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- Riots across France have left more than 3,000 businesses attacked or looted.
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Riots → click → businesses
Paris shopkeepers have boarded up windows and bought pepper spray and tear gas.
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shopkeepers → board → spray
- The unrest has left Paris a city of contrasts: Daily life continues alongside shattered windows, police helicopters and residents’ fear of renewed violence.
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life → leave → violence
Many residents of Paris, Marseille and other major cities beset by riots still feel under siege, much like Los Angeles after the 1992 riots.
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residents → beset → riots
Business is up tenfold at a weapons store near Place de l’Opéra in Paris: Shopkeepers from all over the city have been stocking up on pepper spray and tear gas.
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Shopkeepers → stock → spray
In the nine days since riots erupted in cities across France, thousands of merchants have also boarded up their storefronts, radically altering the Paris streetscape.
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thousands → erupt → streetscape
“They’re afraid their stores will be attacked and looted,” Yves Gollety, owner of the weapons store, explained.
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Gollety → ’re → store
Adding to the dark mood are police helicopters hovering, with searchlights blazing, to enforce a late-night curfew in the Les Halles and République sections of Paris.
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searchlights → add → Paris
And the city has removed many of the huge street-corner bins where Parisians are accustomed to dropping their empty wine and beer bottles.
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Parisians → remove → bottles
Rioters had been knocking them over to get glass ammunition against police.
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Rioters → knock → police
Yet daily life has barely changed in much of Paris, where it can seem like normal times amid the chaos.
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it → change → chaos
Friends chat in cafés with shattered windows.
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Friends → chat → windows
Customers ignore plywood covering the front doors of shops.
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Customers → ignore → shops
But the social and economic grievances that boiled over so violently have not gone away, and nobody can escape the dreaded question: What’s next?
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What → boil → question
More demonstrations, for sure, and a strike planned for Nov. 5, which has left many resigned to toggling, for now, between upheaval and ordinary life.
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which → plan → upheaval
At Cycles Laurent, a bike store on Boulevard Voltaire, a makeshift wooden window doubles as a spray-painted sign urging people to come on in.
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window → double → people
“We remain open,” it says.
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it → remain → ?
The bike shop is one of more than 3,000 businesses attacked or pillaged in France in the aftermath of giant protests against the government of President Emmanuel Macron the weekend of Oct. 17.
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shop → attack → Oct.
Although a tense urban peace has taken hold since then, many residents of Paris, Toulouse, Marseille and other cities beset by riots still feel under siege, much like Los Angeles after the 1992 riots.
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residents → take → riots
“This whole climate is horrible,” said Yolande Montagnac, a retiree who has lived for 45 years near the Gare de Lyon in Paris and was heartbroken by the damage to the city.
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who → say → city
Scattered curfews and a police surge to keep nationwide protests under control have helped to stop the looting.
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curfews → keep → looting
More than 400,000 protesters returned to the streets on Saturday, by the police count; closer to double that number, according to unions.
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protesters → return → unions
Apart from a few tear-gas skirmishes, the demonstrations ended peacefully.
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demonstrations → end → skirmishes
The unrest began after high school students took to the streets last month to denounce poor conditions and resources at their campuses.
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students → begin → campuses
On Monday, Macron said the government would take “concrete measures” to address those concerns.
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government → say → concerns
As the turmoil has grown, Paris has been the setting of odd contrasts.
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Paris → grow → contrasts
As boulevard barricades were burning Oct. 17 in Les Halles, the lilting harmonies of a roving choir singing a peace ballad were soothing passersby shopping for cheese and wine a few blocks away.
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harmonies → burn → cheese
Hours later, vandals smashed scores of windows around the corner and ransacked stores as neighbors watched in horror from apartments above.
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neighbors → smash → apartments
Unchecked by police, looters returned the next night.
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looters → return → police
Not a week had gone by before a gaggle of fashionistas, testing the limits of decency and humor, gathered on the same stretch of the Rue Étienne Marcel for a riot-porn glamour shot in a wrecked ad-poster frame.
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gaggle → go → frame
In the distance was a bronze statue of Louis XIV on a rearing horse in the majestic Place des Victoires, its stone pedestal stained by protesters’ splashes of red paint.
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stained → rear → paint
By then, graffiti had been scrubbed from the central monument that pays tribute to the French Republic, including its tradition of insurrection.
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that → scrub → insurrection
At Gollety’s weapons store, Armurerie de la Bourse, dozens of guns are on display, but firearm restrictions are so tight in France that merchants were not trying to buy any.
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merchants → try → any
“In France, nobody shoots a robber,” he said.
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he → shoot → robber
“You go to prison.”
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You → go → prison
Arnaud, 24, a pastry chef who works at a bakery and declined to share his last name, bought tear gas Friday “to neutralize someone if need be.”
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need → work → someone
“It’s incredible that it’s come to this,” he said as he left Gollety’s shop.
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he → ’ → shop
“I think we’ve reached that limit where the French are saying, ‘OK, the state isn’t protecting me, I’m going to try to protect myself until the state protects me.’”
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state → think → me
Arnaud supports France’s far right.
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Arnaud → support → France
“There’s no center anymore, no core that can bring everyone together.
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that → ’ → everyone
…and 20 more, not listed.
The Aporia
