The demonstrations against privatization can escalate

The Washington Post looks at how demonstrations against privatization can escalate for possible lessons on the French mass actions. “In March 2017, during the last French presidential campaign, a group of grassroots activists began demonstrating against the sale of the nonprofit Kourou hospital [in French Guiana] to a private operator. They set up roadblocks along the main coastal highway, effectively blocking access to the space center and delaying several satellite launches. The movement quickly picked up steam and expanded to Cayenne, French Guiana's capital, and to Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni to the west. As its support widened among the population, the movement and its leaders broadened the scope of their demands—a local dispute over the privatization of a hospital turned into a tense, month-long protest for better schools, better infrastructure and more state investments to fight poverty, unemployment and crime. In a nutshell, the Guianans demanded equality between their struggling and impoverished country, and the metropole across the ocean.”