Clash between pension demonstrators continued for second night in Paris

Riot police and protesters fought again in Paris on the second night of protests against the government’s plans to raise the retirement age in France.

Since the beginning of the year, there has been growing unrest, which has led to a wave of strikes and trash piling up on the streets of the French capital. This is the biggest threat to President Emmanuel Macron’s authority since the “Yellow Vest” protests in December 2018.

Friday night, when protesters gathered in the Place de la Concorde near the Assemblee Nationale, the police used tear gas to keep the crowd from getting out of hand.

Some protesters yelled, “Macron, resign!” as they stood in front of a line of riot police.

At the beginning of the protest at the beautiful Place de Concorde in Paris, several thousand people chanted, danced, and lit a huge bonfire. But it quickly turned into a scene similar to Thursday night as riot police charged and used tear gas to clear the square while some protesters threw fireworks and paving stones at police.

On Thursday night, police charged the crowds with batons and sprayed them with water cannons. Meanwhile, small groups set fires in the streets of upscale neighbourhoods nearby.

Gérald Darmanin, the French minister of the interior, told RTL radio that 310 people were arrested overnight, most of them in Paris.

Cities all over France also saw scattered protests, like a march in Bordeaux and a rally in Toulouse.

Port officers in Calais stopped ferries from going to Dover across the English Channel for a short time. Some Paris university campuses were shut down, and protesters took over a busy road around the French capital.

The garbage collectors in Paris have extended their strike for a 12th day, so garbage piles are getting bigger and stinkier in the streets. Sanitation workers who were on strike also kept blocking Europe’s largest site for burning trash and two other sites that deal with trash from the capital.