“We’re hotter! Hotter! Hotter than tear gas!”
The Yellow Vests movement is an ongoing protest movement that began in France in November 2018, notably in the form of demonstrations and the occupation of roundabouts across France. This article analyses demonstrators’ experiences with policing and how, through situations and demonstrations, protesters discovered and then thematized the problem of “police violence”. After recounting the main instances of violent repression as they were experienced by the demonstrators, it shows how those experiences of police violence were then shared in street conversations, on social networks, and on roundabouts. This in turn led to the emergence of a public that engaged in numerous inquiries, discussions, and experiments, and encountered other publics with the same problem. It explains why the problem of police violence very quickly became one of the movement’s main motives for mobilization and denunciation of the state.