This movement has really come to articulate a deeper discontent - with the rising cost of living, with a sense of being treated unfairly by the government. They're not just rebelling against the fuel tax alone. What they see is working class and lower class people being asked to suffer and contribute more, at the same time the super rich in France get a very different treatment from this president - they got a massive tax cut in Macron's very first budget.

Live from Paris, journalist Cole Stangler traces the class lines running through France's Yellow Vest protests - as the broadly popular Gilets Jaunes converge on the streets against economic burdens on the working class, the movement's grievances are clear, though its demands and direction are less certain.

Cole wrote the articles What’s Really Behind France’s Yellow Vest Protest? for The Nation and “Yellow Vests” Against the “President of the Rich” for Jacobin.