The yellow vests challenge the French Government with acts of civil disobedience: "We want to recover our power to live with dignity and freedom"

The yellow vests have taken a step further in the social mobilizations registered in the last 50 days in France with acts of "civil disobedience" and "unauthorized" concentrations such as the one held in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, armored in advance by the Police, which has once again deployed 70,000 agents throughout the country this Saturday in anticipation of riots.

For the first time, the yellow vests distanced themselves from the "authorized" march of the unions and student organizations, which once again brought together thousands of protesters on Saturday afternoon between the Republic and Nation squares, two days after the demonstrations that brought more than half a million French people onto the streets on November 5.

"We are going to disobey and we are going to do it in a very symbolic place," declared Benjamin Ball, spokesperson for the new version of the gilets jaunes, taking up the baton of the activists who for 484 days in a row kept the forces of order and President Macron in check, blocking squares and roundabouts with their fluorescent vests in protest of the fuel tax.

"Our demands go further this time," warned Ball, who referred to the group's new manifesto: "We want to recover what has been stolen from us: time, money, democracy and our lives. We want to recover our power to live with dignity and freedom. To live, and not just to survive." The spokesperson was later arrested in front of the National Assembly.

Lawyer David Libeskind, another of the group's most notable members, claimed to have filed a complaint against the Paris prefecture for its refusal to authorize a march in the city center. "We chose Place de la Concorde for its symbolic value and because it is close to the National Assembly," Libeskind warned. "We are willing to challenge the authorities."

A hundred yellow vests staged a symbolic sit-in in front of the Concordia obelisk early in the afternoon, while they were harassed and surrounded by the Police, in scenes of growing tension. "You can't silence us," read the banner waved by a student who identified herself as Lena: "We are here demanding, among other things, our right to protest; we cannot bow to this oppressive system that tells us how, when and where we can demonstrate."

The inter-union group of students and the five main unions, meanwhile, once again called for a new march "against the high cost of living and in defense of youth" in the Plaza de la República. In an attempt to appease social anger, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced the holding of a "social conference" on Monday with the participation of employers and unions and with the aim of "presenting concrete responses to the expectations of the French people."

The Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, for his part, asked his troops on Saturday "not to lower their guard in the face of incidents whose intensity of violence will not decrease." Nuñez issued orders to the prefectures to dissolve "spontaneous" and previously unauthorized demonstrations.

Although the clashes with the Police and acts of vandalism have diminished since the explosion of violence on October 17, which resulted in 2,400 detainees and a thousand injured, criticism against police repression has increased after the recent attacks against journalists, who attend the marches equipped almost like war reporters, with helmets and gas masks.

The Agence France-Presse denounced on Friday "the violence committed by the Police against its journalists during the demonstrations." On Thursday, an agency photographer identified by his bracelet suffered a fractured fibula and received five blows (three of them on his helmet) in a police charge. On October 17, another journalist from the agency was hit in the thigh with a rubber bullet in Lille. That same day, a video journalist was deliberately attacked with a water cannon in Paris.

The organization Reporters Without Borders has documented up to 58 cases of journalists who have had their work hindered in demonstrations, 35 of them with "physical violence", 21 of which were carried out by law enforcement forces (and the rest by protesters). A reporter from the left-wing portal Politis and a photographer from the Divergences collective announced on Friday the filing of a complaint after being attacked by the Police at the November 5 demonstration in Paris, "repressed for no apparent reason and without prior notice."