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PARIS, FRANCE – 2023/04/24: A protester seen banging a source pan during the demonstration. A wave of protests took place in several cities of France in front of the Town Halls, to protest against Macron and his government. In Paris, hundreds of people gathered in a noisy protest with pots and pans in front of the Hotel de Ville, then headed to the Gare de Lyon station to receive the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, who had to be detained on the train for several minutes due to the apparatus of demonstration. The protest continued into the night through the streets of Paris. (Photo by Telmo Pinto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Casserolades

The 100-Year Life

Tuesday 23 May 2023

Casserolades

Reporter

Phoebe Davis
PARIS, FRANCE – 2023/04/24: A protester seen banging a source pan during the demonstration. A wave of protests took place in several cities of France in front of the Town Halls, to protest against Macron and his government. In Paris, hundreds of people gathered in a noisy protest with pots and pans in front of the Hotel de Ville, then headed to the Gare de Lyon station to receive the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, who had to be detained on the train for several minutes due to the apparatus of demonstration. The protest continued into the night through the streets of Paris. (Photo by Telmo Pinto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

In 2018, it was the “gilets jaunes”. In 2023 it’s the “casserolades”. Public opposition to Emmanuel Macron’s law increasing the French retirement age to 64 is still reverberating across the country – literally. “Casserolades”, or saucepan protests, have replaced the mass street demonstrations which failed to move Macron on the issue. Instead, groups of protestors are banging pots when the president and his members of his cabinet travel around the country. “When it’s no longer possible to dialogue with our government, we drown out their voices with the noise of our pots,” a 55 year-old protester tells the NYT. History lesson: the casserolades protest harks back to the 1830s, when French Republicans sought to (unsuccessfully) oust King Louis-Phillippe I. Macron’s response to the clanging: “It’s not saucepans that will make France move forward”. What will?  

Photograph Telmo Pinto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

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