Student Protests Continue to Spread in France
Featured image: Burning barricade in the high school demonstrations in France. Source: X
We recently covered the student demonstrations spreading throughout France. One week has passed since the high school protests quickly spread from the Créteil school district into Saint-Ouen, Saint-Denis, Stains and Sarcelles, and have now taken on a national dimension, La Cause du Peuple reports. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has announced that there have been 5000 arrests so far since the initiation of the demonstrations on Monday.
You can read our previous report here:
You can read the La Cause du Peuple report from October 1 here:
There have been widespread coverage of the ongoing protests on social media, as well as documentation of the repression carried out against the youth by the repressive forces. Below we share a collection of said coverage.
La Cause du Peuple also published a statement on the high school protests, of which we have received a translation per email:
France’s Proletarian Youth Lead a Day of Fire
This Thursday, October 1st, the high school student movement entered a new phase of offensive action against the old state. According to estimates from the bourgeois press, every department in the country is affected without exception, while in the largest metropolitan areas, the blockades have turned into spontaneous urban uprisings. At the same time, there have been more than 1,949 arrests related to the uprising. This situation has the French state with its back against the wall.
Today, the proletarian youth have shown that they are ready for the great challenge of our time: the Revolution. A wind of insurrection is blowing across France. Everywhere, militant high school students—primarily those from vocational high schools in the suburbs of the major metropolitan areas where protests have taken place—have bravely stood up to the police’s attempts at intimidation and have boldly fought back.
In many cities, high school students led full-scale revolts that lasted several hours, paralyzing traffic in major cities and putting the “law enforcement” on the defensive at numerous strategic points. Everywhere, we saw these fine young people braving tear gas, retreating, and counterattacking relentlessly throughout the day despite all the police’s efforts. Everywhere, they resolutely held their ground and did not yield to threats or attempts to co-opt the movement. Better yet, they joined forces at certain strategic blockades when blocking a high school was impossible, making the mobilization fluid and unpredictable for the authorities. At the same time, more than thirty universities are now blockaded, and in many cities we witnessed a convergence between high school students and students in struggle. Major urban areas were engulfed in smoke from the intensity of the clashes. From ring-road occupations to spontaneous demonstrations, nothing could stop the proletarian youth on October 1.
This widespread backlash—following several days of intermittent abuses by the bourgeoisie’s militia against children—shook the reactionary government so severely that Prime Minister Lecornu announced the formation of a crisis task force. Initial estimates already indicate that 83 police officers and gendarmes were injured, compared to 119 among the protesting high school students and teaching staff. For its part, the repression is being organized at the highest levels; the rapist Darmanin also announced that he would convene the attorneys general for a crisis meeting. He is calling for a “firm criminal response.” That says it all—and amounts to nothing other than this basic truth: the bourgeois government’s political crisis is such that it has no strategic alternative for maintaining its domination other than the most brutal political repression, even if this comes down hardest on the country’s combative youth. Just as during the Great Uprisings of June 2023 following the police killing of the young Nahel, the bourgeois justice system will reopen its judicial slaughterhouses for the proletarian youth in revolt. The French state is on the ropes.
What was supposed to be nothing more than a fleeting movement of high school students—one that was supposedly easy to quell—has now become a national movement that is only growing stronger in the face of brutal repressive attacks. Worse still, it is intensifying and expanding as the October 17 movement draws dangerously near, providing ever-greater cause for excitement and hope among the masses throughout the country. Thus, despite the masses’ supposed “disgust” for violence, as claimed by our editorialists, 62 percent of the population considers the high school students’ movement justified, according to a Le Figaro poll.
The disproportionate mobilization of law enforcement the following day, along with the drastic measures to close more than 400 schools and the deployment of exorbitantly expensive surveillance systems, point to an emergency situation that will be unsustainable for the state in the long run, both economically and politically.
Consequently, not only the judiciary but also the intelligence services are striving to find a scapegoat to explain the upsurge among the working-class youth. To quote a report from the Prime Minister’s office in *Le Figaro*:
“According to them, the origins of the movement clearly lie in the manipulation of student union structures and political movements aligned with the far left.” The report continues: “The resulting climate of social tension marks a shift in this otherwise calm start to the academic year and may correspond to a strategy by some of the most radical union among the most radical to impose their ideas as national elections approach.”
“LFI and its far-left proxies” are “behind the movement” that has descended into “urban violence,” the Prime Minister claims. »
In reality, it is not La France Insoumise, nor any opportunistic group, that is behind this escalation of the struggle, but rather the realization that no dialogue is possible with a state that does not hesitate to fire on its youth with military-grade weapons and claims to be able to award “good grades” for democratic duties after the fact. As a reminder, tear gas is still considered a chemical weapon of war, prohibited even during conventional wars under bourgeois law. At the same time, our editorial team has observed a resurgence in the use of LBD rounds fired without warning, which have caused numerous serious injuries among the ranks of the rebellious working-class youth.
How, then, can we remain patient when the future is irrevocably blocked for the majority of France’s working-class youth? How can we remain calm when we know that the majority of these young people will be confined their entire lives to backbreaking labor for a pittance, under the thumb of a petty boss dressed like a dictator? How can we maintain a stance of dialogue when the response is a gun pointed by an over-armed adult convinced he has the right of life and death over anyone not wearing a uniform? And above all, how can we remain convinced that the bourgeois democratic framework so highly praised on TV talk shows and in gilded government buildings meets the expectations of the masses when this very same ruling class considers them worse than animals?
We see this in every school on strike across France. We see it in Seine-Saint-Denis, in Toulouse, Limoges, Bordeaux, Rennes, and everywhere else: the proletarian youth deserve no pity in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie makes sure this youth is aware of this. Undoubtedly, these young people have understood this and are coming to understand it more and more with each passing day.
Let us repeat: never before have revolutionaries had such a strategic horizon for advancing the cause of the Socialist Revolution in this country. Entangled in its own contradictions and now limited to repression as its sole response, the bourgeoisie sees its strategic options for mitigating the “social crisis” dwindling away, while the working class is becoming more educated day by day in the relentless struggle against the old existing order. Better yet, this sole response only serves to increase the resolve and fighting spirit of the masses, as evidenced by the numerous riots throughout France, most of which arise from the impossibility of maintaining a blockade due to the excessive police presence.
France is on the verge of a general upheaval, which, even if it does not lead to the fall of the regime, will permanently alter the dynamics of restructuring that French imperialism had set for itself. All of this signals the resurgence of the communist movement, embodied by its most determined youth, who are most aware of the stakes of our time. One question is on everyone’s lips: “What do we do tomorrow?” So let us not falter; let us intensify the struggle and swell the ranks of the proletarian youth in revolt. These young people are ready and ask for only one thing: that we organize them!
