CGT (Confédération générale du travail)
The General Confederation of Labour is one of the five major French confederations of trade unions. It seems they were having a demonstration while I was sucking at school to wait a long line for my inscription. When I saw them on boulevard Raspail, it's almost finished and there were just some dust carts, police men and their stickers on everywhere. I don't think I am still in the position who is allowed to talk about French society yet so I won't. But being here for one year, I did see some demonstrations "of course". Manifestation(demo) is their culture, someone says. I wonder how much influence they can have to change something. Is that really effective? Usually when I see them on the street, I take some photos. Some of them (well...not a little of them) smile and wave at me. It broke my image of "demonstration" as the one who had never seen any of them in real before coming here. But as long as something like March 2006 against for CPE won't happen again(broken windows,violence, fire), that wouldn't make me sad...
5 comments:
I love and admire the French attitude of taking opinios to the public and insisting that the streets are public spaces. A freedom that seems to be lost in some other so-called democracies little by little.
[OT] that bag (French bag) and flowers beside you published on 8th Feb on Bebe Log it's wonderful[/OT]
sally: They show that they are concerned thier own country and participate in society, that's what I like :)
fabrizo: wow Grazie! (Although it was a photo by my mobile phone, but I like that clean look by myself too:)
In NYC, the policemen, teachers, subway employees, hotel workers, etc. are all unionized. We haven't had big demostrations/picketing except for the subway system two years ago. The union strike caused the subway system to shut down for 10 days just before Christmas 2005. It was horrible because over 3 million people use the subway each day.
That must've neen tough. As far as I know, metro, train and bus do demonstration very often but never last long but just some delay or one day off..
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