May Day is a workers holiday with varied roots, as Truthdig’s Paul Street points out in his piece, “The Many-Sided, Overlapping Meanings of May Day.” This year, as global inequality continues to soar to never-before-seen heights, protesters have taken to the streets in cities around the world to express their growing discontent, as well as to celebrate workers and hard-earned (though often beleaguered) labor rights. From Seoul to Seattle, protests were planned for Wednesday, and, in many places, officials drew up blueprints for addressing the mass demonstrations that were expected.
In Paris, a city that has been the site of the growing Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement, over 7,400 police officers were expected to be deployed. Early in the day, officers began to use tear gas against the demonstrators, according to The Independent:
Around 165 protesters have been arrested in Paris–some of them throwing stones, lighting fires and smashing vehicles, police said.
Police repeatedly used tear gas to try to control the crowd gathering near Montparnasse train station for the main protest. It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were injured.
One bandaged-up man with a head wound was helped away from the scene by paramedics.
The French protests were fueled in part by President Emmanuel Macron’s latest economic proposals, issued in response to Gilets Jaunes demands but which promise to continue to “liberalize the French economy” with measures that include wealth tax cuts.
The Gilets Jaunes protesters were joined on the streets of Paris and other French towns and cities by left-wing activists and trade unionists, as they were in protests over the weekend that were considered a dry run for Wednesday’s actions. Truthdig’s Donald Kaufman was on the scene in Paris at the combined labor and climate marches, where he was able to record several videos, some of which you can watch below:
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