viral. Friends and family from all over the world messaged to see if I was ok, many of them asking, “Why do the protesters hate tourists?”
I moved to France from Cornwall five years ago to set up a new life. However, since then things have changed noticeably. I’d been expecting mass protests for a while. The rising tensions have been particularly palpable this summer. Half of the service stations are out of fuel, while those that still have fuel are extortionately priced. Salaries have stagnated, but the cost of living is rising. My partner and I, with a dual income and supposedly decent salaries, have been turned away by bank after bank for a mortgage.
What started as a student protest has become a wider display of discontent. It’s no coincidence that these protests, and the parallel riots, have broken out just six months before what’s set to be the most divisive presidential elections in French history. The far right has never won an election, but the National Rally’s (RN) Marine Le Pen – sporting her new electronic bracelet following her conviction for embezzlement – is closer than ever before. The latest poll, conducted by Institut Elabé and published on Saturday, put support for Le Pen at 32.5 per cent in the first round, more than twice that of any of the other candidates. What’s struck me is how effectively the protests are being weaponised by politicians to create an even greater divide.
When President Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation on Sunday after the largest protest, he blamed the far left for the burnings and looting. Comments under the videos circulating of OnlyLyon, the tourist office, going up in flames incited racial hatred towards immigrants. But the two most visible perpetrators were dressed as Batman, with masks over their faces, so there’s absolutely no way of telling their ethnicity.
Photos of burning buildings make headlines, and while inexcusable, I’ve seen another side to the protests through living here. An artist-cum-activist screen printing placards for students, a café giving free coffees to protesters, people singing and playing music.
Neither the left nor the right hates tourists, which goes to show that those breaking into and burning buildings aren’t politically motivated — although I suppose the far right would hate tourists if they decided to stay long term.
“It’s where we’re located that made it a strategic target,” said Virginie Carton, general manager of OnlyLyon. “A shop in the same location [in the middle of Place Bellecour, the city’s largest square] would have suffered the same fate. One event like this shouldn’t overshadow a rich, vibrant and welcoming destination.”
Unfortunately, the discourse that the far left is responsible for pillaging and burning has already incited the far right. Last night, just after a curfew had been imposed, a group of some 200 people staged a counter-protest. Styling themselves as supporters of the business owners who had their shops broken and pillaged, they marched through the city centre singing La Marseillaise. The slogans on their placards told a different story: “Get Islam out of Europe” and “French people wake up, this is your home!” Lyon’s mayor, Grégory Doucet, released a statement on Tuesday saying he “absolutely condemned the march, and the chants and slogans of hate that accompanied it”.
I’m sure there’ll be many more protests between now and the first round of the presidential elections on 18 April. Instead of offering solutions, French politicians are inviting the public to choose their enemy: the far right or the far left? Immigrants or the ultra-rich?
For now, though, the fuel shortage has been accompanied by a nationwide bin shortage, and I have to share my recycling around an ever-dwindling number of intact bins in the neighbourhood.