When the Yellow Vest movement rushed through the streets of Paris in 2018 most analysts as well as the general public were mystified and not sure how to react. It was an extraordinary movement of hundreds of thousands of people throughout France and it was not clear whether it represented the left or the right or even whether such categories were still relevant.

I followed this movement, joining the protests in the urban streets and then following participants back to the provinces, from its earliest stages and have continued to study it and its aftermath. The Yellow Vests were comprised of “ordinary” citizens who were outraged by government policies to raise the gas tax and whose anger quicky morphed into opposition to the cutbacks in state transportation services, healthcare and education. The Yellow Vests faced the kind of massive opposition from the police that we have seen on the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere in the United States.

Americans might not use the same language, but the paper discusses some parallels with the community reactions to ICE raids, Trump’s gutting of public institutions, and the skyrocketing cost of essential items and services.

This paper analyzes the ways in which grass roots movements have regrouped in new ways to combat growing incursions in democratic expectations combined with the transformation in class relations and the ever-increasing inequality of the current era.

***

About the Speaker

Ida Susser, PHD is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNY. Her recent book The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: taking to the streets of Paris in the 21st Century (Routledge 2026) focuses on commoning movements and new visions. Her previous books include: Norman Street (Oxford, 2012) a study of working class opposition to cutbacks during the New York City fiscal crisis and the transition of Greenpoint-Williamsburg from a working class neighborhood to a gentrified enclave, and AIDS, Sex and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa (Wiley-Blackwell 2009), a history of the power of social movements to transform health.

About the Event

This event is hosted by the Institute for European Studies (IES), part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.