Yellow Vests Call for General Strike on February 5th

23 hours ago

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François Boulo is the a 32-year-old lawyer and spokesman for the Gilets Jaunes Yellow Vests movement in the northern city of Rouen, who is now calling on the French people to form a general strike on February 5th, as “The only way to force a deaf president to call us to the polls.”

As a lawyer, Boulo says, “I defend people threatened with the seizure of their homes by the banks,” and he complains that the “tax devices” of the Macron government work “for the benefit of the richest 1%,” at the expense of public services.

Boulo says he doesn’t seek to become the national spokesperson of the Gilets Jaunes, saying “One spokesperson is not desirable,” in this decentralized movement. Nor does he seek the support of a political party, as being unaffiliated is more powerful. He emphasizes that he “is absolutely neither Left nor Right,” and that the political “quarrels of people are sick.”

Boulo also affirms, “The problem is not the immigrant, it’s the banker”, that is to say that the European Central Bank is not an organ of the government but instead a private corporation.

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YELLOW VEST ANNOUNCEMENT

We call all French citizens, employees, temporary workers, civil servants, craftsmen, shopkeepers, business leaders, farmers, unemployed people, pensioners, liberal professions, students, high school students, artists, intellectuals to mobilize to organize as of February 5, 2019.

THE UNLIMITED GENERAL STRIKE

At this moment, we deplore that the President persists in not hearing the demands of the Yellow Vests and in conducting an unfair policy rejected by 75% of the French people.

Everyone understood that the Great National Debate is only a new communication strategy aimed at anaesthetizing public opinion without adopting any concrete action.

Indeed, the President of the Republic categorically refuses to accept any questions about tax measures adopted at the beginning of his mandate, which have only benefited the richest 1%: reform of the Wealth tax, Flat Tax, Exit Tax, and CICE.

He has indicated his willingness to reduce public spending, which coming from him, we know will impact our essential public services: health, education, the police and the judiciary.

Rather than listening to and seeking to appease the people, the President and the Government have only fueled the fire with irresponsible statements about: the “hateful crowd” and “agitators”.

This strategy of chaos has resulted in 1,000 injured among our police and gendarmes, 12 deaths and 1,800 injured among the demonstrators, nearly a hundred of whom were gravely mutilated, disfigured or blinded in one eye. Not a single word of empathy for the victims has been pronounced to date by government spokespersons.

The violence in our country must stop and our demands finally discussed. Consequently, we call on all French citizens: employees, temporary workers, civil servants, craftsmen, shopkeepers, business leaders, farmers, unemployed, pensioners, liberal professions, students, high school students, artists, intellectuals – to mobilize as of February 5, 2019:

UNLIMITED GENERAL STRIKE

We call:

All the Yellow Vests of the country and anyone else who wants to join us, to spread this call to the population on all social networks and out in the field: roundabouts, companies, universities, high schools, public institutions….We also call on every citizen to boycott the “Big Box” stores in favor of local shops, to support them in this time of crisis.

We all have to ask ourselves, deep down inside, if we intend to continue to comply with the injunctions of a leader who has become illegitimate by ignoring the interests of the people and who has lost sight of the essence of his mandate or if it is time for us to finally take back control of our common destiny. It’s a sacrifice to make today for our future and that of our children and grandchildren.

This moment is and must be historic. It is time [for Macron] to resign, for us to change course and to return [the French Government] into compliance with Article 2 of our Constitution, that the principle of the Republic is: a Government of the people, by the people and for the people.