A human tide swept via Paris final month for the kind of occasion France is aware of solely too effectively — a protest. Union leaders led the march, awash in a multicolored sea of flags. Demonstrators shouted fiery slogans. Clashes with the police erupted.
And, as in each protest, there was Jean-Baptiste Reddé.
He held an enormous placard over his head that learn, “Tax evasion should fund our pensions.” Its distinctive colourful capital letters stood out within the dense crowd.
Indicators like which have been Mr. Reddé’s trademark since he retired from his educating job a decade in the past and devoted himself practically full time to protesting. He has since develop into a private embodiment of France’s enduring ardour for demonstration, rooted in a tradition that sees change as a prize to be received, and defended, within the streets.
“That is what governs my life,” he stated in a latest interview. Demonstrating, he defined, is “the place I fulfill myself and discover a objective.”
Today, France is up in arms over government plans to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62, a part of a push to overtake the pension system, the third rail of French politics. Successive governments have tried to sort out the nation’s pension system, which is predicated on payroll taxes, arguing that individuals should work longer to assist retirees who’re dwelling longer. However Mr. Reddé, as his placard indicated, stated that taxing the nation’s wealthy can be more practical.
His signature indicators have develop into a standard sight at many protests. They emerged above the lots within the Yellow Vest movement, which put France on edge 4 years in the past, after the federal government tried to boost gasoline taxes. They popped up at girls’s rights marches. They usually have turned Mr. Reddé into a number one character of French demonstrations, a sort of “The place’s Waldo?” who invariably seems alongside unionists blowing foghorns and battalions of armor-clad riot police.
He figures he has most likely attended greater than 1,000 protests. “Demonstrating is like loving,” Mr. Reddé, 65, stated. “You don’t rely.”
The son of an English instructor and a stay-at-home mom, Mr. Reddé grew up on the time of the May 1968 uprisings, which breathed freedom into France’s stifling postwar social guidelines. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than he, as a scholar, joined petitions towards report playing cards.
With a college diploma in English and a ardour for poetry — he treasures Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath — he grew to become an elementary-school instructor within the late Seventies. That’s when he participated in his first avenue protest, towards modifications to the schooling system.
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Mr. Reddé stated he had demonstrated towards each pension overhaul since 1995. That yr, as strikes paralyzed France for weeks, he spent an evening at a police station for throwing rocks at officers.
“We wished to repeat Could 1968!” he stated.
Mr. Reddé retired early from educating, partially because of sick depart. “I discovered an accommodating physician,” he stated. He lives in Burgundy off an inheritance, a small pension and monetary assist from pals. He usually sleeps at fellow protesters’ properties earlier than actions in Paris or elsewhere.
His curly hair is lower within the pageboy model and dyed cherry-red. His emaciated face and worn garments give him an ascetic look. When he strides via protesting crowds — his slim, 6-foot-4 physique barely bent below his signal — he seems like certainly one of Alberto Giacometti’s bronze sculptures of anguished males.
Within the early 2000s, Mr. Reddé flooded Libération, a left-wing newspaper, with small advertisements calling for gatherings to advertise peace within the Center East and environmental safety. He acknowledged having “a considerably poetic and utopian character.”
“I really feel empathy for the whole lot, human and animal struggling alike. I’m a little bit of a sponge,” he stated. “So I reveal.”
Paris data about 5 demonstrations every single day, based on authorities figures, making France one of many world’s main nations for such occasions every year, stated Olivier Fillieule, a French sociologist. Mr. Fillieule stated the nation’s “protest tradition” was rooted in a protracted historical past of centralized state energy that made little room for collective bargaining, leaving the road the very best avenue for change.
A few of France’s most important social advantages have been received via mass protests, together with the proper to paid trip within the Thirties. In colleges, youngsters examine the most important social actions which have rocked the nation, making protests an inevitable component of each French citizen’s life.
Nonetheless, Mr. Reddé’s devotion to demonstrating is uncommon.
Earlier than every protest, Mr. Reddé follows the identical ritual. First, he thinks of a punchy slogan, drawing on his frenetic consumption of reports. Previous slogans include “To the 49.3, we reply 1789,” a reference to Article 49.3 of the French Structure, which the federal government has used to move legal guidelines with no vote, and to the French Revolution.
Then, on the day of the protest, Mr. Reddé buys a 3-by-5-foot placard, sits down in a restaurant, grabs thick markers and attracts the slogan in his time-tested design of capital letters and vivid major colours.
“We’re ruled by colorless individuals,” he stated. “We should put colour again into this world.”
In demonstrations, Mr. Reddé makes probably the most of his top to place his signal above the group and close to politicians, drawing photographers and digital camera operators like a magnet.
Pictures of him holding his placards in demonstrations at residence and abroad have appeared in numerous newspapers and tv packages over time. In 2010, an image of him holding an indication studying “Take heed to the individuals’s anger” was utilized in newspapers all over the world.
His indicators additionally illustrate French historical past textbooks and have been displayed in a 2018 exhibition organized by Michel Batlle, a painter and sculptor, who referred to as Mr. Reddé “an artivist.”
Mr. Reddé has been criticized for attempting to steal the present. A 2015 profile in Libération stated his regular presence in protests may quantity to “depriving individuals of their voice and picture.”
However within the crowds, Mr. Reddé is in style.
On the march final month, Mr. Reddé wore a yellow vest, a memento from his involvement within the Yellow Vest protests, which he referred to as “a historic motion of individuals’s rebellion, for social and environmental justice.” Demonstrators stopped him for a photograph or gave him a thumbs-up.
“Irreplaceable!” one lady shouted. “Tireless,” one other protester whispered to his spouse.
Mr. Reddé is even a sort of human landmark.
“We name one another and say, ‘Let’s meet close to Jean-Baptiste,’” stated Isabelle Pluvieux, an environmental activist. “He’s a lighthouse.”
Mr. Reddé stated he had present in demonstrations the love and friendship he lacked as a toddler.
“His household is the road,” stated Mr. Batlle, the artist.
Many demonstrators praised his dedication, noting that he had participated equally in small and huge protests. Mr. Reddé has additionally organized his personal demonstrations towards using pesticides, securing a gathering with advisers to the setting minister in 2017.
“He conveys a way of tenacity, energy, willpower,” stated David Dufresnes, an unbiased journalist who has extensively coated the Yellow Vest motion.
Mr. Dufresnes pointed to the bodily problem of holding an indication aloft through the many hours a French protest often lasts. “There’s nearly a warrior monk facet to it,” he stated.
Mr. Reddé acknowledged that he suffered from knee issues and tendinitis. He usually holds his signal with one arm to relaxation the opposite and typically winces in ache. However he dismissed the hardship as irrelevant.
“Protesting rejuvenates,” he stated.
