The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most

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 a large 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 almost full time to protesting. He has since turn 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 current interview. Demonstrating, he defined, is “the place I fulfill myself and discover a function.”

Nowadays, France is up in arms over authorities plans to lift 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 help retirees who’re dwelling longer. However Mr. Reddé, as his placard indicated, stated that taxing the nation’s wealthy can be simpler.

His signature indicators have turn into a standard sight at many protests. They emerged above the plenty within the Yellow Vest motion, which put France on edge 4 years in the past, after the federal government tried to lift fuel taxes. They popped up at girls’s rights marches. They usually have turned Mr. Reddé into a number one character of French demonstrations, a form of “The place’s Waldo?” who invariably seems alongside unionists blowing foghorns and battalions of armor-clad riot police.

He figures he has in all probability attended greater than 1,000 protests. “Demonstrating is like loving,” Mr. Reddé, 65, stated. “You don’t rely.”

The son of an English trainer and a stay-at-home mom, Mr. Reddé grew up on the time of the Might 1968 uprisings, which breathed freedom into France’s stifling postwar social guidelines. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than he, as a pupil, joined petitions in opposition to report playing cards.

With a college diploma in English and a ardour for poetry — he treasures Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath — he turned an elementary-school trainer within the late Seventies. That’s when he participated in his first avenue protest, in opposition to modifications to the schooling system.

Mr. Reddé stated he had demonstrated in opposition to 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 Might 1968!” he stated.

Mr. Reddé retired early from educating, partially due to sick depart. “I discovered an accommodating physician,” he stated. He lives in Burgundy off an inheritance, a small pension and monetary assist from associates. He usually sleeps at fellow protesters’ properties earlier than actions in Paris or elsewhere.

His curly hair is lower within the pageboy fashion 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 to be like one in every of Alberto Giacometti’s bronze sculptures of anguished males.

Within the early 2000s, Mr. Reddé flooded Libération, a left-wing newspaper, with small adverts 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 all the things, human and animal struggling alike. I’m a little bit of a sponge,” he stated. “So I exhibit.”

Paris information about 5 demonstrations every single day, in response to authorities figures, making France one of many world’s main international locations for such occasions annually, stated Olivier Fillieule, a French sociologist. Mr. Fillieule stated the nation’s “protest tradition” was rooted in an extended historical past of centralized state energy that made little room for collective bargaining, leaving the road the perfect avenue for change.

A few of France’s most vital social advantages had been received via mass protests, together with the correct to paid trip within the Nineteen Thirties. In faculties, youngsters examine the largest social actions which have rocked the nation, making protests an inevitable ingredient 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 embrace “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 and not using a 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 shiny major colours.

“We’re ruled by colorless individuals,” he stated. “We should put shade again into this world.”

In demonstrations, Mr. Reddé makes probably the most of his peak to place his signal above the group and close to politicians, drawing photographers and digicam operators like a magnet.

Images of him holding his placards in demonstrations at dwelling and abroad have appeared in quite a few newspapers and tv packages through the years. In 2010, a picture of him holding an indication studying “Hearken to the individuals’s anger” was utilized in newspapers world wide.

His indicators additionally illustrate French historical past textbooks and had 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 might quantity to “depriving individuals of their voice and picture.”

However within the crowds, Mr. Reddé is well-liked.

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 girl shouted. “Tireless,” one other protester whispered to his spouse.

Mr. Reddé is even a form 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 enormous protests. Mr. Reddé has additionally organized his personal demonstrations in opposition to using pesticides, securing a gathering with advisers to the atmosphere minister in 2017.

“He conveys a way of tenacity, power, dedication,” stated David Dufresne, an impartial journalist who has extensively lined the Yellow Vest motion.

Mr. Dufresne pointed to the bodily problem of holding an indication aloft in the course of the many hours a French protest normally lasts. “There’s virtually 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.