Paris Facing Marauding Nighttime Young Men From the “Banlieues”

By Louis-Marie Gautier @ Shutterstock.com

Is there anything Emmanuel Macron can do to stop the Yellow Vest movement, short of resigning? Would even that be enough? Macron has failed to quell the riots, even with brute force. His plan to remake France looks dead, and it’s possible he won’t even serve the remainder of his term. As Noemie Bisserbe and Stacy Meichtry observe in The Wall Street Journal “The stark economic divide between city centers and the blighted suburbs at their edges, known as banlieues, is also working against Mr. Macron. Bands of young men have seized on the weekend protests and riots as a means of distracting police, allowing them to maraud at night, smashing through shop windows and looting everything from iPhones to pharmaceuticals.” Macron will address the country with a speech tonight. They continue:

The Macron government deployed the full weight of France’s security apparatus on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to contain a movement that authorities said mobilized 136,000 protesters.

The 40-year-old former investment banker is scheduled to address the nation on Monday evening.

Proposals include cutting taxes that retirees pay on pensions; increasing the minimum wage; boosting social-welfare payments; and persuading banks to stop charging overdraft fees that add up to billions.

Many protesters say they will settle for nothing less than Mr. Macron’s resignation.

On Sunday, some protesters were already organizing another round of protests on Dec. 15. A group created a Facebook page for an event located at the Élysée Palace titled, “Macron’s farewell party.” More than 5,200 people had already marked themselves as going. Another 39,000 said they were “interested.”

The stark economic divide between city centers and the blighted suburbs at their edges, known as banlieues, is also working against Mr. Macron. Bands of young men have seized on the weekend protests and riots as a means of distracting police, allowing them to maraud at night, smashing through shop windows and looting everything from iPhones to pharmaceuticals.

Paris went into lockdown Saturday as protesters arrived, with shops boarding their windows up and down the city’s celebrated boulevards.

Protesters responded by prying cobblestones from the Champs-Élysées and hurling them at police

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called the protests “a catastrophe for our economy.”