As hundreds gathered at the St. Lazare train station Saturday morning for “Act Four” of the so-called Yellow Vest protests, police patrolled the surrounding streets, conducting searches and identity checks. Observers crowded around a group of officers who were holding one protester, clad in a yellow vest, to the ground. “Shame! Shame!” one woman chanted at the police, as she filmed on her phone.

The diffuse Yellow Vests movement that has rocked France began in mid-November in opposition to a fuel tax aimed to curb fossil-fuel emissions. Since then, it has transformed into a fierce denunciation of Emmanuel Macron, “president of the rich,” as these protesters and others call him, criticizing his right-leaning economic policies in this famously labor-friendly country.

The leaderless protests defy categorization, but have been overwhelmingly white and working-class, dominated by those from the provinces who reject not just Macron’s pro-business reforms but what they perceive as his arrogant, elitist attitude. The media has fixated on the far right’s presence: reports of demonstrators chanting homophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic slogans, or an early incident where protesters forced a Muslim woman to remove her headscarf. That has proved to be more of a vocal minority than the core of the movement, but far-right figures, from French firebrand Marine Le Pen to Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, have trumpeted the movement as an encouraging sign of anti-“globalist” popular protest.

The crowd at St. Lazare, however, challenged that depiction. Railway workers gathered alongside feminist groups and anti-racism activists from the low-income, ethnically diverse Paris suburbs, or banlieues: an aggregation of disparate, angry parts, united by little more than their shared rejection of Macron. Among the many questions raised by the Yellow Vest movement, this one is perhaps the most intriguing: Will it manage to unite such disparate political groups? Although the alignment seems unlikely to last, the past month of protests hint at what a true class consciousness might look like, unimpeded by France’s persistent rural-urban divides or racial prejudice.

The past month of protests hint at what a true class consciousness might look like, unimpeded by France’s persistent rural-urban divides or racial prejudice.

The Yellow Vests developed out of small-town economic discontent. But rural areas are not the only parts of France affected by economic hardship or Macron’s reforms. In fact, the poverty rate in the Paris banlieues often exceeds that of the provinces; in certain banlieues, unemployment among young people stands at 40 percent, compared to 9 percent nationally, and many of Macron’s cutbacks, notably to public housing, disproportionately impact the urban poor.