Hundreds of thousands of working people and youth demonstrated across France for the third consecutive Saturday, Oct. 31, alongside similar actions in several German cities and elsewhere in Europe.
Spurred by student protests against appalling conditions in the country’s schools, workers have joined actions against sky-high prices and the indifference of the government of President Emmanuel Macron toward the effects of the deepening capitalist crisis, as well as its attacks on the right to protest.
Actions took place in some 150 cities and towns. At least 70,000 turned out in Paris, despite the government’s efforts to disrupt the march by rerouting it, closing down 40 metro stations and imposing a nighttime curfew. The march was organized by students, the CGT union federation, and those known as yellow vests — farmers and others who came together in rural areas in 2018 to fight high taxes on diesel fuel.
Students have protested for weeks against government cuts to an already strained education system that have led to teacher shortages and disgusting classroom conditions. Corentin Cabreux told PBS in Paris that his state-run school residence is damp, with “cockroaches everywhere, rats.”
“At first we mobilized in support of high school students. Then we saw the possibility of uniting our struggles,” Badienne, a university student who asked not to give her last name, told the Militant at the march in Paris. “There have been many protests in recent years to defend pensions. We felt there was an opportunity to protest alongside workers.”
Despite the size of the protests, gangs of masked youth provoked violent confrontations, as they have done at earlier marches, digging up paving stones to throw at cops along with fireworks. Cops responded with teargas and stun grenades, forcing peaceful protesters to flee. Authorities across the country have used ultraleft thuggery like this by anarchist-type groups, as well as rioting and looting in the wake of the mass marches, to ban or restrict protests.
When a masked group set fire to trash bins near a police unit on the Paris march, other demonstrators intervened to put the fires out. “That’s no way to protest,” one marcher who helped put out the blaze told the New York Times.
France’s main union federations have called a strike along with street protests Nov. 5 to demand increased pay and pensions. Since 2019 prices have shot up by 21.3%, and average wages have failed to keep up, driving down workers’ living standards and making it harder for young people to start a family.
Derek Jeffers in Paris contributed to this article.