Nuit Debout in the Place de la République – Picture by Olivier Ortelpa

Thousands of people have been gathering in the squares of French cities and conducting nightly public assemblies for several months now. The movement, which has also spread to other countries in Europe and North America, is known as Nuit Debout – this translates as ‘up all night’ or ‘rise up at night’. The assemblies have become focal points for discussing dissatisfaction with the social, economic and political status quo, and spaces in which to imagine alternatives.
Nuit Debout began on the evening of 31 March, the most important day of mobilisation against prime minister Manuel Valls’ labour market reform, which restricts the power of unions and makes it easier for companies to make workers redundant and increase working hours. The initiative was launched by Francois Ruffin, a journalist for the French newspaper Fakir, producer of the influential Michael Moore-style film Merci Patron (‘Thanks Boss’) and a fierce critic of neoliberal capitalism, which has led him to enormous success in France over the past few months.
The labour market reforms provided the starting point for Nuit Debout, but it is only one of the triggers of this mobilisation. Opposition to government policy has come from three main sources: on social grounds, with the labour market reforms; on moral grounds with the policy of deprivation of nationality; and on environmental grounds, with the issue of the airport in Notre Dame des Landes (in the west of France), in which the government seems willing to force through a project that has mobilised tens of thousands of people against it. This threefold force has evidently fuelled the Nuit Debout movement.
The internet has played an important role in all of this, with social media and the incredible success of online petitions, but also with the YouTube channel ‘On vaut mieux que ça’ (‘we are worth more than that’), on which thousands watch young people talking about personal job insecurity issues on a daily basis. These new communication tools have been central to the Nuit Debout mobilisation.
Daily meetings
There is no leader or spokesperson for Nuit Debout, just three different movements: the alter-globalisation organisation Attac; the Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques (SUD) group of more progressive trade unions; and Droit au Logement (‘Right to Housing’). Each of these in turn files for daily permission to occupy the Place de la République – the site of the first and the largest assemblies – and ensure minimal organisation during the gatherings.
Nuit Debout, which has spread across France, organises daily general meetings – typically beginning in the early evening – during which anyone and everyone can express their views with the same speaking time. There are also working commissions, which may well be the most interesting part of this initiative. As well as focusing on logistical issues, there are commissions for a minimum income, housing, street gardens, Palestine, anti-Islamophobia and universities, to name but a few.
Nuit Debout is characterised by direct democracy. Instead of a delegation of power in which representatives are sent to make decisions on our behalf, this system lets participants make their own decisions during general meetings using a form of consensus, although it is clear at this time that it may be complicated to put into action.
The Nuit Debout protests have been shaped by similar forces – and in similar ways – to the movements that have developed in many parts of the world over the past five years: the ‘Arab spring’ in 2011, the ‘indignados’ anti-austerity movement in Spain, the Occupy movement in the US and England, followed by the Turkish and Brazilian movements in 2013, through to the mobilisation that has recently developed in Hong Kong. The Nuit Debout phenomenon is part of this continuum, although there are two major differences: the assemblies take place at night and the public square is not permanently occupied. Yet the state of mind is clearly the same.

Taking root
Central to this is the idea of demonstrations ‘taking root’. Since the 1990s, among the different forms of protest, street demonstrations have become more frequent all over the world. This was clearly the case in France in 1995 when, hand-in-hand with the railroad workers’ strike against job losses and changes to the retirement age, the ‘Juppéthon’ phenomenon developed with the objective of reaching one million protestors – a target given by the former prime minister Alain Juppé himself if he was to abandon his project.
In this instance, as with the movements against the CPE (contrat première embauche – first employment contract) in 2006 and the pension reform in 2010, it was the number of protests – and protesters – that became the determining factor in their success, more so than strikes or factory sit-ins as was the case in France in 1936 or 1968. The importance of street protests as a legitimate form of mobilisation in France, as in other countries, has continued to grow. And the past few years have increasingly seen those protests taking root with the occupation of public places.
The need for this development is clear when we consider how street protests have come to take the place of workplace strikes and sit-ins. Previously strikes lasted until victory, until demands were met, or until they ended due to the exhaustion of strikers. Nuit Debout and similar initiatives are a form of strike, and despite the fact that gatherings make take place only for a determined short period, they can, however, be repeated again and again – which is what is happening with this movement. The importance, besides the actual gathering, is the continuity characterised by the occupation of public places.
So, while it is a different form of mobilisation from a strike, it has one essential in common: continuity in the struggle. The change in form can also be explained by the fact that striking has become more and more difficult for many workers, because of companies being increasingly dispersed, because of job insecurity, different work-hours, telecommuting – and above all because of the risk of redundancy, a particularly dissuasive factor at a time of high unemployment.
Political impact
It is interesting to note that all the movements that followed the wave of Occupy have subsequently had, in their respective countries, a political impact. This has taken different shape or form: something completely new with Podemos in Spain, the reinforcement of a radical group with Syriza in Greece, or even the investment in more traditional structures such as the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn in the UK or Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries in the US.
It is too early to draw conclusions on the impact of Nuit Debout but its convergence with the trade unions is very important for the future of the labour movement and the ‘gauche de transformation sociale et ecologique’ (the left social and ecological transformation). In France, as in many countries, the heart of the left lies in and relies on the public sector: railways, electricity, the post office, teachers, health. Yet at Nuit Debout there are also a lot of students, intellectuals, in more or less precarious situations, and artists who find in these gatherings the ways and means to express themselves that the unions and the traditional political parties can’t offer. This is an essential way of revitalising the labour movement and the left.