The Yellow Vest Official Charter, the work of high school students?

William Skordelis
7 min readDec 15, 2018
The “Offical” English version of the Yellow Vest Charter

France’s Gilets Jaunes, or Yellow Vests are at it again, with the death toll now up to seven, despite President Emmanuel Macron’s plea for calm in his speech to the French nation on Monday night.

In cliche terms, Macron is “between a rock and a hard place.”

Had he read the Yellow Vests “Charte Officielle Des Gilets Jaunes,” published December 5th, he would have known that no amount of concession and apology would placate this movement.

The “Official” charter consists of a Facebook page, named, “Charte des gilets jaunes.” While the protests have spread throughout France, this Facebook page has a meager 6,042 shares of their charter which has been posted in French, English, Spanish and Italian, and covered in the press.

So who’s driving the bus?

Based on the French and U.S. press coverage we’ve seen, the Yellow Vests are made up of all ages of French men and women, boys and girls. And without an actual declared leader or leaders of the movement it is difficult to determine who wrote this charter, where these demands come from and how it can declare itself “official.” But on close examination, it looks as though it was written by high school students, and maybe not the smartest ones in the class. The demands contained in the “25…

--

--

William Skordelis

Bill has been writing published free-lance articles in print since 1992, and online since 2008, specializing in social and political commentary.