In France, streets and fields seethe with protest

Police officers near burning tyres outside the refinery at Fos-Sur-Mer during a protest on March 24. Pic/AFP

A big day has come for French high school student Elisa Fares. At age 17, she is taking part in her first protest. In a country that taught the world about people power with its revolution of 1789 - and a country again seething with anger against its leaders - graduating from bystander to demonstrator is a generations-old rite of passage. Fares looks both excited and nervous as she prepares to march down Paris streets where people for centuries have similarly defied authority and declared, "Non!"

Two friends, neither older than 18, whose parents took them to demonstrations when they were little, are showing Fares the ropes. "The French are known for fighting and we'll fight," says one of them, Coline Marionneau, also 17. "My mother goes to a lot of demonstrations ... She says if you have things to say, you should protest."

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Fares said her mother had been against her taking to the streets but has now given her blessing. "She said that if I wanted to fight, she wouldn't stop me," the teen says. "It's an attack on democracy," Fares said. "It annoyed me too much." President Emmanuel Macron's government has ignited a firestorm of anger with unpopular pension reforms that he railroaded through parliament, which push retirement age from 62 to 64.

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