MARSEILLE, France — The nearly 20-year-old images have entered French folklore: peasants, farmers and ex-hippies dismantling a rural McDonald’s, panel by panel, in what became a symbol of France’s resistance to American fast food.

Today that aging newsreel is being played in sharp reverse. A group of workers and their union leaders in Marseille are fighting tooth-and-nail to save a McDonald’s from closing in a working-class, largely immigrant neighborhood. A so-called “Festival of Dignity” protest was recently organized by the McDonald’s employees in an effort to save their roughly 70 jobs.

Even though McDonald’s was once seen as a cultural menace to a glorious French tradition, the workers say this particular McDonald’s, in its quarter-century of existence, has played a vital role as a social integrator in one of France’s most troubled districts — providing employment and shielding local youth from pervasive drug-dealing, getting them out of jail and helping them stay out.