LIVE - November 5 strike: social discontent rises a notch, up to 700,000 demonstrators expected in the streets

The administrative court validated on Wednesday the alternative route proposed by the police headquarters concerning the demonstration for wages and youth on Thursday in Paris between the Places de la République and de la Nation, contested by the organizers.

The inter-union and high school and student organizations had initially proposed a route going from Place de la Bastille to Place de la Concorde, not far from the National Assembly.

The police headquarters banned this route on Wednesday, on the grounds that “this demonstration takes place in an extremely tense social context marked in particular by the urban riots that occurred in the capital” on October 17.

Some 70,000 police officers and gendarmes will be mobilized on Thursday in France in view of the national call for a strike launched by the country's main unions to defend wages and employment, said Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. “It is exactly the same” system “as that of October 31,” explained the minister on Wednesday during a press point at Place Beauvau, promising “an extremely firm response” to possible “exactions” and “excesses.”

The minister identified three risks out of the 220 actions announced: “black blocs”, “wild processions” and “looting and damage to businesses or public buildings”. As in previous weeks, Beauvau therefore called on elite units, such as the RAID, the GIGN and the BRI, as well as the “26 Centaure armored vehicles” of the gendarmerie, around “fifteen water-throwing devices”, helicopters, drones, etc.

After a day of strike in the public service on September 29, then the mobilization of October 17, marked by damage and looting, and those of October 24 and 31, calmer but still followed, to which is added the high school movement, the unions want to further increase the pressure on the government. “The time has come to take a new step in mobilization, the strike must take over” from November 5, launched the general secretary of the CGT Sophie Binet on Wednesday October 21, after a meeting in Matignon. “The mobilization meeting is November 5,” declared CFDT general secretary Marylise Léon.

This new day of social protest was announced at the beginning of October by an inter-union union bringing together the CFDT, the CGT, FO, the Unsa and the FSU, “for wages, public services, employment and industry”. “The anger is immense. The situation in the country is fragile. We must respond without delay to social and environmental emergencies,” the organizations wrote in a joint press release, calling on “all public and private employees, young people and retirees” to “strike and demonstrate next Thursday, November 5.” All the unions then joined this call for mobilization.

“It will be a great day of convergence with private sector employees who will be present, civil servants, retirees, young people,” Sophie Binet anticipated on Monday on France 2. “We want two things: salary increases everywhere (...) and a revision of the government's draft budget which, as it stands, is catastrophic for the country,” she added. Some 244 demonstrations have been announced at this stage throughout France, according to a CGT map. The coordination of the “yellow vests” also calls for a “November 5 of the people”. For the Insoumis presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, “what is hanging over our heads now” from the executive is “the general strike”, from November 5, he estimated on October 24 during the Parisian demonstration. Transport, education, health…