Rain was pouring from the sky. It formed rivulets that became un-avoidable rivers that picked up the grime of the Parisian streets. Under the huge statue of Marianne in the centre of the Place de la République, there were more people selling kebabs than protestors.
When I’d told my flatmates I wanted to join the Yellow Jacket protests in Paris, they didn’t applaud me, as I’d hoped. Instead they they gave me uncharacteristically cautionary advice.
“Ooh la la! Non, non, non! It’s not something to do by yourself!” they said.
“It’s better to have someone look out for you in case there’s trouble.”
“If you’re going to join the yellow jackets in Paris, you need matos.”
“You need good running shoes.”
“And take your passport.”
With Brexit looming it didn’t seem the best form of ID.
“And finally, you need a gas mask.”
“But if you don’t have one, swimming goggles will do.”
“The mask is for lacrimo.” Cecille offered and said like that it sounds almost pretty and feminine. But it’s short for gaz lacrymogène and that means tear gas.
Few of the people that I knew had taken part in the Yellow Jacket protests. “We don’t know who these people are, what they’re asking for, we don’t want to support a movement where it’s not clear what we’re supporting.”
The Yellow Jackets remained mysterious and unknown. Where better to get to know them in Paris?
Paris! Paris! The Mecca of revolutionaries! All the people whose heads were chopped off their bodies in this very place.
The Yellow Jacket protests had now been going for five months. The French are never ones to miss out on drama and had named each Saturday’s protest an Act. The rendezvous point for the 25th Act of the Yellow Jacket protests was at 2 pm in the Place de la République in the centre of Paris.
Now here I was and all I could see was ten people dressed in yellow jackets, huddled under umbrellas, dwarfed by Marianne’s lions. At Marianne’s right side a van of riot police was parked, its windows steamed up by the breath of the twenty riot police inside.
“Where are the others?” I asked one of the women in a yellow jacket. She had travelled 576 km from Grenoble for the protest.
“You mean our camarades ?” she said. At left-wing gatherings, everyone suddenly becomes ‘comrade’ like we have slipped backwards into revolutionary Russia.
I went from person to person asking if they had any insider information about the rest of the protestors, much like you might ask for directions as a tourist.
“Sorry to bother you, but how do I get to the part of Paris where the riot police are firing off grenades, please?”
“Excusez-moi, do I need to take a right or a left to join the people bashing down high fashion shop windows, please?”
The group of ten gilet jaunes who were soaked to the skin swiped madly at their smartphones trying to find information about where other protestors might have gathered.
Rumours and contradictory information and ideas bounced through the air like balloons.
“Our comrades are marching towards the Place de Italie! But they have been blocked by the police! We need to go and reinforce them!”
“No! They will soon arrive here, and then we will all join together and march through the streets of Paris!”
“No! They are heading towards the site of the national library of Francois Mitterand!”. Why they were heading towards a library was unclear. Were they going to borrow books for bed-time reading?
“We should ask the riot squad where the other protestors are. They’re bound to know.”
By this stage the riot police had clearly decided we were as threatening as a bread roll, and dozed in their armoured van.
This was not the sexy, rock n roll, day out in Paris I’d imagined, full of rebels wearing sleeveless t-shirts, and rakish scarfs and Doc Martens, hurling rocks. This was the 21st century and we couldn’t find out where the rest of the protest was.
A passerby smirked, “Someone should invent a yellow jacket application so you can find each other.”
Then a man in a pink shirt stopped to talk to me.
“You think this is the end of the Yellow Jackets?” he asked me. “Ha! I am one of those left-wing people who no longer has any opinions about anything anymore,” he said glumly.
Then immediately his face broke into a wide smile. “Still, I will try to find the other yellow jackets! You coming?”
“We will find them! Never fear! Suivez-moi! Follow me! I have a plan. We’ll catch them as they come out near the Seine! We’ll take the metro. Tu viens?! Are you coming?”
Maybe it was his pink shirt or his renewed confidence but he seemed to be on to more than the other drenched Gilet Jaunes. I followed him down into the metro station under the Place de la République.
A woman and her son made a beeline for us while we bought our tickets. They were wearing yellow workmen’s jackets so at first I thought they were ticket inspectors.
The woman was tall with badly dyed orange hair, cross eyes and in her arms she was carrying a chiuahaha, the same colour as her own hair. Her son was in his twenties, tall and scared looking.
The woman asked us, “You’re also looking for them? You know where they are? We’ll follow you!”
The metro bumped and swayed its way through the belly of Paris. It was dark down here, but the fluorescent yellow jackets and their reflector strips, shone in the white light of the metro. They debated about the Yellow Jackets protests at full voice, while the other commuters looked on like sitting ghosts.
Pierre in pink had swung back into cynical mode.
“It’s just a load of people who have nothing better to do and now they sit around on roundabouts and have barbecues and drink pastis. They’re not as poor as they pretend. Most of them have bottles of whisky in their car boots.”
It seemed Pierre measured wealth in bottles of whisky.
“I don’t agree,” the lady with the chihuahua replied. She broke into song “foule sentimentale, on a soif d’idéal, attirée par les étoiles” (the Sentimental crowd, who are thirsty for ideals, attracted by the stars) that’s what I think of when I think of the Gilets Jaunes. It’s clearly a new May ‘68.”
Her son lifted his head. “No! During May ‘68 the whole country was blocked. The Yellow Jackets are nowhere near this in strength.”
We emerged out of the metro, on the other side of Paris. I no longer had absolutely any idea where I was.
Neither, apparently, did Pierre.
“The Seine! We need to find the Seine river, ” he poured over one of those unreadable metro maps, which never show the area you want to go, but finish just before.
I asked a group of three gangstery types, who looked like they could have brought down a government just the three of them. They didn’t know where the river was either.
We scurried down the street.
Along the way a man on a bike travelling in the other direction stopped us. The lady with the chihuahua and her son in their glowing jackets had attracted him, like a magpie to gold.
“Do you know where the Yellow Jackets are?” he asked us hopefully, his face wide with hope.
“The National Library!” said Pierre emphatically.
“Why the library?”
“Does it matter? Are you with us or against us?”
The man turned his bike and joined our procession.
We passed a side street.
“Oh la la!” Pierre stopped. His face beamed in ecstacy.
“This is the street of Rue………; it’s in a cult scene from a film about when Paris was under Nazi
control.”
He spread his arms and word for word he acted it out.
“Enough! Onwards! The yellow jackets await!”
We ran on down the street, and along the way other people coming in the opposite direction asked if we were looking for the ‘gilets jaunes’ also, and when we said yes, they turned around and followed us.
I imagined we were following in the footsteps of the sans-culottes. The word was coined during the French Revolution to describe the common people of the lower classes who were protesting against the monarchy. The distinctive costume of the sans-culottes was pantalon (long trousers) in place of the culotte, the silk breeches, worn by the upper classes. The sans-culottes were the urban labourers who became the driving force of the revolution. They called for social equality, economic equality and popular democracy. They were one of the first working class groups that had a political stance.
We raced on. The Seine stretched out in front of us, lined by the high rise glass buildings of the banking sector of the government.
Pierre seemed to be forgetting our quest for the Yellow Jackets.
“Have you heard of Tocqueville’s theory?” he asked.
Finally the great building of the National Library came into view. There was not a Yellow Jacket or a policeman to be seen in any direction.
Pierre paused and I thought another film re-enactement was imminent or a tirade about the Gilets Jaunes or an explanation of Tocqueveille.
“Will you wait here? I just need to buy a baguette,” he said and ducked into a boulangerie.