For these activists, there are no small gestures or small actions. Nearly 24 hours after the failure of the two motions of censure tabled in the wake of 49.3 on the pension reform, a small group crisscrosses the seventh arrondissement of Paris. In small groups of two or three people, some masked, they stop on avenue de Lowendal, not far from the Invalides and place Vauban, where a rally took place the day before. Everyone methodically inspects the dozen dumpsters parked on either side of the road. A young man brandishes a can of paint, and covers the mirrors of the trucks with a purple paint, before moving on to another. Shortly after, a man comes by, tied up with a box and a brown suit, and tries, swearing, to clean up. Wasted effort. “It’s not possible! Dirty striker!” he murmurs before leaving.
Imperturbable, the small group of people continues their work, before gathering between two trucks, on the sidewalk. They are waiting for a police intervention which will not come. We are shortly before 2 p.m. Non-striking garbage collectors from Pizzorno Environnement, a company that collects waste in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, will not be able to carry out their rounds as they had planned this afternoon. None of them even approached their trucks. They wait, idle, on the benches in the avenue.
“It’s the strike!”
“Boss, we’re going home early tonight,” grumbles “Teteuf” on the phone, one of the drivers. We can’t work, they’re blocking us! He hangs up, plague in his beard. With two other of his colleagues, he observes the small group of “blockers” opposite. Requisitioned by the company from “the headquarters”, in Draguignan, in the Var, the three men stare, appalled, at the blockers who come to talk to them. “Don’t you understand that the strike is for you too? Asks Camille*. We are demonstrating and blocking for all of us!”. Karim, one of the drivers, shakes his head, affirms “to be from the CGT, but not to be on strike”, and shoots a sentence, pithy: “I come from Morocco, and it’s much harder there . You’re complaining about not much”. Camille looks at him with wide eyes. Contractual, “paid with a slingshot”, this mother of two students explains that she is mobilizing for her retirement, but also for those of the “most difficult trades, such as garbage collectors”. “Just because others have less doesn’t mean you have to do the same!” she insists. Karim opens his mouth to reply, quickly interrupted by an increasingly distraught Teteuf. “You are preventing us from working!” he repeats. On the sidewalk opposite, the small fifteen people raise their fists: “It’s the strike!”.
The members of the small group – a heterogeneous composition of students, teachers, or even civil servants – arrived a little before 2 p.m., informed by the members of “a union” – they do not wish to say which – of the presence of dumpsters. “Pizzorno parked them there to be able to pick up the garbage in the fifteenth arrondissement and not be blocked in the sheds. So we blocked them anyway”, says Samuel*. A theater actor, the young man combines the “sides” to live from his passion. Coming from Marne-la-Vallée (Seine-et-Marne), this is the first time that he has taken part in an action of this type, in Paris, to protest against the pension reform. Although opposed to the text so far, it was the use of 49.3 that decided him to take action. “I feel that something is rising, I wanted to act. I can’t sit there doing nothing”. It does not matter if the reform was definitively adopted after the rejection of the motions of censure tabled by the opposition. Karim believes in it, and he’s not the only one.
The “shift” of elected officials
“As long as there is life, there is hope!” exclaims Katia, just next door. This school teacher, unionized, is not a novice in this type of action. “I have been struggling since Macron’s first term,” she asserts, bravado. On the specific issue of pension reform, she has several colleagues who are usually less committed by her side: nursery school teachers, sitting on the sidewalk, or others, leaning against the dumpsters, who teach in college. All come from Vitry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), a town located ten kilometers from Paris. None of them is their first action against the pension reform. “We got gassed on Thursday and Sunday. I can’t take the tear gas anymore,” sighs Anne, 33, a college teacher. Beside her, Nathan, also a secondary school teacher, nods vigorously. “It seems like a strike is easy, but it’s almost more tiring than when you’re working,” he says. In recent days, between tows, blockages, and the tour of establishments in their sector in order to “sensitize” other teachers, these teachers do not stop.
Very committed against the reform, these officials say they are “galvanized” by the current atmosphere. “We feel that something is rising, assures Katia. It is as if the dull anger of the yellow vests had suddenly reactivated. We must not let go!”. Anne approves, qualifying somewhat: “We are not going to lie to each other: we are a small determined core. But as long as we hold on and take turns, something can happen. Especially when we see the actions in small towns. The “Vitry band” is unanimous: a big change took place at the end of last week, with the use of 49.3 for the executive. Since then, for these teachers, the challenge of their action clearly goes beyond pension reform alone. “We are protesting against the authoritarianism of this government which represses demonstrations, against this executive which always favors the same people: the rich, the whites…”, says Nathan. “And the men!” adds Anne.
In this list of recriminations, the demonstrators particularly insist on a point which annoyed them: “The calls of the deputies of the majority to be protected, all because we write them emails”, mocks Anne. Thursday March 16, Aurore Bergé, leader of the elected Renaissance, had asked the Minister of the Interior to “mobilize the services of the State” for the “protection of parliamentarians”. Parliamentarians from the majority or Republicans had already experienced power cuts or degradation of permanence. “This type of statement only illustrates the gap between the violence that we experience every day, and what the deputies see on a daily basis, develops Katia. What we deduce from all this is that ‘they don’t understand us anymore’.
*Name has been changed.