France: High School Students, Civil Service Unions, and Firefighters Unite in Blockades

A student movement erupted in France this week, with high school students demonstrating at over 300 schools on Tuesday, September 29 and over 500 schools on Friday, October 2. High schools and university students nationwide are protesting deteriorating school conditions and budget cuts, and fighting back against heavy police repression since the beginning of the movement.

Since then, students have taken to the streets alongside teachers, firefighters, healthcare workers, and other public-sector workers to challenge the austerity of the Macron government. The conditions they face are not trivial; overcrowded classrooms, lack of resources, deteriorating public services, and increasing precarity for young people growing up in an increasingly unstable world.

What began at Saint-Exupéry high school in Créteil on September 21 quickly spread across Île-de-France, the central region surrounding Paris, as students connected their own learning conditions in schools in the working-class neighborhoods to broader government cuts and attacks on public services. Protests are now taking place in over 13 major cities, including Paris, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, and Bordeaux, with over 400 schools closed.

As the movement has grown, so has the breadth of the demands students are placing on the deeply unpopular Macron government. The mobilizations challenge the current administration and the idea that workers and young people should pay for austerity through cuts to education, healthcare, and other public services. The “unacceptable educational conditions” they face include a lack of teachers (a 1:35 teacher-student ratio, in some places), lack of proper tables and chairs, 10-hour school days with barely enough time for lunch, rats and cockroaches in schools, and overheating classes (some hitting over 95°F).

The kids are smart — they’re making connections between their real life conditions and the Macron government’s hypocritical and reactionary policies. They’ve drawn conclusions that the administration cares more about criminalizing traditional Muslim attire like the hijab and abaya than fixing the schools. They also rail against growing militarization in Europe, and the decision to increase police budgets while schools continue to crumble.

High schoolers across the country are opposing fascism, rallying against racist “sorting” decrees and tuition increases, and even mobilizing for a Free Palestine.

The government has responded with significant police repression, particularly in working-class areas of Saint-Denis, with tear gas, arrests, beatings, and the deployment of heavily equipped police around schools. Riot police are using batons, tear gas, and flash ball guns on teenagers as young as 14. One teenager was hit in close range by a grenade launcher, losing several teeth and almost killed in the process, while another could lose his eye after being shot by a “non-lethal” riot control weapon.

In total, nearly 2,000 people have been arrested, including 625 students on Wednesday, September 30 alone. The next day, Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin brought together 36 attorneys general to strategize a defeat for the movement, legitimizing arrests and prosecuting students. The government wants to make an example out of students and their families, recalling the racist crackdown of the movement for justice against police violence after the killing of an Algerian 17-year old in 2023.

What was so remarkable about the September 29 blockades was the unity of students with public sector workers, who also went on strike to oppose Macron’s austerity measures. Students joined together with educators, firefighters, healthcare workers, and other civil servants in an incredible show of solidarity.

Their demands intersected with these striking public-sector workers. Firefighters protested the lack of resources and worsening conditions they experienced during an increasingly severe fire season, while healthcare workers denounced years of cuts, understaffing, and the deterioration of public hospitals. In several schools, teachers and education workers joined the blockades and defended students from police repression, demonstrating the potential for student and worker struggles to reinforce one another.

These struggles uniting creates the possibility of a broader movement against the government’s budget and austerity measures. Rather than allowing these struggles to remain isolated, the day’s mobilizations pointed toward the possibility of uniting students and workers around a common fight against austerity, cuts to public services, and the attacks on living and working conditions by the Macron government, as well as imperialist rearmament and militarization.

It is fundamental that this movement be supported against the neoliberal and increasingly right-wing government in France from an international perspective. Students across the world are facing increased precarity, between education cuts, brutal wars, and uncertain ecological and economic futures. This student movement reminds us that uniting the youth with the workers movement is a strategic necessity to fight for our demands and oppose the rise of austerity and the far-right.