Week 18: France’s gilets jaunes target luxury shops and restaurant in protests

[AxeI]

It started from there and quickly snowballed into something much broader, mostly about low-income families and the middle class being forced to bear most of the financial burden.

Town halls set up channels for citizens to bring up their demands. The movement is unorganized and blurry so those demands often contradict one another, and a fair share of them are racist or extreme (reinstate the death penalty, close our borders, etc). The most popular and seemingly consistent ones across the movement are, off the top of my head:

Repeal the fuel tax (obviously)
Reinstate the tax on riches that was removed by Macron's government at the beginning of his term
Create a system of "citizen initiative referendum" (RIC), similar to what Switzerland does. In essence, if enough people petition for something, then the government has to hold a referendum on the matter. If it passes, parliament needs to design a law for it before holding a vote on it.
Increase minimum wage.
Stop the desertion of public services from rural areas.

There are other things of course but those are the main axes.

[Scarabix]

After three days of hearing about this shit I'm starting to get the message that a shitty restaurant is more important to this government than the thousands mutilated by police.

Ministre de l'intérieur & french président condemn the use of the phrase «police violence», seek to sue
Gilet jaune Éric Drouet's house raided by loyalists, police inquiry denied
«stylo rouge» teachers assaulted with point blank tear gas and chokeheld by police for blocking Toulouse rectorate.
France put on UN police violence watch list with fucking sudan & venezuela, government still refuses UN investigation into the matter.

But go ahead, keep crying about your fucking restaurant. These people are fucking scum. We should throw Fouquet's brick by brick into la Seine, it's clearly obstructing the government's vision right now.