The French love to protest for anything and everything. I explained to my students that I had never been directly inconvenienced by a protest or strike in 22 years until I came here. Now, a little over a month in France, I have been inconvenienced by 3.
The first one was minor: a 10 minute delay on the tram as a handful of people blocked the railway. They wanted Nantes to return to being a part of Brittany, and understandably thought that making me late to my first day of work might help their cause. It wasn’t too perturbed because it was my first French protest. ”How exciting!” I thought. The other passengers just rolled their eyes, said their “putains” and waited for the train to change its rail.
My next experience caused a lot more trouble but was also much more exciting. I don’t fully understand what’s going on, unfortunately, but I do know that the farmers of France are pissed. The price of milk and other goods has plummeted for some reason, so they’re pissed. Farmers in France have literally flooded entire streets with milk in protest. I didn’t get to experience the milky Venice, but I did see a massive line of tractors blocking the tram lines all day long, making it impossible for many people to travel. In the morning, I saw a guy sitting in a tractor on the tram line by himself and I thought, “what the hell does this guy think he’s doing?” A couple hours later, there were hundreds of them honking and blowing smoke, making noise, and kind of just hanging out in their tractors.
The most recent protest\strike combo I experienced was at my own school. I was excited to hear the rumor that the students would block off the school on Tuesday to protest potential reformation in the school system. This would mean that I’d get to see a real student strike and not have to work. When I walked up to the school in the morning, I saw that the main entrance had a wire fence in front of it and trash cans piled nearly to the top to prevent anyone from entering. I continued walking and saw that at the second and last entrance there was a crowd of students, the principal in the middle of them encouraging students to come on in. Few obliged. Still, I was a little disappointed that I was able to get into the school at all. When I went to the staff room, I was surprised to see my colleagues working on a banner announcing that the school was on strike.
I went to my first class and found that nobody was there. Not a single person showed up. I guess some of them were taking this thing seriously. After about 10 minutes of waiting, I decided that I’d walk home and spend a couple of hours there before my next class. In that short amount of time, the students managed to completely block off the second entrance. Instead of being locked out of the school, I was locked in. For 4 hours. As soon as it started sprinkling, the students scattered but left behind their barricades. I had to escape outside of a private backdoor and climb over a garbage can obstacle course. From what I gathered, most of the students weren’t sure what they were protesting. They don’t seem to think they’re really making a difference. I think they just do it because it’s in their blood.
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The French are dumb.
the dumb are dumb
Gosh, Kevin, how exciting!