TL;DR: Yes, you would be welcome, and I think you would benefit from the experience. And it would be good to tell your stories to add to the public understanding of what is happening.

[edit] Saturday is the best day to reliably find a protest march. Start walking around looking for helicopters, listening for drums or sirens, and looking for where the people dressed in black are going. Unfortunately I don’t know the hot spots in Paris, and it is a big city. In smaller cities like Montpellier, Lyon, Toulouse, or Bordeaux, it would be easier to find.

As a person who moved here from the United States within the past year, I find France to be very welcoming to people who are sincere in their intentions and respectful of the culture. I am that way, so I’m not sure where the boundaries are, but I imagine they are less receptive to the kind of blowhard behavior that some Americans are reputed to exhibit.

Coming to observe or march in the daytime protests would be easy, safe, and enjoyable. If you hear sirens and people start moving away from an area, walk calmly away. If you see clouds of tear gas or hear pops like big firecrackers (tear gas going off), walk calmly away. The police are professional and respectful if you listen and do as they say.

You can also sometimes walk peacefully through the police cordon into the area where the tear gas is, but be sure to listen for the officers to say no, and be prepared to let them search you if they ask. It is probably not as safe as in the main peaceful marches, but it has not been a problem for me yet, other than having my bag searched.

As for the protestors, 100% of them have been nice to me, even though my French immediately marks me as an immigrant. The daytime marches, where I spend much more of my time than in the tear gas, are borderline festive, though with a distinct air of grievance.

I don’t see any evidence of “hurting people for no reason” in that video. Do you see the large, unbroken, glass windows on both sides of the street?

The vast majority of the protesting is now peaceful. The protestors quickly realized the breaking and looting was working against them in the media, and in court cases around protest bans.

Here is an article from the BBC on Thursday’s protests. They were the largest so far, until yesterday. The BBC only found a few small examples of breaking: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckx2qzv835pgo

Source: I live in Montpellier. I’ve been in the peaceful marches and walked through the tear gas, photographing.

That article is from Thursday, but it happened again today. Saturday is a common protest day in France. In Montpellier, early afternoon was the largest protest march I have been in. It was peaceful, and a lot of fun. The police were present, and professional.

Later, as evening fell, I went out to run an errand. The shop I wanted to go to was on the far side of the central square. I could hear the helicopters overhead, and knew there was likely to be enhanced activity. My walk took me past cordons of riot police, who were still being professional as far as I saw.

It seems I was there moments after something was broken up on Place de la Comédie. I walked through the most dense clouds of tear gas I have experienced so far, though not the densest I have seen. Nasty stuff; at the worst I couldn’t see momentarily.

I’m happy to walk through tear gas, and buy a bottle of wine with bloodshot eyes and tears streaming down my cheeks, if it means enjoying the benefits of living in a society that stands up for what it believes.

Rarely has so much been owed by so many to one comment.

How it happened…

• Trump: We’re not grifting enough.
• Miller: We’re grifting all the grift. Every scheme we know, in parallel.
• Big Balls: We’re not smart enough. AI SI is smarter. It can think of more.
• Trump: I already asked the Google.
• Big Balls: We need a fraud-specialized training dataset.
• Miller: Say we’ll pay them to tell us about fraud schemes.
• Trump: I’m not paying them.
• Miller: You never do. Just tell them you will.
• Trump: Are you - a very bald and very short man - criticizing me?
• Miller: No, sir. ‘mirin’.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win, then they infiltrate you, then they exploit your userbase.

Pas du tout, c’est la faute de les oligarches fachos, qui viennent principalement de mon pays.

As an American living in France: I came here because France is better than this.

En tant qu’Américain vivant en France : je suis venu ici parce que la France est mieux que cela.