I had the interesting experience of a French “manifestation” on our street today - it was mad! It was a strike of ship workers and dockers from all over Europe, because the European parliament (seated at Strasbourg) is in session this week, and I think they are discussing something about port liberalization on Tuesday. Anyways, there were tens of thousands of strikers setting off flares and petards (I’m not sure what the English word is, but they are like noise crackers that give off a huge “boom” or sound like a gunshot) on their way to the European Parliament building. The riot police kept sending teargas into the crowd but didn't actually break it up since the French are the only country in the world with a consitutional right to "manifest". Apparently some neighbouring streets got it worse than ours, with some overturned cars and a lot of broken glass. The French girls in my residence found this all a minor nuisance disrupting their bike route on the way to class; when I explained that in Canada a demonstation is usually along the lines of holding hands in silence or 5 people waving placards outside a supermarket, they asked "then what's the point?"
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