France’s presidential election is only days away, with incumbent Emmanuel Macron flanked by far-right Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the left-populist France Insoumise. If Mélenchon’s surge isn’t enough to make the second round, we’ll likely see a rematch of the 2017 face-off between Le Pen and Macron. This would do justice to the hardening reactionary turn among much of France’s political class — but it is a poor reflection of the on-the-ground mobilizations that have punctuated the last five years.

Taha Bouhafs has had a front-row seat on the turbulence of the Macron era. Today aged twenty-four, he first gained national notoriety for capturing the footage of Macron’s bodyguard Alexandre Benalla beating up protesters during the 2018 Labor Day protests in Paris. Since then, Bouhafs has become a leading activist and journalist whose work focuses on social movements and police violence. Released this winter, Bouhafs’s first book, Ceux qui ne sont rien (Those Who Are Nothing), is a first-person retelling of the high-pitched moments in French politics since 2016.

Bouhafs spoke with Jacobin’s Harrison Stetler about police violence, racism, and the dangerous work of being a politically engaged journalist in Macron’s France.