Three days before the “act II” of mobilizations announced by yellow vest groups and student organizations, anxiety is mounting among shopkeepers in the western French city of Angers. After the looting and vandalism of October 17, some traders say they are ready to defend their businesses themselves.
A Climate of Fear After October 17
Sitting on the terrace of his bar in Angers on Wednesday, October 21, Rode keeps his eyes fixed on his phone. On the screen, images of the ransacking of the convenience store across the street play on a loop.
“There must have been about ten or twenty troublemakers who got in. It was a stampede, they were throwing products outside,” recalls the shopkeeper. “What was crazy was the euphoria of the people. There were direct shouts of ‘yeah, we broke it, we opened the door.’ So I stayed for about thirty minutes with one of the managers there. You find yourself acting as a security guard, a mediator, serving drinks while keeping a smile on your face.”
Shops emptied, windows shattered, metal shutters torn down — from Paris to Marseille, via Bordeaux, violence also reached mid-sized cities like Angers in the Maine-et-Loire department.
“If It Goes Badly, I Close”
The tense climate is pushing local shopkeepers to prepare for the next mobilization. Catia plans to open her store on Saturday, but “if we see that things are going badly, I close,” she says.
In the thirty years she has run her shop in Angers, she had never seen anything like it. “For a small city like Angers, we should be able to control the situation. I don’t think we have a very large criminal element here. But I think we have completely let things slide,” she says.
“At Some Point, We Will Defend Ourselves”
For Saturday, word is circulating among the traders. “Today, the problem is that we are not going to let ourselves be pushed around. We have worked all our lives. I started working at fourteen. I have been working for sixty years, they need to get that into their heads. At some point, we will defend ourselves. I have what it takes,” one shopkeeper insists, before confiding that he is preparing jars of urine to empty on rioters if they attack his store.
“I understand that they are protecting their business,” says Lali, who took part in the protests. A third-year law student and president of the local branch of Unef, a student union, she adds: “I understand there can be a certain moral and psychological violence, but these are still material goods. But here, I think there is real fed-up feeling.”
The frustration is widespread, even among students. The Unef president fears that students may abandon the marches as a result.
