Several hundred men and women in yellow safety vests pull down the Champs-Élysées. Young, old, Parisians, residents of the banlieues and other cities. In front of them, policemen with protective shields, clubs and tear gas guns, they block the street.

Up to 70 meters, the demonstrators run up. Then they stop. The crowd is not angry, rather helpless. They do not carry banners, do not call slogans.

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"Yellow vests": water cannons and tear gas

On the free meters between the police and the "yellow vests", a man on a black motorcycle begins to make laps with a loud engine, the crowd cheers him. A boy on a BMX is doing wheelies. A few young men roar something.

Further up towards the triumphal arch shock grenades exploded, shot down by the police on other demonstrators. The bang hurts in the ears. The motorcyclist disappears, the men and women in the yellow west go slowly forward.

You can not see the policeman with the rifle, but suddenly tear gas cartridges patter down. The crowd is falling apart. More cartridges. A shock grenade. Everyone runs away, away from the police.

A few minutes later, they gather again, go back to the police. A young woman roars: "Macron démission!" - "Macron resignation!". Somewhere a marching drum sounds.

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DPA

What happens in Paris and all over France is a riot without a firm plan. An uprising against a system from which many people from all camps feel abandoned. It's a nationwide explosion of long-set anger and despair that ignited a trifle.

It started when Priscillia Ludosky, a cosmetics saleswoman, started an internet petition. She calculated that taxes accounted for over half of the price of gas and demanded their cut.

For a long time nothing happened until Éric Drouet, a truck driver, discovered the petition and sent it to his friends on Facebook. They passed it on, the press reported and the number of signatures shot up, first to 200,000, then to 1.15 million.

Drouet called for a demo for the 17th of November. 300,000 people followed his call. Their distinguishing feature: the yellow safety vest, which every car driver has to carry in his car.

"Macron does not live in our world"

After last Saturday's protests that devastated central Paris and injured some 260 people, French President Emmanuel Macron repaid a decision to increase fuel taxes. But the "yellow vests" want more. They say: Macron is the president of the rich. They want his resignation.

Julien Bertolot has been with us since the first "Yellow West" protests. The 34-year-old says, "Macron does not live in our world, he was a banker and so he acts, behaving like Louis XIV, like an absolutist ruler."

Bertolot's father works for a minimum wage as a cook in a small restaurant, his mother is unemployed. He was able to study thanks to state aid and works for a small software company. "But that would not be possible today," he says. The cost of living is now too high, and the construction of new social housing in Paris too slow to keep up with demand.

It is not enough for him that Macron has withdrawn the gasoline tax. He wants higher taxes for rich people and a higher minimum wage. That's why he is on the street, even if today is his birthday. He says, "I'm afraid I'll be hospitalized or imprisoned at the end of the day."

An apartment, too small to raise children

Maria Lechat, 29, has the feeling she should not really complain. As a project manager in a small company she earns a net 1800 Euro. Others, she says, deserve even less. Sometimes only 600 euros. "But I'm not sure if I ever need an accident or so a thousand euros, that will bring disaster."

How close it is with her, she also realizes again before Christmas. She hesitates for every euro she spends on gifts. Holidays are unthinkable - too expensive.

She shares an apartment with her boyfriend who is too small to raise children, but she can not afford a bigger one. And how it should go, when she comes to retirement, she does not know.

"Macron has introduced fuel tax to fund climate change measures and that's important," she says. "But the gasoline tax hits the poorest hardest, why does not he take the money from the rich and the companies that produce the most greenhouse gases anyway?"

What also makes them angry: that the government startles when cars burn, but does nothing when many people have too little money to live on.

Protesters from all walks of life and directions

Because of the "yellow west" protests Lechat was still skeptical at first. She was afraid that they would be infiltrated by the far-right Rassemblement National, the party of Marine Le Pen. "But when I saw all sorts of people join in, I joined them."

According to authorities, this Saturday there are 31,000 in France, 8,000 in Paris alone. Occasionally cars are lit and shops plundered. But the vast majority is peaceful - and they come from many social strata and directions.

There are Silvan and Samy, armed with goggles and breathing masks, who voted for Le Pen and are convinced that Macron is a puppet of the Rothschild banking family and the secret Bilderberg conference.

There's a pipe-smoking private teacher who rejects speed limits as much as the Republic, and who could imagine the reintroduction of the monarchy.

There is the history professor, who sits on the curb in a quiet minute, who can live well from his pension, but has come out of solidarity to the "yellow vests".

Some of them have never been to a demo, others have been running for years to every protest. They all unite nothing but their yellow warning vests and the feeling that this system has been doing too little for people for years.

That's why they do not have common slogans, banners or leaders and that makes them unpredictable. So unpredictable that the government has been able to help itself so far, as every week more police officers to send them on the street. Four people have already died.

Raphael Thelen also reports on the situation in Paris:

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