"They are Millionaires, We are Millions!" - Nuit Debout Looks Ahead As Occupation Winds Down

Over the last two months, thousands of people have shown up in parks throughout France to discuss the issues facing their country and the world. Police have eyed the protesters warily, waiting for orders from on high to put a stop to the direct democratic actions. Occasionally there has been violence, much of it on the part of authorities.

No, this isn’t Occupy Wall Street reborn, it’s Nuit Debout, and in many ways it has become a singularly French phenomenon, building upon earlier social movements and, in some ways, bringing a new level of creativity to them.

France has long been considered among the fairer of the world’s more developed economies in terms of protecting the rights of its workers. Still, the recent economic numbers are uniformly bad for citizens no matter how the government tries to spin them, with unemployment at 10 percent overall and 24 percent for young people. For young immigrants and people of color, sources put the unemployment rate as high as 40 percent.

The fact that French President Francois Hollande – a socialist who promised to address an out-of-control finance industry and a European Union pushing punitive austerity measures – is now advancing "reforms" of France’s labor laws to make it easier for companies to hire and fire workers has enraged the populace and was one of the sparks that brought Nuit Dubout together.

Among other things, the labor changes – also called the El Khomri law, after the labor minister who presented them – would make the 35-hour work week, prized by many citizens, effectively optional for business while restructuring the country’s overtime rules. This galvanized not only trade unionists but people throughout society to raise their voice in protest. In a major manifestation of their anger, strike actions led by various unions – some of which are still ongoing – brought the country’s transportation system to a virtual halt.

Growing a Movement

At the movement's peak, thousands of people were showing up at the largest encampment in France each night, the Place de Republique in Paris. After long debates and consensus-based votes, the remaining participants would sleep in tents until “being asked to move on by police just before dawn.” They would then come back the next night and resume their occupation.

To try and understand Nuit Debout (which roughly translates as “Rise Up at Night”) and what its future might be, Occupy.com spoke to one of its representatives, Pierre Lalu, who, among other roles at the encampment in Paris, has been working on digital solutions for activism. When we spoke to him he was in the process of planning a hack-a-thon to, in his own words, “improve the software available to the movement: democracy software."

"We consult with artists and others involved with Nuit Debout as well as citizens groups, and we are going to do a big open forum and hack-a-thon. It’s messy, but this is how things happen,” he said.

Not only are attempts at movement building through direct democracy messy. There is also the fact that although these movements tend to spread quickly on social media, in the real world they are usually seen as geographically limited in scope. This, to some extent, mirrors earlier movements like the Indignados (15M) in Spain and Occupy in the U.S. shortly thereafter.

In fact, the call for a May 15 “Global Debout” in cities across Europe and beyond, in solidarity with the 5th anniversary of the Indignados protests, only brought out about 150 people in Brussels and “around 100 people” who gathered in Berlin, with much smaller turnouts in other places. On a more energized note, thousands turned out in Spain to celebrate 15M that day.

I asked Pierre about the formal consensus model used first in Spain, then at Occupy, and later picked up by Nuit Debout – with all the empowerment and frustration that this implies. “The question is," he explained, "Does everything have to be decided in a consensus way? Maybe for very big questions you can bring in consensus and this is important. Our philosophy – and it's still not settled because not everyone agrees, and there are always frictions – is basically as long as what you do doesn’t negatively affect other people, you can do it. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of other initiatives you can do it. Otherwise you have to talk to the other people concerned and come to an agreement.”

Approaching Nuit Debout, many media sources looked for the easiest historical comparison on offer: May, 1968, Paris. This was when student- and worker-led revolts repudiated the Gaullism of the post-WWII era and played a part in consigning that brand of authoritarianism to the dustbin of history.

Although there are certainly parallels – and some of the techniques of protest, used at the time by groups like the Situationists, are still effective today – Lalu emphasized that there are many differences between then and now, especially in regard to the role of communications technology.

“What we have today is a different epoch. Now we have the Internet and social media and a bigger network related to the commons with people trying to create an alternative society and alternative ways of doing things. In production and exchange, in working, in sharing. Nuit Debout is, I think, like Occupy, a manifestation of people who want to do things differently. Our goal is to connect what already exists and to continue to grow our ambitions in terms of these alternatives.”

To this point, communities within France where Nuit Debout's message of solidarity and local democracy are urgently needed include the "banlieues," those poor suburban areas filled with immigrant communities, which surround the country’s major cities. For these communities, often under-served and over-policed by the state, movement building can seem frustratingly slow.

As Almany Kanoute from the Fresnes suburb, and founder of the civil society group Emergence, told Telesur recently, “Residents in the banlieues are in a situation of emergency – of unemployment, of eviction from their homes, of daily police brutality, among others, while Nuit Debout consists in long democratic debates."

Still, in the course of our conversation, Lalu made it clear that Nuit Debout is working with Nuit Banlieue, which formed shortly after the first occupations and is making outreach to other groups in those communities – including homeless people, who have had a large presence at the encampments and have used the opportunity presented by them to organize themselves.

Unions, which have become increasingly marginalized in today's service-based economy, even in France, have for the most part attempted to make Nuit Debout conform to their agenda. Lalu said a group representing the unions had put together a meeting with members of the movement, but only had space for 300 people. They then proceeded to lecture the crowd about what their goals should be. “It was a very paternalistic reunion with them saying that they knew what was better for Nuit Debout and this social movement,” said Lalu.

It doesn’t mean there won’t be cooperation between the street activists and unions going forward, but Nuit Debout will likely have to accept current realities as far as unions are concerned. “Unions are losing influence, people don’t believe in their methods and think they are very corrupted. They tried to seduce and co-opt the movement but it didn’t work. Still, we have a friendly relationship, we have mutual struggles and we’ll help each other but we won’t allow any vertical structure in Nuit Debout like the unions want.”

The mainstream press, whether in France or in North America, seems to prefer viewing movements like Nuit Debout in isolation. But there is another point of view shared by many activists across borders. From 15M to Occupy to Nuit Debout, along with many other movements that received less attention, something new and beautiful is growing. It isn’t happening as quickly as many would like, but at its own pace, from one country to the next and, hopefully, back again. As the methods of direct democracy and horizontal movement building become better known and more mature, Nuit Debout, like 15M and Occupy before it, can look ahead to building the better world that all of our movements envision.