Several hundred activists from the environmental group Extinction Rébellion occupied part of the Grands Boulevards in Paris this Saturday, April 16, 2022. Claimed objective? Make it a big agora to discuss the climate emergency, put it back at the heart of the political debate, one week before the second round of the presidential election. The civil disobedience operation was called “the inevitable rebellion”.
During the morning, shortly before 10 a.m., hundreds of environmental activists took over Porte Saint-Denis and the boulevards Bonne-Nouvelle, Saint-Denis and Strasbourg-Saint-Denis in the tenth arrondissement of the capital, placing straw bales, by organizing sit-ins but also by voluntarily attaching themselves to containers filled with cement to hinder a possible evacuation according to AFP. One of the movement’s spokespersons claimed the presence of a thousand activists on the spot at the end of the morning.
Extinction Rebellion wants to block “several days” traffic at the edge of the Porte Saint-Denis, in the center of Paris.