Will the “yellow vests” be back on the roundabouts this weekend, at least “to get together”?

Every year, for six years now, the authorities tighten their butts when the date of November 17 arrives. Because this day marks the birth of the “yellow vest” movement and a comeback of roundabout squatters is never excluded. Especially since at this time, publications in this direction are flourishing again on social networks. This is exactly what is happening right now.

“You're fed up, we have to fight against the high cost of living, so there you have it, for a few days there has been a call on social networks for the resumption of roundabouts on Saturday November 16,” says john.anar on his account TikTok in a video with almost a million views. And when we search for “yellow vests”, whether on this network or on Lists of roundabouts on which actions are planned are already circulating without it being possible to know who is at the origin.

“I don’t have a crystal ball”

However, should we hope for some, and fear for others, a new large-scale movement of “yellow vests”? On this subject, john.anar, who relayed the call of November 16, does not really have an answer. “There are several of us who come down with the call, but the real number is difficult to estimate,” he explains. On the other hand, he admits that he does not have “a crystal ball” to predict the extent of Saturday's movement, also believing that “many people are afraid of repression and judgment.”

“But why talk about a return of the yellow vests when they never left,” asks Jérôme Rodrigues, one of the most emblematic figures of the movement, contacted by 20 minutes. According to him, in fact, “there are actions every Saturday on the roundabouts”. However, for Jérôme Rodrigues, “there will be no big evening, no revolution” on Saturday. This date, “it’s an anniversary, an opportunity for us to get together,” he says. And if he does not see “to date” the yellow vests returning to the harshness of a daily struggle, one of the historical leaders of the “yellow vests” nevertheless believes that “there is a wait, an anger that is rising » without knowing if “it will come to fruition tomorrow”.

On BFM, Jérôme Fourquet, director of the Opinion and Strategies department of the IFOP, assures that “ingredients exist” but that a “trigger” is still missing that will make this social movement “ignite”. And this famous trigger could come from our campaigns. Indeed, on the networks, the calls for yellow vests to resume roundabouts on November 16 are trying to cling to the growing anger of farmers, the FNSEA and the Young Farmers having already planned “a resumption of actions from November 15 “. But despite a “general discontent, all social categories combined”, Jérôme Rodrigues does not believe in the hypothesis of a convergence of struggles, “each one is still demonstrating for his own area”.