Manifestation

Today was a day of strikes and protests in France, even in my sleepy little town. People are annoyed about a variety of things: The crisis, job losses, government cuts to education and health care, money for banks and not for ordinary people, etc. Unions called for unity and a national day of rage.

Here I'd say 200 or 300 people showed up, including about 20 of my high school students. There probably would have been more, but today was unusually cold for the region, (-2?). The big protest here is that the surgical ward of the local hospital is being moved to a nearby town, for cost cutting. However, the surgical ward at the new hospital is already overcrowded. Though this was the main issue, people spoke of the others as well.

It ended with a march down the main street, and almost all of the local shops closed for two hours in sympathy. People carried signs and shouted slogans.

About 1000 people had turned up for a similar protest on Saturday. This is impressive because the town only has 8000 people. As far as I can remember, we don't do this sort of thing in Canada. It's particularly rare for our high school students to organize, march and strike (dude....we can strike?!) but commonplace here.