When he gets off his big motorbike, Thierry still has on his thick leather jacket. But hardly has he set foot on the floor of the cabin, before even sitting down around the table with the trimmed corners, he swaps it for his yellow vest, the required outfit in this HQ made of pallets and planks. Four years after the popular conflagration, the “chalet” of Villefranche-de-Lauragais, south-east of Toulouse, is still there. Planted very close to the large roundabout, thanks to the indulgence of the private owner of the plot. The hut has even been considerably equipped, with its kiosk, its garden area around a wooden spool table and its dry toilets.
But the panorama has not changed since November 2018: the secondary road and the parking lot of a disused supermarket – where they saw “a 70-year-old grandpa sleeping in his car for a month” – and whose gas station still works. This Tuesday evening, the illuminated panel displays diesel at 1.829 euros. We are on the eve of the melting of the rebate. “When it all started, on November 17, 1998, it was 1.50 euros. Prices are skyrocketing. And, who knows why, no one is moving anymore,” says Antonio* who has just parked his van on his way home from work, unloaded some equipment and also put on his vest.
“How can you be happy in a system like that? »
Statement of failure? “There was the bonus, ironically called the Macron bonus, but which is in fact the “yellow vests” bonus and then there were a lot of freedom-killing and anti-social laws, they even tested a future dictatorship with the health pass”, soberly summarizes Antonio. Without getting discouraged. “A revolt, it takes on a spark, we are here to keep the embers alive”. “We don’t know when but it will come, inevitably”, abounds Christine, a local retiree who has given up her bank card and never listens to the news again. “We may be a little crazy, but how can we be happy in a system like this? echoes Thierry, before placing a jar of mirabelle plum jam on the table. “If we’re still here, it’s in resistance to a system that mistreats the poor,” explains Antonio. “With corrupt people on all levels,” continues Christine.
These three “yellow vests” do not have much in common. They recognize that they would never have met without their chasubles, and are content the rest of the week to “watch over the group” from a distance. Yet they finish each other’s sentences, seek assent in their classmates’ eyes before igniting. A complicity built up over four years of debates, “inter-roundabout” GAs with the people of Tarn and Toulouse, and over the bimonthly “visibility actions” on Saturdays or even the famous Tuesday evening sessions, around a pack of beer and a thermos of coffee. “We don’t agree on everything, but we agree on the essentials,” assures Antonio.
Dozens of Toulouse demonstrations, going to the outposts, “to take tear gas and de-encirclement grenades” have also strengthened ties. “There are things that we have experienced and of which we wonder if they really happened”, says the calm Thierry, who admits to having come out “tired”, morally and physically, from the episode.
“I love Macron” or happy honking
The hard core of the “Lauragais en angry” group is made up of around ten people. “We are roughly between 40 and 60 years old,” assures Antonio. “And more than half work”, he adds as if to ward off the “Go work instead, you lazy people!” » that motorists sometimes launch, throwing cans in support. Vandals even painted “I love Macron” in their cabin this summer. But these manifestations of hostility are much less common than the honking, which rises joyfully and numerous this Tuesday evening from the departmental.
In Villefranche, four years later, the “yellow vests” are part of the decor. And at the time of putting on their gas masks and their swimming goggles to beat, for the first time in a long time, the pavement on Saturday in Toulouse, they do not despair of “another democracy”. A real “.
* The first name has been changed