Since mid-September, students in metropolitan France have been mobilizing against poor conditions in public high schools.
asserted
students → mobilize → schools
The mouvement lycéen has spread from a single campus in a Parisian suburb to include high schoolers and university students nationwide, with public sector workers, climate activists, labor unions and everyday people joining in solidarity.
asserted
workers → spread → solidarity
The unifying concerns have largely centered on the climbing costs of daily life, shrinking funds for social services and general anxiety about the future.
asserted
concerns → unify → future
For two weekends running, France has seen hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets: first on 17 October, when a day of largely peaceful gatherings ended in looting and vandalism; then on 24 October, as the state met the movement with aggressive policing and protest bans intended to keep people at home.
asserted
state → run → home
But curfews, teargas and sweeping arrests have not been enough to deter the students.
asserted
curfews → deter → students
On Monday, they won their first government concessions: $4.45bn in government loans for the renovation of rundown buildings, more university spaces, more teachers and other administrative changes.
asserted
they → win → buildings
Protesters remain unsatisfied.
asserted
Protesters → remain → ?
Calling these “crumbs”, a spokesperson for the l’Union Étudiante, a national university student union, vowed to keep fighting.
asserted
spokesperson → call → Étudiante
More actions are scheduled for 31 October, with a national strike called for 5 November.
asserted
strike → schedule → November
Their resolve highlights how ingrained protest culture is in France.
asserted
culture → highlight → France
“There’s this idea, very deeply rooted in France, that expressing yourself by demonstrating is a democratic right,” said Quentin Deluermoz, a historian at the University of Cambridge and Université Paris Cité who studies social movements.
asserted
who → ’ → movements
“When something truly problematic is felt on a large scale, people will demonstrate to make their voices heard and demand a change or adjustment in policy.
asserted
voices → feel → policy
While fundamental structural differences between France and the US complicate easy comparisons, the French student movement is nonetheless a useful reminder of what makes demonstrations powerful on both sides of the Atlantic.
asserted
demonstrations → complicate → Atlantic
The mouvement lycéen has been bolstered by a strong network of unions across French society.
asserted
lycéen → bolster → society
In France, unions provide organizing power within the public sector, responsible for calling strikes and filing the paperwork that makes them legal, in addition to consolidating worker demands and negotiating with the state.
asserted
them → provide → state
But the right to strike, enshrined in the constitution, belongs to individuals: once a work stoppage is called, anyone can join it, whether they’re unionized or not.
asserted
they → strike → it
As long as they obey protocol, workers generally can’t be fired for walking off the job (though they do lose pay).
asserted
they → obey → pay
Not so in the US, where “going on strike is a very risky activity”, said Eric Blanc, assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers and author of the Labor Politics Substack.
asserted
Blanc → go → Substack
“If you have to pay rent and make sure your kids have food next week, you’re going to think twice about taking action even if you know it could benefit you.”
uncertain
it → have → you
Still, the US has seen what an effective action can look like, namely the 2018 teachers’ strikes that spread from West Virginia to Kentucky and Arizona.
asserted
that → see → Kentucky
By walking out of their classrooms for more than a week, public school educators “created a crisis” that forced politicians to pay attention, Blanc said, and they did so knowing it would spark anger at either the state or the teachers.
asserted
it → walk → state
To head off the latter outcome, teachers “were really conscious about winning over parents and community members”, Blanc said.
asserted
Blanc → head → parents
They rallied bus drivers, custodians and other support staff.
asserted
They → rally → drivers
They coordinated childcare at local community centers and food donations for families affected by missed school meals.
asserted
They → coordinate → meals
The West Virginia strike also “broke with the rules and practice and went straight to the [state] capitol to demand more money”, Blanc noted, ultimately winning a 5% pay raise for all public sector employees in the state.
asserted
Blanc → break → state
A broad coalition puts power behind the students’ cause
So far, the French student protests have drawn a broad coalition without diluting demonstrators’ demands.
asserted
protests → put → demands
That owes in part to the unions and activist groups that have piled onto the cause: the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests, a leaderless movement that came together in 2018 to protest fuel-tax increases and eventually the cost of living, set the date for the 17 October action in early September.
asserted
that → owe → September
After the student movement took off, it put out a call on their website inviting “Gen Z, Indignés [anti-austerity activists], farmers, firefighters, workers, teachers, healthcare workers, climate activists, residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods and retirees” to join them.
asserted
it → take → them
The unions then called for protests on the same day.
asserted
unions → call → day
On 24 October in Paris, the situation went further: multiple groups merged into one march, along one route.
asserted
groups → go → route
“It wasn’t just the numbers that mattered – it’s that we had a single demonstration with everyone,” explained Robi Morder, a jurist and political scientist specializing in student movements.
asserted
Morder → matter → movements
That solidarity is important for the students because it lends legitimacy to a more vulnerable group, and because workers have leverage high schoolers lack.
asserted
schoolers → lend → leverage
While high school and university students do have their own unions, which represent them in talks with the government, their walkouts don’t have the legal standing that workers’ do.
asserted
workers → have → standing
After all, when the lycéens boycott their classes, it “doesn’t bother anyone except the high school students, since stopping work isn’t like in a factory”, Morder said.
asserted
Morder → boycott → factory
Teachers’ unions have already organized walkouts in support of the students, and a general strike is coming next week.
asserted
strike → organize → students
To get the government’s attention, Morder said, “we have to be very strong and very numerous, that’s the idea: strength in unity”.
asserted
that → get → unity
That idea has taken hold at the local level in the US, too: in Minneapolis this winter, unions, community leaders, mutual aid networks and everyday people pulled together to push back ICE; and in Cascade Locks, Oregon, voters banded together to recall their elected officials and cancel plans for the construction of a datacenter.
Clear, actionable demands
asserted
voters → take → demands
Earlier this month, the students drew up a list of 10 emergency measures they’d like to see implemented, including the need for “clean and functional sanitary facilities”, staffed classrooms and buildings adapted to extreme heat and cold.
asserted
they → draw → heat
“What’s happening in the high schools is the same situation as in the hospitals and in all the public services,” said Deluermoz.
asserted
Deluermoz → happen → services
According to Blanc, mobilizing around grievances that are “really widely and deeply felt” tends to be a productive avenue for organizing.
uncertain
that → accord → organizing
…and 28 more, not listed.
The Aporia
