France - March 23, 2023
New day of rage against the pension reform and the government of the Fifth Republic
IN THE BURNING FRANCE
THE WORKING CLASS AND THE MASSES CONTINUE THEIR HEROIC STRUGGLE IN THE STREETS
The workers, the students, the pensioners, the broad masses of France, are not leaving the streets and for a week now they have been confronting every day the Macron government, the imperialist 5th Republic regime and its repressive forces, expressing their hatred, fed up with being robbed of their gains and showing that they are not ready to let the pension reform pass.
Today, from Paris to Rouen to Brest to Montpellier to Bordeaux to Lorient, millions marched all day long with pickets, barricades, blockades of refineries and roads, closures of schools and shops, blockades of universities, burning of rubbish, fires, smashing of shop windows, attacks on banks and real estate. All over the country there was a real pitched battle.
In Paris, hundreds of demonstrators protesting against the pension reform invaded the tracks of the Gare de Lyon, with firecrackers in their hands they flooded the rails with smoke, interrupting the movement of trains. An interprofessional general assembly of about 800 workers, including health workers, teachers, railway workers and other sectors, was held in the city. In the evening the capital was burning: the flames of the fury of the exploited in 140 places illuminated every corner of the city. On the Strabourg boulevard, the demonstrators erected barricades to block the police. The former, led by the youth, and shouting "Paris, get up!", threw stones and Molotov cocktails and confronted until late at night with the riot police, which had been violently repressing all day long, throwing tear gas, arresting with great brutality every demonstrator they saw, injuring hundreds of demonstrators, as they have been doing for months. There were more than 450 people arrested in the country and many injured among the demonstrators. At the same time, more than 400 police officers were also injured.
In Bordeaux, the entrance to the Hôtel de Ville, where Charles III, King of the United Kingdom was to be received, was set on fire. In Nantes, smashing of windows, looting at the Administrative Court. In Lorient, attack on the police station and its policemen. Everyone hates the police! is shouted in the streets all over France.
In Lyon, the Peasant Confederation joined the mobilization for the first time with a banner saying "64 years, death in the fields", denouncing that with the extension of the retirement age, they will die working. At the same time the farmers distributed free products at the end of the route, denouncing that even their current retirement is a pittance that does not reach 1000 euros.
Striking workers at the Normandy refinery voted to refuse to take over the relief of their fellow workers, thus preventing them from being recruited by requisition, a measure with which the government wanted to force them back to work. The Esso-ExxoMobil refinery is also blocked. These refineries supply the Parisian airports.
In Boulogne sur Mer (access to the Strait of Dover) protesters barricaded barriers, downed power poles and pallets at the entrance to the port of the industrial zone of Resurgat, causing delays to ferries crossing the Strait, while dock workers demonstrated in the streets of the city. The port of Caen was also blocked.
The roads to Toulouse, Lille, Argoeuves (near Amiens), and the access to Charles De Gaule airport had also been blocked, although the police managed to clear the latter.
In the face of such actions of the working class, the inter-union called for a new day of national mobilization on Tuesday, 28 March.
It has already been demonstrated that in order to defeat the attack and regain what was taken from us, the government must be defeated. The enormous energies deployed by the working class, which for a week now have exceeded the pressure struggle to which the leaderships of the trade unions were leading it, need a forceful action that could bring the French imperialist bourgeoisie, its regime and its government to their knees. Macron out!
There is no time to lose, in every workplace, school, university, neighborhood, city, region, we must self-organize in committees of struggle, of workers, students, immigrants, pensioners, undocumented workers. In the face of the ferocious attack of the police and the repressive forces that the Macron government and the regime of the 5th Republic have launched against the fighting masses to silence their enormous struggle, let's set up self-defense committees to defeat the riot police and all the repressive forces. Dissolution of the police now!
Let's set up a national Coordinating Committee of Struggle to organize a REVOLUTIONARY GENERAL STRIKE throughout the country and to raise the demands of the whole working class, and first of all those of the immigrants: papers, work, health, decent housing, for all! With occupation of factories, barricades, street fighting, blockades, and all the methods of struggle that the exploited are putting into play, open the way to a victorious French May.
And let this French May burn the prairie of the whole of Europe. There our allies are the European working class who are suffering the same attacks. Together we can succeed. DOWN WITH MAASTRICH!
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