5 ans des Gilets Jaunes | Manifestation du 18 novembre 2023 à Paris

I am yellow because there has been misery in this country for five years, maybe much more. I am yellow because of the injustices of this government, which cares about the French people. The French people are dying of hunger, while this government does not care. The government is corrupt, whether it is the left or the right, any part of the government is corrupt. And I am yellow to defend the people, for the future of my children. What is your personal situation? Is it difficult? Yes, I resumed my studies because I had a work accident, so I am unable to work. I resumed my studies to find a new job. Financially, it is difficult. Can you eat normally? No, no. It is difficult when we pay our taxes, when we pay our bills. In the shops, everything has increased. I have three children and it costs me 400 euros per week. It is not possible. By earning 1,500 euros, we cannot. It is impossible. In France, people cannot feed themselves. It is not possible. How do you feed your children? We borrow money, we do not pay our bills and we risk being expelled. The Yellow Vests have been here for five years. We have been fighting for five years. The government has not listened to us for five years. For five years, the government has been celebrating as if we did not exist. For five years, the Yellow Vests have never stopped fighting. They do not listen to us. In other countries, we suffer. In other countries, it is difficult. In France, our ancestors fought for our rights. We had rights and we are losing them. People are resigned because we have a government that goes from 49.3% to zero. We do not have a government. We pay ministers a crazy salary with crazy advantages and we are dying. It is unacceptable. It is not possible. The people must wake up. The people must realize that it is not because the government does what it wants that we are resigned. We must all unite. From any country we come from, we are all in the same country. We all live in the same country and we all suffer in the same way. At the beginning, the Yellow Vests were angry citizens. Right, left, middle, there was no political party. We were there to be able to eat, to have the right to live. What is your current situation? I am retired. I have to work again to eat. I work twice a week in the children's ward. There are a lot of retirees in my case and I am 67 years old. It is very difficult. People who have worked from the age of 15 to 62, I have 1,000 euros in retirement with a salary of 600 euros. How do you want to do? What message do you want to pass on to the young people? I defend the Yellow Vests. At the end of the month, if they do not finish their retirement, if they have children, widowed women or divorced women, we think of the sick, the disabled too, all these poor people. They must have a better life. What message do you want to pass on to President Macron? I always say to Macron, I respect him as president. But he did not want to listen to the Yellow Vests. It is unfortunate. Second, this government does not want to talk about us, even the media. So it is forbidden to talk about the Yellow Vests. Even tomorrow, you wear a Yellow Vest, you walk on the sidewalk, they catch you, either the police station or a fine. Are you already in the police station? No, but there are some friends of mine. Either we go to the police station or a fine. And now I say to Macron, try to understand us. Try on our side. Try a little open to the Yellow Vests. We are not monsters. We are humans. We listen and we have a brain. And we think. So don't worry. As we say, we defend the people. And it stops there. I just want to say that the veil that was also raised with the Yellow Vests is precisely to see the repression. How a government treats citizens by treating them by all names. Even by taking away their civility. Yes, by slandering us. Yes, necessarily. The gas, the beating. Fortunately, the only chance I have compared to other Yellow Vests is that I have not been murdered in the flesh. And we must not forget that it is 5 years. It is also for all the people who have worn this Yellow Vest and who are no longer with us. In fact, they are no longer in front of our eyes, but they are still in our hearts. There were still 36 people in Yellow Vests who lost an eye. But not necessarily only Yellow Vests. There was a 16-year-old child. His mother sent him to look for bread. It was in the east, towards Strasbourg. And he took a bullet. He had his whole head disfigured. So there was so much violence. And then they used black boxes, different movements, to break the movement. And I think that there was, at the level of the government, an interdiction on the media to still talk about Yellow Vests. While we have been here every Saturday for 5 years. We didn't let go of anything. I am English-Irish. I have been here for 33 years. Why are you a Yellow Vest? Because I believe in liberty, equality and fraternity. What I saw in France is a dramatic change. When I arrived in France, it was not what we see today. It was a beautiful country. In fact, 50 years ago, day by day, France was really big. France was big 50 years ago. Today, it is a small country. People are afraid. They think that the interdiction is over. It is something that is so sad. You have seen that the spirit of France has changed. The interdiction has changed. Yes. We were talking earlier about the injured. This is the mattress. I have broken my leg. It is because of the blows. Did you suffer the violence? Yes. I am not even French, but I suffered because I support the cause. Can you repeat again? What did you get? A mattress. Yes, a public mattress. This is Bastille. I was 3 years old. What did you do? Were you also violent? No, I was just there. I was just there. I am 61 years old. I can't run. I can't run so fast. The first time, I got off the subway in the Republic. A policeman came up and hit me. For absolutely nothing. He hit everything that moved. I moved. Are you from Belgium? Yes, I am from Belgium. Why did you come from so far away? It is a global problem. Democracy is a global problem. The Yellow Vests started on the same day in Belgium and France. It was even more violent in Belgium. It is different. In Belgium, they arrived by bus. They arrived here by bus. They put us in the bus. We are locked up in huge prisons. During the day. In the evening, they let us go. Are you in prison? Yes. It is a law that was passed 10-20 years ago. For the hooligans. For football matches. They use this law against us. By saying that we risk doing harm during the day. It is by prevention that they lock us up. Without judgment. Without anything. When we get out of there, we don't have a paper to say that we spent the whole day in custody. Without judgment. How many times were you in custody? Three times in Belgium. And here in Paris, once again, 35 hours. To be handcuffed. Without... It was the day after the... Not Armandin, the other one. Castaner had put the law on illegal weapons. Plastrons and gas masks. They were weapons of war. I had a gas mask to avoid being intoxicated. Because to them, it is a weapon. A gas mask is not a weapon. It is to protect yourself. And they were throwing gas. So I had that with me. And I spent 35 hours in custody in Paris. And I wasn't convicted. Did you invest a lot in Gélieon? Yes, a lot. A lot of money. How much did you invest in Gélieon? I would say... Two or three evenings a week. And all my weekends. For five years. Does it deserve it? Yes, yes, because... I think that... For me, personally, I don't do it for myself. I do it for all the children and for all our future generations. Because we are really going towards a dictatorship. Because I also work in Europe. And I have contacts with Europe. With people who are more on our side. And this week, for example, they voted for the digital wallet. So we will all know about you. But it is very dangerous. Because, for example, now if you have an illness, when you are going to be employed somewhere, we will put your digital wallet on the road. And then we will see that you are sick, you will not be hired. It will also be, if you have done so many demonstrations, you will no longer be able to have a job, you will no longer be able to travel. It's already happening in other countries. In China, it's already like that. So the one who is opposing, in a way, they are not opponents, they are people who want something else. But here we are no longer listened to by politics. Neither heard nor listened to. I fight for the common good of citizens and citizens living in France who have this desire to live with dignity. The movement is historical. It has been going on for five years. It is still there. It will always be there. And it shows that in France it is not going well. Because it is not only in Paris that there are Yellow Vests. There are Yellow Vests everywhere in France. They open tolls. They go on roundabouts. They block some streets. And the movement is national. It moves throughout the country. And it shows that it is not going well, that there is a fracture between the people and the government. And you, personally, is it difficult too, daily life? Ah yes, daily life is difficult. It is difficult. It is very difficult. You know, you take an average Frenchman who earns his SEMI. He pays his rent at 600 euros. He pays his groceries for 200 euros. There is not much in the caddy. He pays his bills. And now he works to get gas to go to work. You see the situation. We have no leisure. We are not happy, in the end. We just want to be happy. Well, me, two weeks at the beginning of the month, I already have nothing. Did you work? I worked during these last two months, in air conditioning. But as soon as I get my salary, money goes very fast. Life is too expensive. Doing our shopping, it's a cost now. It's a luxury. We can't afford it. We pay attention to what we buy. We pay attention to our expenses. Making gasoline, well, we pay attention with our vehicle not to take it for nothing. It's complicated. Can you eat a lot? Well, no. I often eat pasta. Often pasta. Meat is a luxury. The kilo is expensive. And there are French people who are in much more precarious situations than mine and who can't afford to eat well every day. Sometimes we eat once a day. And you, what is your case? It happens to me sometimes. Sometimes I manage to get by. There is also solidarity. We help each other. And without this help, without this family, without these Yellow Vests, for example, I think a lot of people would be even more affected by the fact that they are affected now. You mean, between the Yellow Vests, there is help, there is still solidarity? Yes, there is solidarity. There is help. It has always existed since the movement. People help each other. There are people in their gardens who grow vegetables and fruits and give them back to other Yellow Vests. We help each other as best we can. We are all in the same boat and the boat is sinking. And we will all sink if we don't do anything. What we are confronted with is simply corruption at all levels. The media is spreading information. Health is being killed. Justice is unfair. And the banks are lying to us. They are lying to us and they are illegal, they are cheating, etc. So I aspire to a simple thing. It's just that there are good people who are put in the place of scams. The Yellow Vests who are there and who don't give up and who have been there to spread the truth for five years. That's why I'm fighting. Because I have respect for all these people. I have a good feeling about it. I'm not a member of the RSA. I have a job. I own my own apartment. Because what the Yellow Vests were at the beginning was really a mixed class. It was not politicized at all, etc. And really, we didn't want to. I have a child, a son. I didn't want to. Besides, at the beginning, he was protesting with me. Well, then we got scared in 2019. We stopped. I'm not that young. And I was scared for him. With everything that was put in place, the police repression, especially in Paris. But really, what got me out is that I didn't want to leave this world to my son, to our children, to the generations to come. And it's surprising. It was a shock for France, which is supposedly, thank you, which is supposedly, well, normally, a country of freedom, fraternity, equality. All the paradigm that I had fallen into, I believed in my country, in France, in a land of welcome, a land of freedom, of expression, of everything. In fact, we were deprived of everything. After the COVID crisis and the health pass and all that, frankly, we are dark. Today, we have the seven groups who are all together, etc. We're going to walk, we're going to walk towards the Sacred Heart. Today, they are able to do anything and everything. They are able to arrest people as they want. They are able to put PVs even though it's unconstitutional. They are able to do everything, or even go so far as to suppress or lock people up for nothing at all. Do you think the demonstrations of Yellow Vests are useful for something? They are useful in one way or another, even if we are not seen on TV, we are seen in the street. That's the main thing. What do you think is the spirit of Yellow Vests? Fraternity and freedom. Equality, for now, it's not there at all, it's not there, it's not represented. But it's precisely by putting pressure. Every Saturday or every Wednesday, etc. All the groups, each one of them, they bring a stone to the building. It's not about talking about us or not talking about us. It's about knowing what's going to happen. So our duty is to communicate to the people of France that if they don't move, if they don't do anything, we go straight to the wall, quite simply. There are people who are also prohibited from demonstrating, so they can't be present, unfortunately, for the next five years. So we are also here for them, for these people. Do you think it's important to be here today? Yes, absolutely. Why? Because it's the future of our children, of future generations. So if we don't do it now, it will never progress.