Gilets Jaunes: One Year Later
On Nov. 17, 2018, the Yellow Vest movement had an odd beginning, resembling in no way to a classical social movement à la française. It provoked a myriad of confused media coverage worldwide, focusing on only one tactic, the Saturday Riots, ignoring the hidden part of the iceberg.
During this year, multitudes of local self-organizing tools developed, alternatives to current political and economic systems were attempted in practice as the movement grew strong and continues to. All this, even though the French and International Media have suddenly stopped covering any part of the movement. Instead, the media chose to construct a false narrative of “essouflement” (shortness-of-breath-ness) of the movement.
Paris / Image Credit: Patrice Gravoin
What happened this past year inside the movement, excluding the televised riots? What forms emerged, what were the tactics and targets? What is announced for the Rentrée 2019, and how to get involved? We want to know why this movement is still important, despite the sudden media blackout surrounding it.
Montreuil / Image Credit: Zoe Wicz
The importance of this movement lies not in the aesthetics of rioting, but in the emerging and complex new forms of political tools, categories, imaginaries it has enabled, and the growing local populations investing their lives in thinking new political systems. It grows from a larger current rupture, which started in 2011, with the Arab Spring, the Square Movements, and the Occupy Movements.
It is also reflected in the ongoing Hong Kong uprising, as discussed in Lundi Matin. These are part of a third phase of the anti-capitalist struggle, one which builds from the critique of salaried labor exploitation and the alienation of our lives, into the more global critique of the destruction of our environment and living conditions.
Hong Kong / Image Credit: Local HK Telegram Thread
The movements are based on the peoples’ social non-existence in an illusionary representative democracy. It is built by people who struggle to win and believe in their right to live a life worth living instead of professional activists who live for a never-ending struggle. It has enabled new “revolutionary subjects.” More concretely, it has created a larger symbolic umbrella which helped isolated individuals get involved, feel the power of actively being connected, and existing struggles to gather massive support rapidly.
The Yellow Vest gained visibility through instrumentalized coverage of “violence." When hearing “Gilets Jaunes,” the images that come to mind are those of Saturday riots that impressively took place without interruption for a whole year. But the media focus has been all wrong. The riots are a way to capture attention, but the coverage is not meant to stop there. They are a symbolic response to the systemic violence of a police state, to bring visibility to the underlying processes of the movement.
These are aimed towards a world against the dictatorship of money over our lives (as stated in the Saint-Nazaire call), and one built around a network of local popular assemblies growing into a federation of free communes, where the power belongs to the people, is made by the people and is for the people, as demanded by the Gilets Jaunes of Commercy in a YouTube video.
The importance of this movement comes from its novelty in breaking with classical politics. It is characterized by its leaderlessness, its chaotic heterogeneity, but mostly by its energy, strong collective affects, robust solidarities, and tenacious belief in deserving a better life.
Paris / Image Credit: Patrice Gravoin
More can be said about the tactics and targets. Throughout the year, some resources can be found at the end of the article. Keywords include re-occupations and re-appropriations of space, blockades of economic fluxes, and autonomous local and horizontal self-governance. Some unusual tactics were to make use of the roundabouts as organizing points, breaking out of the centralization of activism in metropoles. Alongside were built numerous local Maisons du Peuple and Cabanes to spark encounters, discussions, projections, and texts. It has introduced many people to the ideologies of Autonomia and Communalism.
A central development was the Assemblée des Assemblées, a national coordination of delegates from each local yellow vest group to develop democratic alternatives. The first one took place in January at Commercy, the second in Saint-Nazaire in April, the third in Montceau-les-Mines in June, and the fourth is announced for November in Montpellier, as called for by the Assembly of Assemblies of Yellow Vests.
Saint-Nazaire / Image Credit: Gilets Jaunes de Saint-Nazaire
A lot is prepared for this Rentrée 2019, such as attempting to coordinate with growing environmental movements. An attempt at this can be observed in the newest Gilets Jaunes cabane installed at the Extinction Rebellion occupation at the Place du Châtelet, as announced in a Facebook post by a Yellow Vest group.
The strength, and weakness, of the Gilets Jaunes, is the group's unpredictability; it is unclear what will happen in the future. However, we can conclude that the current economic system is not viable, and green capitalism cannot be a plausible answer.
The Gilets Jaunes and other uprisings are completely relevant and crucial to report on since they enable necessary connections to find solutions. They show us we can and should be working towards these right now. We need to liberate autonomous spaces and create diverse forms pursuing the end of the constraints of a capitalist world.
With these spaces proliferating and supporting each other, material capacities and resources develop and enable new ways of living against the global systemic commodification of lives. This multiplication must be articulated with moments of intensification and actions of blockages, occupations, uprisings which attack the economic system structurally to create breaches and not simply inoffensively build next and outside of it.
This movement offers an outlet for a positive revolutionary project. The urgent next step is to investigate and research the technicalities of installing a new system, given the multitudes of interlinked constraints the current system is built on.
Toulouse / Image Credit: Caro Style Photographie
For more information:
See Jerome Baschet's book and Laurent Jeanpierre's book about the movement.
Here are a few independent media sources that cover it: Lundi Matin, ACTA, Cerveaux Non Disponibles, Plein Le Dos, Desarmons-Les, Commune Magazine, Plateforme d'Enquete Militante
Don't hesitate to look up the official Assemblée Facebook page and other local Gilets Jaunes Groups.
Call for the first year Anniversary - "We all have a reason to be a Gilet Jaune" / Image Credit: Cerveaux Non Disponibles
