This is what a democratic uprising can look like – https://www.facebook.com/nytvideo/videos/frances-yellow-vests-protests-understanding-the-collective-rage/261768511159947/ – and it scares the hell out of neoliberal elites everywhere, in the U.S. as well as Europe. Which no doubt helps to explain why four weeks of Gilets Jaunes (“yellow vests”) protest in France has been largely ignored by the American corporate media.
French working and middle class citizens, like their counterparts in the rest of Europe and the U.S., have been largely left behind by the supposed progress and bounty of the globalized “free market,” instead being subjected to painful austerity measures – notably cuts in pensions and social services, along with job layoffs, wage reductions, and restricted access to credit – implemented after the 2008 financial meltdown in order to protect the wealth of the very plutocrats who provoked the crisis.
Popular uprisings grounded in the basic needs of a majority of the population should be of keen interest to social workers. Indeed, they deserve social work support. How else do we justify our claim to work constantly for the cause of social and economic justice?
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 