What France Understands About Protest That America Doesn’t
With over 3.5 million protesters in a single day and 4,000+ farmer actions in 2024 alone, France treats protest as civic duty—not spectacle. Meanwhile, 132 million Americans line up for Black Friday
Summer is a quiet protest season in France, unlike the US. In France, protest is woven into everyday life—people march between errands, kids chant with sandwiches in hand, and civic action is expected. In the U.S., mass action is rare, and shopping is our national pastime. If we want real change, maybe we need to stop swiping and start marching.
The first time I saw a protest in France, I thought someone had died on the bus. It was a Tuesday morning in Nantes, grey and wet, and the tram had stopped without warning.
The driver just got out and lit a cigarette.
No announcement, no replacement bus. A crowd started forming near the préfecture, half of them waving signs, the other half just... watching.
Is this normal?
No one looked surprised. The other folks on the bus (and there weren’t very many) got up and walked off the bus, mostly without comment.
That’s when it hit me: this was normal.
Weird.
Protest Lifestyle Choices
Protest is a weekday activity. People fit it between coffee and childcare. Longer protests take breaks for lunch, they take evenings off and go home, then pick it up again the next day.
Kids protest, too.
They know the chants. They pack sandwiches. It’s not always angry. Sometimes it’s festive. Sometimes it’s absurd. But it’s alive. Civic engagement here doesn’t just mean voting every few years. It means showing up, blocking roads, banging pots at midnight.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., we show up more for the sales. We camp out for Black Friday. We do it every year.
Costco rotisserie chickens are divisive - the Costco hot dog is a uniting issue (a great write-up of the $1.50 hot dog’s multi-billion dollar impact).
Protests are rarer. Something we do when things get really, really bad—like police murdering someone on camera. Otherwise, we grumble online and buy noise-cancelling headphones.
It is far from perfect in both places, but still: one country trains its citizens to march. The other trains them to swipe their cards.
If we want change in America, maybe we should stop shopping and start learning the words to L’Internationale.
Numbers Don’t Lie
France Protests, America Shops
In France, protest is part of the civic landscape. The country sees dozens of organized demonstrations each month, and some of the biggest can draw more than three million people in a single day.
In France, civic participation in street protests is remarkably high. During the 2023 pension reform demonstrations, between 1.2 and 3.5 million people joined marches across the country—nearly 5% of the population on peak days. In early 2024, over 4,000 farmer protests took place across Europe, with France regularly seeing highways and city centers shut down by tractor convoys.
U.S. civic engagement tends to peak around presidential elections.
The 2020 presidential election had a 67% turnout, a strong showing by American standards. France usually sees 72–80% voter turnout for presidential elections.
Mass protests in the U.S. are rare and often reactive. The George Floyd/BLM movement drew 15–26 million people over several months, making it the largest in U.S. history—still only around 8% of the population, spread out over a few months.
The 2017 Women’s March saw 3–5 million globally, with about 500,000 in Washington, D.C.
Compare that to 131.7 million Americans (almost 40%) who shopped on Black Friday 2024, spending $10.8 billion in one day. That’s a huge mobilization—just not for a political cause.
In France, protests are regular, organized, and part of the cultural script. In the U.S., they’re more exceptional—and when they reach French levels of turnout, it’s usually because there’s a sale on TVs.
It’s also why I say that to make real change in the US, stop fucking shopping.
Summers
Summer slows France’s protest machine—not for lack of outrage, but because half the country’s on vacation.
August is sacred. Unions pause. Even die-hards trade marches for pétanque.
Still, this month, there were air-traffic strikes all over Europe. Pro-Palestine marches swelled. Anti–far right rallies flared after the elections. Farmers brought tractors to the capital. Someone even stormed the Tour de France finish line.
Lighter, yes—but the fuse is never too far from the match.
By contrast, summer in the U.S. often ignites protest. With schools out, college campuses quiet, and weather on their side, Americans are more likely to flood the streets in June or July than in January. The George Floyd protests began as the heat rose. Pride marches, abortion rights rallies, immigrant justice actions—they all spike during the summer months, when outrage can move more freely outdoors.
There’s less structure, fewer unions guiding the schedule. But when something breaks—another police killing, a court ruling, a political flashpoint—Americans march hard and fast. Unlike France, where protest is a form of ongoing civic choreography, U.S. protest culture is more reactive, more combustible. The pattern isn’t steady—but when it erupts, it’s summer that burns.
not only number, but leverage
The American civil rights marches weren’t massive by today’s numbers—250,000 at the 1963 March on Washington, just 25,000 arriving in Montgomery after days of walking from Selma—but they were meticulously planned, strategically staged, and aimed straight at the machinery of power for maximum outrage.
These weren’t spontaneous crowd surges. They were coordinated acts of civic pressure, designed to tip the scales of federal law.
Hopefully, it is not simply how many march—it’s where, when, and with what purpose.
protest doesn’t always mean winning
And in France, despite the marches, the government often does what it wants anyway. Macron’s pension reform was still pushed through without a vote, using Article 49.3.
Perfectly legal. Deeply unpopular.
But in France, protest isn’t just about winning. It’s about being seen, creating pressure, and refusing silence.
Even the massive Gillet Jaunes movement’s deeper demands didn’t materialize. Many protesters felt co-opted or burned out. The movement fragmented over time.
They won some policy shifts. But the big fight—for dignity, visibility, and fairer economics—remains unresolved.
Ever marched in a protest? Or skipped one to hit a sale?
I’d love to hear how civic life feels where you are.
What makes people show up—or stay home?
Introducing Contributor, Keith Christiansen
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Endless protests, zero results and lots of chaos especially when it involves transportation. Inevitably inconveniencing every school holiday. It’s extremely annoying (IMO). I remember once, on a ski holiday in the Alps, there was a one day chair lift strike. Total BS.
Could talk about this for days.
Good article 👌
This is a very interesting post, and very timely considering what is going on in the USA. It does seem like Americans can't get off their duff to protest as their/our country slides into authoritarianism.
But I really do not agree with you that French people consider protest as a "civic duty." A right? Sure. A way of life? For some. A duty? Nope.
And I agree with Suzanne that the timing and target of the protests often seem almost cruel. When the SNCF announces they're going on strike and that they're going to target the school holidays, perhaps even Christmas, I'm not sure what they're accomplishing.