France's yellow vest protesters hit the streets once more Saturday, keeping up pressure on President Emmanuel Macron even as internal divisions and frustration over protest violence cloud the movement's future, reports FRANCE 24.
Multiple protests are being held around Paris and other cities, the 11th straight weekend of action prompted by Macron policies seen as favouring the rich.
Macron has sapped some support for the movement by taking an active role in recent days in a national debate in towns across France, launched to address the protesters' concerns.
Some yellow vest leaders are trying to keep up momentum by holding protests after dark as well as during the day. A small crowd of protesters advanced peacefully Saturday morning down the Champs-Elysées, site of recent rioting. Two other groups plan evening events across town, at Place de la République in east-central Paris.
France deployed about 80,000 police Saturday against protest violence. About the same number of protesters took to the streets the last two weekends.
Participants at the Champs-Elysées march called Macron's national debate a 'smoke screen' to distract the French from his pro-business policies. They expressed views veering from the far left to a middle-ground, middle-class malaise. Many want Macron to restore France's wealth tax and allow the public to propose national referendums on anything from pulling France out of the euro to rewriting the constitution.
"We are forgotten," said protester Mervyn Ramsamy, a hospital employee from north of Paris lamenting recent closures of maternity wards and other medical services in already struggling areas. "We won't give up."