“Let’s stop by the library, I have to return a few books.”
“I’m pretty sure I just saw a grenade in the air. No, look, over there. Oh fuck.”
“Did you call your parents already about Christmas? It was complicated last year so I just thought we could—”
“Nope, not this way.”
“Can we go through? Then where can we go?”
“RUN!”
“The key is to have nothing on you. So that when you’re searched—”
“Okay kids, one more block to the McDonald’s!”
“He was definitely on the ground and they pushed him. But they didn’t arrest him, they just left him there.”
“Are the stores open?”
“The thing is, there are no more independent media except for Mediapart.”
You hear the craziest things on yet another Saturday protest day in Nantes.
On Friday, after the grève nationale, I planned the weekend. Nothing crazy, mind you. Really, I just had to work, get some groceries and buy socks.
“That’ll be my first normal Saturday in Nantes since I arrived,” I mentioned to my mum.
Saturday is typically a fun and lively day in Nantes. Sunday is hangover day and the city is dead. Monday isn’t even worth mentioning. But the first day of the weekend starts with a big open-air market on Place de la Petite-Hollande, then thousands of people spend the day wandering around town. This is when out-of-towners stop by Fnac, H&M or Zara and less impressed locals still go out to shop—well, more window shopping than shopping these days considering the cost of living, which is why there are protests in the first place.
Old and young, rich and poor, everybody is downtown and stays at least until sunset, often later when it’s warmer.
I was going to join them all.
The next morning, I made myself a latte, grabbed my phone, started reading the news and…
“Maman, y’a acte IV demain!”
Okay, so another protest day.
That’s leftists for you. We don’t have money but we have stamina.
Joining or avoiding a protest used to be easy. There was a gathering point, a defined route from point A to point B and then at the very end of it what the media call “quelques échauffourées” (a few scuffles), i.e. cops being cops (and frankly, wannabe revolutionaries being themselves). The government would later report 1,000 people on the streets, the unions would say 1 million joined and that would be the practical end of it.
But see, now protesting itself is an act of protest.
“So when did it start getting out of hand, exactly?” I heard a woman ask her friend.
“When protests were banned downtown.”
I agree. See, you can’t even protest. You’re not supposed to. All gatherings are suspect, kind of like during COVID. So there is no official gathering point—or if there’s one publicly announced, expect thirty armoured vehicles and tons of police, so duh, plan B. And no marching either. You literally can’t march for more than a block before police cars rush up to the protest and start throwing grenades or tear gas or both.
So all day long, people try to protest and the police try to stop protests. It starts right after noon and ends long after dark.
On a busy Saturday afternoon, it felt unreal to see the city as it always is, with entire patios of people chatting or having a drink and then suddenly getting up and rushing indoors. Stores were closing on people or closing with people inside at the first sight of riot police running in whatever direction. There were very, very old folks dragging their shopping trolleys straight toward the riot police line because damn it, that’s the street they always take and how else are they going to go home?
And so much tear gas.
We left the apartment at 2 p.m., walked fifty metres and were engulfed in a cloud of it.
Two minutes later, we flattened ourselves against the wall to avoid the cops storming in, running after… okay, maybe the kid with a Molotov cocktail. But at least he wasn’t throwing it at passersby.
You have to give it to the French: for a population apparently known for protesting constantly, they are actually stoic when shit happens.
Like, you had whole streets of random people, regardless of what they were doing or where they were going, reaching for a face mask or pulling their scarf up. Liberté, égalité in the face of tear gas, and some fraternity too.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sleep and take the train tomorrow to posh La Baule, where nothing is boarded up. I need some fresh air.
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