a second round massively followed from Boulogne to Valenciennes and from Péronne to Creil, this Tuesday morning
Hundreds of thousands of French people again in the streets of the cities of Hauts-de-France, to demonstrate against the pension reform. This morning of Tuesday January 31, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Calais, Valenciennes, Péronne or even Creil, there are very many of them mobilizing. A brief overview.
The mobilization against the pension reform, which must pass the legal age of departure from 62 to 64 years, does not decrease in the cities of our region. This Tuesday, January 31, the day when the bill must be examined in committee at the Assembly, hundreds of people gather in the streets.
Demonstrators as numerous, if not more numerous, than for the first day of mobilization noted in history on January 19th. In Boulogne-sur-Mer, it is more than 6,000 people who this morning, from 9.30 a.m., mobilized from the Chamber of Commerce.
All the unions were represented in the long procession which tried to cross Capécure, before going to the city center of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in Pas-de-Calais.
Same observation in Valenciennes, in the North, where the procession of demonstrators worked from 10:30 a.m. These are more than 6,000 people who braved the cold and the greyness of this Tuesday morning, as much as on January 19th.
A second day of mobilization still as followed in Creil, in the Oise, where the demonstrators left the pottery around 10:15 a.m.
Nice mobilization too in Péronne, in the Somme, where a long procession left at 9:30 a.m. from Place du Jeu de Paume. 300 to 350 people are configured in the streets. Among them, metallurgists, teachers, but also caregivers. All are calling for the withdrawal of the pension reform.
Today, 64 years old is not acceptable, especially when you have a fairly physical job. I am a storekeeper forklift, we carry weights every day, and at some point, we are crushed.
manifesto in Péronne
“Me, I tell myself that I have to leave 64 years old, I would have worked all my life for people and I won’t even be able to enjoy my grandchildren“confided this caregiver from the Péronne hospital.
Other processions of demonstrators in the streets of Saint-Omer, Maubeuge, Douai de Calais, or even Arras were scheduled for this morning. Just like in Picardy, Beauvais, Compiègne, Soissons and Laon.
This afternoon, from 2:30 p.m., it’s in Dunkirk that the demonstrators will meet again. As for the regional event, it will take place in Lille, at 2:30 p.m., from Porte de Paris as well as in Amiens
In the region as everywhere in France, dozens of town halls are “symbolically closed” in support of the strikers. Raismes, Saint-Amand, Lourches, Douchy-les-Mines, … or even in Picardy Creil, Villers-Saint-Paul, Montataire or Nogent-sur-Oise.