Nearly 2,000 French high schools are blockaded or closed today amid massive student-led protests over school funding and inequality. The demonstrations began in September at a single school in the economically deprived suburbs of Paris, where students protested teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated school buildings beset by rats, falling debris and more. But the scope of the protests has widened amid a violent crackdown by French police. French authorities have arrested more than 5,000 people, largely underage students, since the movement began. Violent police tactics have led to serious injuries. One protester lost an eye after being hit by a rubber bullet, while another lost a hand when he picked up a police stun grenade.
We hear from an anonymous protester who describes the violence meted out on students, who “aren’t even adults yet,” and from Claire Vigneau, general secretary of Fédération Syndicale Étudiante, the French student union, who reports from a protest in Rennes, Brittany, “where we are trying to escape from the policemen that are chasing us with tear gas and with water cannon[s].”
“The amount of spending that France has done on education has stagnated, if not declined,” explains French American journalist Cole Stangler. “The critiques that high school students are making are actually very similar to what teachers’ unions have been saying for quite some time.”
“Everyone is deeply, deeply angry. We are completely fed up [with] the living conditions, the school conditions, the work conditions that we have,” says Alys Rowlands, a university student in Lille and also a member of Fédération Syndicale Étudiante. “The true violence is the violence of the state that we are being faced with all day, every day, all year. That’s the true violence: having no money, having difficulty finishing the month, having less and less help from the state, having to choose between eating and putting your heating on during the winter.”
