A frustrated French public defies Macron. But do protests matter?

At the Place de la Bastille, young people have jumped onto the monumental turquoise pillar, setting off colorful smoke bombs. Reggae music blares out of trade union truck speakers, and a Brazilian drumming group has everyone dancing.

It’s not exactly 1789 and the storming of the Bastille, but it is apropos. After all, it was here that the French revolution began.

“We think and we hope that these protests will do something,” says Linda Blanchard, a psychiatric nurse who is only a few years from retiring, and is one of the more than 1 million nationwide expressing their discontent with President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform bill. “We’re not revolutionaries, we don’t want to destroy everything. We just