A protest sign lies soaked by the roadside in central Paris. "Pay the workers who make society run," it says in black marker.
A short distance away, someone has tried to break a window.
"Yes, it was a bit messy yesterday, but nothing really broke. They tried the window, but that was it," says a man whom a TT reporter encounters.
Very little is being said about Saturday's clashes between protesters and security forces. Across France, more than 1,300 people were arrested and 53 members of the security forces were injured, the Interior Ministry announced on Sunday.
By 10 p.m. on Saturday, the number of arrests had already reached nearly 1,000. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez then blamed the violence on "black-clad extremists," the AFP news agency reports.
Police responded with tear gas, water cannons and stun grenades. Two protesters were seriously injured, one in Toulouse and one in Clermont-Ferrand.
"The police started moving towards everyone and told them to lie down and back up. They just knocked people down," protester David, who was bleeding after an alleged baton strike, told AFP.
According to the CGT trade union, around 800,000 people demonstrated across the country on Saturday. However, the Interior Ministry put the figure at just over 400,000.
