September 18: In Nîmes, retirees dream of seeing shareholder dividends taxed

Françoise, 69, is retired from the École des Mines d'Alès. She has been enjoying a "decent" pension for six years. But for all that, retirees are "neither a world apart, nor a homogeneous social group," she says, annoyed that the government refers to retirees as "a category to be taxed . "

Others have a harder time (than her) making a living from it. It's "for them" that she's there, in the Nîmes procession where 8,000 people demonstrated, according to the inter-union count, 3,000 according to the prefecture. For those who are suffering too much to demonstrate or who say "it's still okay . " "We shouldn't have to put up with this, since we know there's money in France. Ah! If only we taxed dividends instead," dreams the activist of Nîmes en commun, the collective fighting to put an end to twenty-five years of municipal right-wing rule.

"We gave money without compensation to companies, for example via the research tax credit, to work on plastics ," complains the former engineer, who has in mind the phenomenal amount of 211 billion euros of public aid paid to companies in 2023, revealed by a recent Senate report. All this money given "in total contradiction with ecological aspirations..." .

Before adding, as if giving a French lesson: "In politics, we lack direct, indirect and circumstantial object complements: we keep repeating "growth, growth", but without asking for whom, for what or how..."

Lise, for her part, marches with the CGT Éduc'action. She is "not very optimistic" : " We held 16 demonstrations against the pension reform , for nothing..." But she too demonstrates for others. A volunteer at the Secours populaire in Vauvert, she welcomes women "broken" by a life of work cleaning, picking vegetables, carrying pallets... "On 800 euros a month, alone or sometimes with children, they survive."

If anything could override her resignation, it would be "violence," she asserts. "They would have to be afraid," asserts the gentle pensioner. For the moment, she admits with a lump in her throat, those who are afraid are mainly the most vulnerable, the elderly, the disabled, families with children "who don't even dare to come to protest anymore ." Force is in power and those who oppose it, like the yellow vests, "are losing their feathers."