PARIS — More than 400,000 people marched across France on Saturday, October 24, protesting rising living costs and school funding in a fresh challenge to President Emmanuel Macron, as largely peaceful rallies gave way to clashes in Paris and other cities. Police made nearly 1,000 arrests, the government said, according to the Associated Press.
A peaceful march turns violent in Paris
The Paris march began peacefully, a week after widespread rioting and looting during protests across the country. But near the demonstration’s endpoint in eastern Paris, masked protesters hurled objects and fireworks at police, who answered with tear gas, sound grenades and water cannon, the AP reported.
In Marseille, France’s second city, youths set fire to rubbish bins to block roads and hurled rocks and bottles at security forces, while police said several stores, including two jewellery shops, were ransacked. Clashes also flared in Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Lille, Nantes, Nice, Rennes and Toulouse, according to Reuters.
Two very different crowd counts
France’s Interior Ministry put nationwide turnout at 410,000, including 110,000 in Paris. The CGT union, which helped organize some of Saturday’s protests, estimated nearly 800,000 nationwide and 250,000 in Paris. Both counts are reported here as given; neither is treated as the settled figure.
Authorities deployed 70,000 police officers and gendarmes, 10,000 more than a week earlier, after conceding they had underestimated the scale of the unrest on October 17. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez had urged officers to be, in his words, “ultra, ultra responsive” against troublemakers and looters.
Nunez said the violence was less intense than a week ago. “What changed was anticipation,” he said. He added: “In almost every march we saw the formation of these high-risk groups. They broke away from the main body and sought to commit acts of violence,” accusing far-left activists and criminal gangs of seeking to foment trouble.
Why people are marching
The marches were driven by anger over living costs, strained public services and school funding, which have drawn students, workers and unions onto the streets in recent weeks, Reuters reported. The grievances go beyond a single policy: protesters denounced rising living costs and growing inequality, and the turnout — hundreds of thousands nationwide for a second straight Saturday — signals a protest movement that has not run out of steam.
What happens next turns on whether the government answers the cost-of-living grievance and whether next Saturday’s marches stay peaceful or tip again into street violence. The arrest count and the rival crowd figures are both likely to be revised as official tallies are updated.
Sources: Associated Press; Reuters.
