Rêve Générale
January 29th, 2009
Check out these photos of riot police storming burning streets. Did I fly to Iraq? Gaza? Nope, I stayed in Paris. The one thing missing from my Museum of Old Paris was a strike leading to a riot, and the French populace kindly provided one for my Thursday evening’s entertainment. Strikers filled the Place de l’Opéra wearing signs saying Rêve Générale (a play on the word for “strike”, grève) and shouting “Down with Sarkozy”.
A girl with a camera was making the riot police grin and blush while it was still daylight, but as soon as it got dark, the crowd started burning things, breaking things, and throwing things. I saw several people (standing right next to me!) throw Molotov Cocktails into green rubbish bins, which exploded and burned. I saw two guys take advantage of the disorder to have some fun trying to smash a glass telephone booth with flying kicks. They were easily dissuaded — a bystander tutted at them and they sloped off.
I saw the police in riot gear beat the crowd back the length of the boulevard, then some of them came back to shoo me away as the crowd flung broken pieces of furniture and bottles.
