televised interview, which was projected live on a giant screen in the Place de la République, in which he vowed to press ahead with the labor reforms. Following the interview, a group of protesters (300, according to the police) left the square in the direction of the Élysée Palace, the president's official residence. The protestors were diverted by the police and eventually dispersed. Several banks, commercial premises, and vehicles were vandalized, and there were some violent clashes between protestors and security forces. In the days following these events, the movement failed to adopt a collective position distancing itself from these actions. A substantial majority of participants at the Place de la République, however, declared themselves opposed to violent protest. Occupations in France Over the first week the protests spread to over 30 cities across France. The academic David Graeber, a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, said that the protests had spread much faster than those of 2011. Explaining the spread of the protests, Graeber was quoted as saying, "There seems to be this sense of betrayal. [It's] the fact that it is an ostensibly left-wing government that did the state of emergency, that did the labor law, that's done a whole series of different things. These [the protestors] are the people that voted for them… [They] assumed that such a government would somehow speak for their concerns. They're just really pissed off." During the first two weeks, assemblies took place mostly in city center locations, and some critics accused the movement of being predominantly white, bourgeois, and unrepresentative of the wider population. In response to this concern, participants in Paris argued in favor of expanding the movement into the banlieues. Several Nuit debout events were held in Paris suburbs such as Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen in mid-April, however these failed to attract local participants in large numbers. An event organized in the northern parts of Marseille on 23 April likewise failed to greatly engage the local population. Activists suggested that the movement's message, such as its opposition to changes to the labor code, had little traction in the area because many residents there were already unemployed, and because such areas had for decades been marginalized and ignored by wider society. Protests spread outside France The movement quickly spread to neighbouring countries in Europe. Within the first ten days, protests were held in cities including Brussels, Berlin,