About 1,500 initiatives including demonstrations and blockades have been announced on the website dedicated to mobilization. The entourage of Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez speaks of around 500 planned actions and over 90 planned demonstrations. In addition to marches in city centers and rallies on roundabouts, symbol of the yellow vests, blockades and garrisons with controlled passage are planned at stations, bridges, toll booths, petrol stations, refineries and oil depots.
Authorities expect around 40,000 protesters in Paris today and another 150,000 in the rest of the country, according to a police source. The protest takes place in a climate of strong social tensions, fueled by the increase in fuel prices and the loss of purchasing power. In the background, the memory of the yellow vests of 2018-2019, born against the increase in fuel taxes and marked by violent clashes, including on the Champs-Elysees.
"Unrest is expected in demonstrations, especially in Paris and in large cities", warned sources close to Minister Nuñez, who specified that stun grenades, the use of which in high school protests was suspended after serious incidents, could be used in the event of "extremely serious urban violence". Speaking live on France 2, the Interior Minister said he fears above all that the "final phases" of the protest could degenerate into devastation and violence "due to the far left", in particular, in cities such as "Bordeaux and Toulouse". Sources close to the minister warn that "blocking actions" on the country's main arteries and infrastructures "will not be tolerated".
In the morning the first interventions by the police at the beginning of the day of mobilization. In Lyon, riot police used tear gas to disperse around a hundred demonstrators along the banks of the Rhone. In Rennes, "a group of demonstrators attempted to block avenue Charles et Raymonde Tillon by erecting burning barricades," the prefecture reported on X, adding that a police intervention was underway.
In the capital, demonstrations are prohibited near sensitive institutional places, including the Elysée, Matignon and the National Assembly, and on the Champs-Elysees. The prefect of Paris, Patrice Faure, rejected the itinerary of the Paris demonstration with arrival in Place de la Concorde, invoking risks of violence and disruption of public order. Faure proposed an alternative route, between Place de la Bastille and Place de Clichy, which however the organizers did not like. "We are refused marches that head towards places of power and this is not normal", declared Coppélia Moreau, of the Ile-de-France l'Interface committee, at the end of a meeting in the prefecture with the local authorities.
Since the beginning of September, calls for a return to the streets on October 17 had begun to circulate on social media. Eight years later, symbolic figures of the yellow vests during the 2018-2109 protests such as Jérôme Rodrigues, Maxime Nicolle, Eric Drouet and Priscillia Ludosky, expressed their support for the mobilization. Jerome Rodrigues, a figure of the yellow vests who lost an eye during a demonstration in January 2019, called for the protest to continue beyond this day: "We will not solve the problem in one day, we must make ourselves heard for much longer."
"It is not just a movement of 'yellow vests', nor just a movement of students and high school students, it is the entire people who are rising up, and that is why the powers that be are afraid", declares Benjamin Ball, curator of the website 17octobregiletjaune.net, already promoter of past protests such as “Bloquons tout” and the climate march of 26 September. In an internal circular revealed by BFMTV, the police indicate that today's mobilization is fueled by "an effervescence on the social networks, which generated it, but also on the media, which are dedicating increasing space to this issue". According to the authorities, it is "a 'heterogeneous' movement that aims at a 'convergence of struggles' and which brings together, among others, exponents of the far left, 'neo-gilets jaunes', supporters of the Palestinian cause, left-wing parties, high school students, students and even 'adherents of the alternative techno scene'".
The presidential vote in April sees the candidate of the Rassemblement National (RN), Marine Le Pen, as the big favorite in the polls. The president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, said he was "concerned" about possible unrest, accusing the mobilization of offering, "under the cover of legitimate demands", an opportunity for the "France of chaos" to rally behind Melenchon. The leader of La France Insoumise focuses on mobilization and hailed "an important moment" in which "the acute exasperation of many sectors of society" will be expressed, in particular university and high school students, while denouncing "disproportionate and permanent police violence and repression". Several deputies of the radical left, the leader of the Ecologists Marine Tondelier and the communist secretary Fabien Roussel will be present in the marches.
