May 1 French with March and repression | Hundreds …

From Paris

Red, yellow and black were the colors of this virulent May 1 in Paris, where unions, autonomous groups, Black Blocks and yellow vests were united in the streets. Forty thousand demonstrators marched in the French capital for about 400,000 throughout the country. The figure is short compared to other times, but the demonstrations in Paris provoked violent clashes between groups of demonstrators and the police and, also, a series of looting and destruction on the boulevard de Montparnbade and its surroundings.

The bitterness raised by President Emmanuel Macron and the symbols of his tenure are as dense as in the early days of the yellow vests movement, in November 2018. People picked it up with all that was breathing luxury or wealth. He left the popular profile bars intact and destroyed the inhabitants and the pretty banks. The unions protested vehemently against the brutal charges against the police. The forces of the order have swept the whole world, including trade unionists perfectly identified and not inclined to looting. The CGT denounced "unprecedented violence and without discrimination".

The "extreme center" of Macron remains sticky and vicious. Three hundred and fifty journalists have legitimately complained of aggressive and intimidating treatment, often accompanied by physical and verbal violence by the police. It seems that covering a street protest in France is more dangerous than being in a real war. The journalists denounced "beatings", "seizure of material, threats and insults". The forces of order are even allowed to forcibly erase the memory cards of cameras. A whole democratic show on the other side.

The law enforcement doctrine updated last March is characterized by excessive use of force. Anything that looks like a protester is intercepted by the police with indisputably dictatorial judicial methods. It is a matter of intimidation.

The government also has a new legislative package to repress in which it has even been forbidden to leave with the head or face covered. Once again, the extremes of the Black Blocks and the police reaction amplified the political impact of an event at a fairly modest level of convocation. Like every Saturday with the protests of the yellow vests, there are few people and a lot of social and political echo. The crackdown has finished marking the presidential term. From November to today, hundreds of people have been seriously injured, had their limbs amputated, and their eyes lost under police bullets. And there have never been so many thousands and thousands of people arrested and tried without fairness.

It is no coincidence that one of the most repudiated emblems this first May was the figure of Alexander Benalla, now Macron's former bodyguard, who appeared disguised as a policeman – he was not – flying protesters in a square in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. His case is a hymn to impunity and manipulation: to protect him, presidential advisers altered the images, punished the police officers, then lied to parliamentary commissions, continued to use diplomatic pbadports while he was not guilty. he no longer worked in the presidency, falsified official documents. He violated ongoing judicial controls and, in the performance of his duties, signed security contracts to protect Russian oligarchs linked to Vladimir Putin. Benalla had the luxury of publishing a photo on Twitter with a weapon in his hand while he was not allowed to carry weapons. Benalla continues to enjoy freedom of movement. Every ordinary citizen would be in a high security cell in La Santé prison some time ago. His lordship enjoys the mercy of a system that holds him in his arms. Masks with their silhouette, slogans and songs were a mbadive slogan on this first of May. "In case of abuse, there is Benalla on the cover," indicates a sign that a man held in his hand and whose face was covered with the mask of Alexander Benalla. This episode of politico-police sloppy mediocrity adhered to the public image of macronism as the nickname given to Emmanuel Macron in 2017, "the president of the rich".

The Black Blocks and the far left hoped to make this day of May a new battle scenario. They reached it once again. In their own way, with the blind police repression, they tarnished the essence of this day of the worker, where the essential thing was to claim the right and the equality of the work and whose protagonists are generally the unions. The union of violence stole the first plane.