The Protest of Lonely People, Shaking an Entire Country
Loneliness can be just as powerful in bringing people into the streets as economic deprivation.
The yellow vest movement in France has now entered its fourth month. Every week, thousands of protesters don their high visibility jackets and match through the streets of Paris, or stand for hours on roundabouts, slowing down traffic. What started as a protest over a now cancelled fuel tax became a place for grievances of all kinds to be expressed, a way for those struggling to make ends meet to protest a President who used to work for a bank, and is seen, with good cause, as the President of the rich.
Recently I visited a group of protestors in Bourges, a small town in the countryside, in a part of France often referred to as the “Diagonal of Nothingness”. There is basically nothing of interest in this part of the country. It is a countryside of flat fields, shops are closing down in many of the town centres, cultural life is slow to none existent. There, I was welcomed by a group of Yellow Vests who spend their spare time in a large tent outside of town, drinking cheap beer and chatting around a bonfire.
Amongst them were single mothers surviving of temp jobs, people working on part-time, short term contracts and not knowing where their next paycheck would come from. There were pensioners whose benefits have been cut down and are living out their golden years shivering in houses they can’t afford to heat. There were young people who can’t get jobs and aren’t entitled to any benefits because the French social protection system is based on how much you have already paid in. I met a lot of people with very legitimate economic reasons to be angry against a President who has passed labour laws making job contracts ever more precarious, cut down on certain benefits while giving tax cuts to the very richest people in the country. They weren’t necessarily desolate, and they admitted it, but money is a constant source of concern. “I know I’m not the worst off,” one protestor, Virginie, tells me. “But I’m protesting for those with less money than me, too.”
Economic deprivation isn’t the only thing fueling the Yellow Vest movement, though. A big part of it is loneliness. The social isolation the protestors…
