The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy

Written under the shadow of growing authoritarianism in the United States and Europe, this book is an effort to understand resistance movements of the twenty-first century. It foregrounds the Yellow Vests to present an accurate and timely picture of a protest movement that baffled analysts and blurred the boundaries of left and right. Comprehensively exploring the meaning of "les Gilets Jaunes triompheront" (the yellow vests will win), written on the Arc de Triomphe in 2018, The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy details how people of all ages, many from the provinces and the urban periphery, rushed through the Paris streets, breaking windows and braving tear gas, challenging the ruling class in extraordinary and unpredictable ways. Avoiding hierarchy and stable organization, and claiming a right to a territory or space that is between the private and the public, these protests imagined a different form of collectivity that is not commodified but established by the social practice of "commoning"-of momentarily linking protests in the streets and other spaces. An essential book for activists and researchers on contemporary protest movements, this book offers crucial insight into the formation of protests and popular resistance and how social movements generate their own political and ideological character.

Ida Susser, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has published on popular mobilizations, social movements, and the urban commons in the United States, Europe, and Southern Africa. Her books include Norman Street: Poverty and Politics in an Urban Neighborhood (2012), and the co-edited volumes, Rethinking America (2009) and Wounded Cities (2003).

Preface: Reflections, Chronology of significant events discussed in the book, Maps, Introduction: The swing of the pendulum, 1. Commoning and collective visions in global context, 2. Rhyming the rebellious century: Marianne and the Place de la République, 3. Nuit debout: Commoning, crossing thresholds, and prefigurative politics, 4. From occupation to transformation: The consequences of Nuit debout, 5. Yellow Vests "They Are Stealing the State", 6. The creation of the Yellow Vests community: Roundabouts and cabins, 7. Thresholding and shared imaginaries: Environment, Black Lives Matter, and the silences between left and right, 8. The longue durée: Why the fear of the Yellow Vests?, 9. Memoirs of a working-class childhood, 10. Life in the Banlieues: A Red Belt suburb, 11. Immigration, race, and racism in Seine-Saint-Denis, 12. The revanchist city: Violence among police and protesters, 13. May Day!: Unions, nature, and the street, Conclusions: Transformative Movements and the emergence of a historic bloc: the politics of possibility, Afterword: Commoning toward a public and ecological democracy by Stéphane Tonnelat