By Clotilde Bigot for AlterNet. France is a far more rebellious country than the United States. People march in the streets and go on strike for the smallest reasons. But this time, there is evidence of a major revolt as hundreds of thousands of people have been protesting against a new labor law for weeks. High school and university students were the first to join the protest, to block their schools and to demand the withdrawal of the law, quickly joined by trade unions, and by the youth, in general. The grassroots movement called Nuit Debout ("Night on Our Feet") has been protesting virtually nonstop.
With unemployment high in France, the nominally Socialist government of François Hollande has aggressively pushed through a new law. In the face of hostility Hollande has chosen to bypass a vote in the National Assembly using a rarely used executive power, which has sparked the most recent of a series of massive protests. In the meantime, Hollande has been unsuccessful overall in gaining consensus on the labor plan, failing to unite the Socialists in his own party, which the conservatives are strongly against as well.
