Mal à la grève

When we arrived, we had been warned of the grèves or manifestations (protests/strikes) that the French are notorious for. I had heard stories of the public transportation system being on strike, therefore making everyone walk or bike however far they need to go (not great when you live on the outskirts of town like some IES students) or the university being on strike for whatever reason, which cancels classes for however long (up to 8 weeks last year, the IES director told us). While it seems like a huge inconvenience, it's life here. I was surprised that I had made it a month and a half without running into any real grèves; we saw a group of 20 people protesting something at Mont St. Michel, I had heard that the post office went on strike/ just stopped mail service for one day, and the one time I watched the news since I've been here, they reported on a huge milk strike (farmers dumped thousands of gallons of milk all over the streets in protest). By and large, I've been on the outside of these manifestations.

I took the bus into town on Friday afternoon to meet up with my friends for lunch at the RU. On my way there, via the usual route, I pass by the hôtel de ville/ mairie (mayor's office? I forget the English term) and there were about 20 old farmer men sitting outside with a banner, and a sandwich board across the street saying something about not building an airport because that's taking away the agriculture (I think it was about putting a runway where there currently are farms). It was my first real taste of grève, and I laughed to myself. Is this what I was warned about? A group of old farmer men that are just standing in the cold, not saying a word, but holding one big banner near the entrance gate? 

And then we hit it. Maddy, Lauren, and I needed to walk a couple blocks to get to the RU, and were a little shocked. The trams weren't running, and this was why: LES TRACTEURS.

So we had lunch as usual, and came out to chaos. While it felt a little Seattle WTO riot in 1999-esque, it was completely harmless (don't worry, Mom). 

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Some of the middle-aged agriculteurs that were striking (and this was also where they were picnicking with their boxed wine, which surprisingly does exist, even in France)

On that yellow truck is nothing but feathers (and some hay to keep them from blowing away)

Possibly my only taste of snow in Nantes, even if it is feather-snow (that is also a policeman watching from an apartment window)

Then they were blowing all the feathers in a wood-chipper like thing, which made it look even more like snow

A little burning hay fire between Maddy and me

Some shopping carts hanging from a tractor, which was to illustrate that the price of food will go up if the farmers don't get what they want (which is a bigger share of the food production prices I think)

Looks like grève-- made the entire city smell like smoke and be cloudy all day

Tractor traffic

A jeu de mots (wordplay): "On travaille plus, on ne gagne plus rien!?" which basically means, "We work more, we receive even less (or more than nothing)"

The only casualty from the grève (which was replaced the next day, I noticed)

Not quite as impressive, but these little burning hay piles were in the crosswalks (and on the tram tracks, but it's not like the trams would have been running anyway)

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Apparently this was on the bad side of grèves; they're not usually this bad. But at the same time, I didn't find anything out-of-control about it. Yeah, the crosswalk sign had been bulldozed by a tractor, and there were fires, but the fires were just chunks of hay/straw burning on cement, not spreading fires. And yes, there were hanged dummies hanging from the tractors, and yes, they made a huge mess, but it really just felt like a parade for 40-year-old men: sirens and cannons instead of music, blowing hay and feathers instead of confetti, and smoke to create the ambience. Before the actual procession of tractors and ridiculousness started, we saw all the men just chatting it up/ eating the lunches they packed and drinking a little before the manif went into action. (Another difference: it was a fully orchestrated thing: they were bussed in on coaches, each area of the Loire-Atlantique département was represented, someone with a bullhorn was announcing the advance of each group, and the actual thing started at like 1pm and went until about 6pm-- it wasn't like "let's just show up and picket until the sun goes down.") 

I took a video of it like a TOTAL tourist (but even some French people were taking pictures, so I felt a little better) and hate posting it because I feel even more touristy, but I think it shows the militaristic feeling of the strike and why we we were reminded of the French Revolution as we were walking through it. The funniest part was really that I had no idea this was happening; we just ran into it, and it seems like the kind of thing you can't really miss. (PS. Sorry it's kind of long. He's saying "let's go, let's advance.")