Dozens of #40mars occupations are organized across the continent on Saturday, the tenth day of the Paris-based movement. France’s growing Nuit Debout protests, likened to Occupy Wall Street and the Indignados movement, is calling for occupations across Europe to demand financial justice in each country and in the European Union. The group’s Facebook page lists events in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Portugal — 24 in France and nine outside — responding to the message on its website that, “This movement was not born and will not die in Paris.” Nuit Debout grew out of massive protests in March against sweeping pro-business reforms in France, with a group of students, unions, migrants and other protesters occupying the central Place de la Republique.
The Saturday occupations are organized under the name #40mars — or March 40 — adding ten days since the first day of Nuit Debout, March 31. On Thursday, Parisians stopped police from evacuating migrants and marched to Société Générale [a French multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in Paris] to protest its prominent role in tax evasion schemes, as revealed by the Panama Paper leaks. “The debates taking place in the assemblies on Republic square [Place de la République] prove that the general exasperation goes way beyond the Labour Law and opens a more global issue: the reconsideration of a social and political system stuck into a deep crisis and on its way out,” reads the call for international protest. While France will focus on the labor law’s “shock strategy, notably imposed in the context of an authoritarian state of emergency,” other countries are calling for non-political occupations to serve as social forums on economic policy. Britain’s protest, though, will largely echo calls for Prime Minister David Cameron to resign over his defense of his father’s offshore trust. Source: Telesur |
