Today the lady behind me in line at the grocery store checkout politely tapped my shoulder and when I turned around she motioned toward my giant bundles of kale and asked: “what do you do with your kale? Do you cook with it, or make juice, or…?” And i admitted there in front of god and the world “oh I feed it to my peacocks.” And she just looked so taken aback that I said “I’m sorry that’s not the answer you were hoping for”
And that’s how I learned other people don’t really know what to do with kale either. We’re all pretty sure it’s edible, though.
I should be working on my finals but I can’t. I need to talk about this because the world is looking at us through Notre-Dame, and I need to use this. You want to talk about France? LET’S TALK.
We have been on the brink of civil war since November.
You can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to live in France right now. Every Saturday, we protest for our rights, our civil, constitutional rights. Some may remember the student protests of last year (if not, here is a chronology of what happened: x, x, x, x). Since then, it’s gone downhill. In my university, the dean faces charges but is still in function, he hired a milicia with bulldogs who patrols the uni and separates any group of student they deem too big. They used to control our id before going in. The police violence is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
I’m terrified to go outside, but I still go to protests because we are being silenced, slowly, methodically, by the Macron government. I was hurt multiple times during protests, almost always in the face. I was gassed, I was hit by water canons. The police isn’t even caring about the non-protesters. I’ve seen them shoot gas grenades at toddlers, three-year-old choking on lacrymo. Two girls, gassed, and a little nine-year-old who had her arm broken running away.
A mother falling to the ground because a plastic-shrapnel grenade exploded next to her ankle and destroyed her foot. Most of my friends have PTSD, any sharp sound can send every single one of us into a panic attack. We can’t handle fireworks or firecrackers anymore.
The blood. I can’t make you understand how much blood is spilled during the protests. The number of times they scream MEDIC during protests makes me sick.
On record, there are currently three persons who were shot in the eye. One man had his hand ripped off. Multiple men and women got broken ribs from the flashballs. THEY EVEN SHOOT AT REPORTERS from the national television and freelancers, with water canons and flashballs. They’ve beaten minors unconscious, they’ve shot a flashball into someone’s mouth and it exploded his cheek, they’ve thrown a disabled man off his wheelchair.
During the protests, we break things. Of course we do. We break glass, mostly, because it’s the cheapest to repair and it’s what’s the most impacting visually, so it’s our compromise. They break us.
If you carry a camera into a protest, they’ll track you down and target you until either your camera is dead or you’re too beaten up to be able to film. I’ve been there. I never bring my camera anymore. And even then, I wouldn’t film anyway, because the police is on social media, and they look at every video, they identify people’s faces, and then people get in trouble. They block entire streets so you can’t escape them. They make ‘nests’ where they circle around protesters until they’re surrounded, then they throw a gas grenade in the middle and when people run away towards the edges, they catch everyone one by one and beat them bloody.
And the worst is the misinformation. The media have done such a good job at misrepresenting the protests that there is infighting inside my own family, inside most families, at work, at school, between people who think the government is doing its best to control the situation and the protesters are violent anarchists set to destroy the country, and the people who’ve actually been in protests, who’ve peacefully raised their hands up when asked and where shot in the ribs with a flashball in thanks. My own parents didn’t believe me until I came back from a protest with a split eyebrow and sprained wrist.
This is a short documentary a French newsreport/gamer youtuber made. If you speak French, it will give you another inside view. If not, you can just watch the images from March 18th, until now the most violent protest since November.
In Paris, now the army is in the street. They pulled back the anti-terrorism squads soldiers (about 7,000) and put them in the street, against us. They had orders to shoot after three warnings and they are armed to kill. THEY ARE ARMED WITH LETHAL WEAPONS. The last time the army was sent to control a protest was in 1948.
You want to talk about France? Talk about that. We are scared. We feel abandoned by the world. And guess what? If France falls, you’re all coming with us. Right now, it’s easy to forget that the same thing is happening in South-America and all over Middle-East, because Western media doesn’t like talking about anything that isn’t white and pretty. But if they managed to forget to talk about just how bad it is here, then it’s going to happen to you too. So the first step? Is to talk about it. Share this, share other news report. Talk about it with your friends, your families. Contact your local news, ask them why no one is talking about it. Go to social media, tweet people, ask questions. Hell, ask ME questions.
France is heading straight to civil war, and I’m terrified.
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