Yes, There Is a French McDonald’s That Is Beloved (by Its Staff)

The nearly 20-year-old images have entered French folklore: peasants, farmers and ex-hippies dismantling a rural McDonald’s, panel by panel, in what became a symbol of France’s resistance to American fast food. Today that aging newsreel is being played in sharp reverse. A group of workers and their union leaders in Marseille are fighting tooth-and-nail to save a McDonald’s from closing in a working-class, largely immigrant neighborhood. A so-called “Festival of Dignity” protest was recently organized by the McDonald’s employees in an effort to save their roughly 70 jobs.