France - March 21, 2023
LET ALL FRANCE BURN!
DOWN WITH THE PENSION REFORM!
REVOLUTIONARY GENERAL STRIKE TO DEFEAT MACRON AND THE FIFTH IMPERIALIST REPUBLIC
For 6 days, against the pension reform, the masses have continued to mobilize spontaneously, blocking routes, and today 6 of the seven refineries are still blocked despite the Government having imposed the requisition, which forces some essential workers to return to work.
All these nights in Paris and in the main cities in the inner country, with barricades, burning garbage bags, breaking shop windows, the protesters face the riot police which is hardening the repression every day, that even takes everyone crossing in their path prisoner, without no reason.
10,000 people in Nantes, 4,000 in Rennes and 5,000 in Grenoble took to the streets in a torchlight demonstration. In Nantes, the police repressed with intense mortar fire as soon as the mobilization began.
In the Place de la République, Paris tonight, 3,500 people demonstrated and there were 46 arrests.
Shouting "all policemen are bastards" and "everyone hates the police," they confronted the riot police as the latter surrounded them to prevent them from advancing. The repression was not long in coming and they began to fire tear gas on the crowd. Violence, physical and verbal aggressiveness, persecution of protesters. And as if this were not enough and as shown by videos that go around social networks since the night before, the night of March 20, they knocked down a protester who fell to the ground fainting by fist bumps. Today, March 21 at night, you can clearly see how an officer fires a grenade, which hits a protester in the head, knocking him down. Murderers! Disbanding of the Police right now!
"What we want is a general strike"
Thus the first protesters were claiming who arrived at about 6:00 p.m. at the Place de la République in Paris. While the mobile Gendarmerie and riot police troops were located on the boulevard and in the streets that led to the square.
In Lille, to the cry of “Strikes, blockades, wild demonstrations!", high school students were mobilized, accompanied by members of the CGT and SUD. Some 250 people gathered in the city and confounded the police by playing cat and mouse.
Strike pickets, roadblocks at the entrances to the cities of Rennes, Lille, Lyon, Caen, Le Havre, Nantes, Charleville-Meziere (Belgian border), Grenoble, are expressing the rage, the anger of the workers, students, against the pension reform and also against the use of the article, with which (49.3) the Government wants to impose this reform.
In the energy sector, the general secretary of the CGT-Energie promised new waves of "selective cuts", such as what had happened at noon when they cut electricity to the headquarters of the BNP Paribas and Société Générale banks, as well as the RATP (Paris public transport). The cuts have affected some 35,000 homes and businesses in Toulouse, where Airbus factories are located.
Garbage collectors in Paris, who have been on strike for days, have blocked the incineration establishments completely.
Tonight, the police unblocked the Donges oil terminal, which had been occupied by the workers for a week. While in Le Havre, all the access bridges to the industrial zone and the port were blocked on Tuesday morning.
In Fos-sur-Mer, near Marseille, where the oil deposits are located, in the morning the police went to force the striking workers to return to their jobs (requisition) because, 54% of the service stations had a lack of fuel and 41% were already without any fuel. However, bravely the workers of the refinery with an immediate response and with the support of hundreds of unionized workers in the CGT of the region and protesters who arrived with banners against Macron and his pension reform, blocked the entrance of the deposit, burned pallets which made the police back off.
At the end of the morning, they wanted to go to another access to the warehouse where the system trucks were entering at that moment, but they were unable to stop the trucks, as they were protected by riot police, which responded with projectiles and tear gas grenade shots, which pushed the protesters back.
With all these heroic actions, the workers, the students, demonstrate the power of their struggle, that they are not willing to give up and are going to fight all the way.
herefore, what the working class and the exploited masses need is:
A revolutionary general strike that overthrows the pension reform, Macron’s Government and the regime of the imperialist Fifth Republic. And to light the fuse throughout Europe, so that a common strike with the working class of the rest of Europe could bring down Maastricht! For the return of May 68!
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