French Police and African women protesting...

[SixtyFootDoll]

I am and I dont normally very easily awful

Terrible actions by the police but those protesters were deliberately using their children as shields against the police which is also terrible. Sorry but you don't use your children as shields.

Yes they should of had the nanny take them to the park while it was happening.

What utter crap, If you live in a tent on a street, with your famly and all your mates live there too, where do you stash the kids when the police are beating you up.

Im away to ram a Daily mail up a horses arss.

So should they have put their kids in some kind of cushy childcare while they tried to defend their rights? Get a clue.

I agree with Sammyuni - protecting my kids would have been my primary concern, not fighting in the street with them strapped to my back.

Where were the husbands?

. Am I misunderstanding or are people actually saying that the women seem to deserve this? The babies were there so what were the poor police supposed to do but hurt them too?

Of course I'm not saying they deserved it - the violence was barbaric.

But I would not have put my kids in the front line. They could have got some of the mothers to look after the children while the others protested.

Or better still - got the males out there doing it for them.

Or does it that just asking for too much thought?

You, the insinuation that I think women are to blame for rape is insulting. And I don't think this is remotely the same kind of situation. The "rape victim" in this situation would be the babies, surely? And I don't recall saying they are to blame for getting dragged along the ground

These mothers seem to be deliberately laying down (with their babies strapped to them) to make it more difficult for the police to move them on. Their babies got dragged along the ground. IMO the mothers share responsibility for what happended to their children. They did not have to respond the way they did.

That said, their situation sounds desperate. Being evicted with no where to go is appalling. I hope that their actions are not in vain and that something is done to help them.

I think I have to agree with Been Beta et al. A protest/ eviction resistance is no place for children or pregnant women and no, cushy childcare is not the only alternative to bringing them along strapped to your back. I am willing to bet there were women in the group who were not pregnant who could have done the protesting. These people had been "evicted or expelled from previous housing" before, and they obviously knew what an eviction entailed the French equivalent of bailiffs are probably no more sensitive than the British.
And yes, where are the men from this group?

Filmed by someone from the housing rights group who just happened to be there?

hmmmm.

Desperate people do desperate things. Perhaps these women were desperate and thought seeing how vulnerable their children would be if made homeless, the authorities would look for another solution other than eviction.
They surely did not assume having their kids there would lead to the police using excessive violence?

I'm sure it's possible to protest without risk of having your baby dragged along the ground, even without the need for cushy childcare.

They chose to create a photo op with their children as a means of getting better leverage in their negotiations perhaps? Without knowing about any negotiations or dialogue that had taken place up to this point it's difficult to really know how desperate they were either.

Excessive is in the eye of the beholder really, and in this case the beholder was someone representing a housing pressure group, with a camera. It smacks of planning, and apparently no-one was injured despite the seeming heavy-handedness.