Hundreds of thousands of French workers and students flooded the streets Thursday to demand a "dignified wage," which is French for "somebody else please invent money, we are busy setting fire to a Citroën."
I've covered a lot of cost-of-living protests. This is the first one that closed the Eiffel Tower so the people demanding more money could walk past a monument they couldn't staff.
Here's what's real, per NBC News, France 24, Al Jazeera, and the Associated Press. Thursday's "Black Thursday" strike followed weeks of student-led blockades that started over staff shortages at Antoine de Saint-Exupéry High School in Créteil. France's Interior Ministry put nationwide turnout at 575,000 after revising an earlier 600,000 estimate. The CGT union said 1.6 million. About 448 people were arrested and 53 officers were injured. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez lined up 70,000 police with armored vehicles and drones. The Eiffel Tower stayed closed because the strikers who work there also marched.
In Lyon, riot police fired tear gas and used water cannons after fires were set. In Paris, tear gas flew about two hours into a march that started with singing and floats, then graduated to vandalism. One high school in the city center was set on fire. In Rennes, someone threw pétanque balls at officers, which is the most French projectile available without a baguette launch system.
The unions — CGT, CNT, UNEF — put the grievance in one sentence: "Everything is going up except wages and pensions." Anger, they said, is "immense." They also warned Macron's government the country is on the brink of recession, a bold claim from people currently helping the economy by torching vehicles and closing tourist landmarks.
Macron leaves office in May. Elections are about six months out, and the far right is leading the polls. So the progressive answer was another nationwide day of clogging traffic while carrying climate signs, AI warnings, and a thicket of Palestinian flags. Nothing says "fix my grocery bill" like a foreign-policy parade with tear gas dessert.
France 24 notes the eurozone's second-largest economy is battling "dire finances." The left's cure remains higher wages, better school staffing, tax changes, and one more march until the numbers invent themselves. If shouting at a riot shield raised GDP, Paris would be Singapore by lunch.
I met a fictional café owner near Place de la République — call him Jacques Receipt — who said his morning customers were delayed by the "dignified wage" route and his evening customers by the cleanup. "I am very inspired," he told me, staring at a closed register. "I will raise my prices in solidarity."
On the sewer scale, Black Thursday gets four rats out of five. One rat for closing a world landmark to protest empty wallets. One rat for a union count nearly three times the government's. One rat for pétanque as resistance. One rat for a grocery protest that somehow needed climate, AI, and Gaza to fill the placards.
The students started this over teachers. The unions finished it over wages. The fires finished the sentence. Macron's France spent Thursday proving that if you run a high-tax, high-union laboratory long enough, the lab coat catches fire and demands a raise.
And here's your bill: AAA put the U.S. national average for regular gas at $4.10 a gallon on November 5, more than a dollar above a year ago, so your commute is already protesting without the pétanque.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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