Clément Petitjean is an associate professor of American studies at the Université Panthéon Sorbonne in Paris.
France’s ongoing movement against pension reforms has an impressive level of popular mobilization. But it hasn’t relied on the “professional organizers” typical of US social movements — showing there’s a different way to build well-rooted mobilizations.
A government bid to cut back pensions has pitched France into its longest strike in decades. But as one railworker organizer tells Jacobin, the dispute is about more than retirement insurance — it’s about stopping Emmanuel Macron’s whole agenda.
The transformation of community organizing into a “profession” is a barrier to radical political change.
France’s failure to criminalize recent protests is revealing fault lines in the government’s highest offices.
Many thought the Parti de gauche would reinvigorate the French left. Why has the effort failed?