France also has a long history of non-peaceful protests, which are standard there for a minority party to voice its opinion. That's the stark difference between the USA's form of democracy vs France's. I'm afraid that their version is being imported here by the same forces that you're afraid of. USA's aggrieved know to take their action through the ballot box, not through street protests and vandalism.
Yellow vests get our sympathy because at the root they are protesting government overreach. Doesn't mean we must also condone the methods, which are more than civil disobedience, and include blocking roads, vandalism and attacks on the President's residence. These protests have been violent, and the government's response shouldn't be surprising, nor the facts that someone who's smack in the middle of a violent protest got hurt.