South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
France’s yellow vest protesters march despite bans, injuries
PARIS — Yellow vest activists protested across France on Saturday to support an activist injured last week in a confrontation with police and to show that they remain mobilized against the government’s economic policies.
The demonstrators were undeterred by police protest bans or repeated injuries in 20 weeks of demonstrations. So they were out marching again in Paris, Bordeaux and other cities to keep pressing President Emmanuel Macron to do more to help France’s struggling working classes or to step down.
They’re also showing solidarity with Genevieve Legay, a 73-year-old antiglobalization activist who suffered a head injury in the southern city of Nice last weekend.
The Nice prosecutor said a police officer pushed her down.
“We are all Genevieve!” read an online appeal for Saturday’s protests.
Thousands of yellow vests marched peacefully in the streets of Paris, from north of the city center through the Left Bank to the Trocadero plaza near the Eiffel Tower. Some waved a rainbow flag that read “Peace,” same as the one Legay was carrying in last week’s protest.
The French capital was placed under high security and protests were banned around the grand Champs Elysees avenue, the scene of past yellow vest riots.
Paris police said 32 people were detained and 21 fined for taking part in an unauthorized protest.
In the southern French town of Avignon, brief scuffles broke out as police forced protesters out of the narrow streets of the medieval city center.
In Bordeaux, in the southwest, French police used tear gas after some protesters set fire to debris from a construction site and tried to force their way past security barriers. Protests were banned from the city center, where violence has often erupted in previous weeks.