French youth and student revolt - Part II

lol

where d'you get those mate?

Hey guys, This is my first post, and I'd like to put out an article from the revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party. This is our analyses and news of the events in Paris.

Mao said blah blah blah

Admin edit - copy and paste removed. This is a warning. Dont do it again.

PLP Revolutionary Communist

http://www.plp.org/cd06/cd0329.html#Demonstrations%20of%208 00,000%20Rocking%20French%20Government

Hello everybody,

I live in Paris, so excuse me for my very poor english

Just to tell you that today's demonstration was great ! I used to come on your forum since 2 weeks and i saw the debats. I just want to make a little report from today's demonstration, the "young corner" of this demo counted tens of thousands demonstrators. Most of them coming from popular and poors highschools (is this the right translation of "lycées" ?), they where whites, blacks, "beurs"... and we don't care about what they are coming from, they are just in "rebellion".

I don't now about tomorow's movment in terms of struggle, i hope we will win, but from my what i saw today and in the last demonstrations, the idea that neo-liberalism and capitalism is a cancer and we have to fight against it and look up for a radical alternative is an idea that is doing its way in these "young and workers streets"... demonstration after demonstration.

I hope we will win against CPE, and whatever how, anyway, I think that a new generation of "antisystems militants" is now borning.

Congratulations for your massive strike today... anybody is alone, the show must go on !

8)

hi MZA welcome!

nice first post, what a day indeed

Newsnight on now talking about anarcho-syndicalists wrecking havic in France! on as second news item

hello, well this is my 1st post here but ive been following the events trought this forum and blog!!

well let me just say that for what i saw on tv and heard from comrades that are in paris todays demontrations were just amazing!! and well french students are an example for all the european youth... theyr solidarity, theyr will and theyr power is definatly an inspiration for future struggles in other countrys that are dealing with the same kind of dangers by the growing unemploimnt and liberalism...

now... ive followed trought Sky-news the events occuring this afternoon in paris and let me just say im disgusted by theyr comments and the way they refer to the protesters!!

1st of all they tend to generalize and call everyone in the square trouble makers, then they talk about the poor kids from around paris in a disgusting racist way!! and they dont even day that theyr also students!! they just call them trouble makers without even asking them what theyr doing there or what theyr protesting about!!!!

they also mention anarchists and communists as beeing only there to couse trouble and they dont even mention them as students!! when we all know that there are huge groups of communists and libertarian youths linked to the students movement!! WTF so the students cant be linked to any party now???? is they do theyr not considered students anymore?? thats what i understood by the sky fellas.......

anyway!! keep up this great job!!!!

revolutionary solidarity right here from Portugal!!

I think we can safely assume that while the ethnic makeup of banlieue youth and so called neds and chavs are different there are some similaritites, depending on your definition of ned/chav.

Banlieue youth are lumpenproletariat, so when they attack the polie there is some revolutionary potential, even if they've just come for a fight.

I'df like it if people would read the blog and stop looking at sky etc.

There are very few reports of violence by banlieue youth, the numbers are tiny.

The big reports centred on around 300 youths when PAris had 1000 times as many peaceful protesters.

Its also easy to assume that every brown face is instigating violence.

The violence that kicked off in the evening at Sevry was after a day in which the police repeatedly gassed people, often at random. Yet the violence was blamed on casseurs and banlieusards.

IF the protests carry on in France as they are now the law will be withdrawn and Vilepin will fall.

The danger is that Sarkozy's compromise will be accepted.

Think those rather groovey photomotages (posted above) may have originated with the folks at Schnews:

http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news537.htm

Great arent they?!

Hey everyone! It even seems as if its springtime for the workers movements er...this spring! To overuse a metaphor, so happy to see millions in each country er...spring into action all at the same time;- the superb mass revolt against attacks on immigrants in the USA, as well as the great revolts against neo-lib attacks in Britain and France. And thats just mentioning the revolt in the imperialist heartlands! Oh Great stuff., the daffodils are popping out, all the trees have buds which bear the promise of the future!

Of course, we must do more than celebrate this apparent resurgence, and invent the kind organisations and politics that can win these sorts of battles. And then of course go much further to address winning the whole class-war.

But its still worth celebrating the spring, innit?

from here

I mean, maybe it just gets me because once upon a time i'd have spouted such liberal nonsense, but its not as if the government could get any 'less sympathetic' - they've outright refused to drop the CPE (until now at least that murmurs of compromise are starting). She can't even acknowledge that the police are also violent ...

Quick update from French press this morning. Le Figaro (Right wing newspaper) this morning claims police made 800 arrests in France following disturbances yesterday. It says dustbins were set alight in Toulouse and vehicles damaged.

The demonstrations were reported to be the largest since strikes over changes in pension rights for railway workers in 1995, which forced the resignation of them Prime Minister Alain Juppe.

The debate in the French Parliament yesterday is reported as heated, with one Deputy, allied to Nicholas Sarkozy, cited as saying: "It's a dead-end street, Villepin is playing at war."

France's five largest unions yesterday evening addressed a letter to President Jacques Chirac, asking for: "A new deliberation over the statute of equality of opportunity, excluding the CPE."

This is exciting stuff, thanks again for your reports people from France, reglisse, MZA, etc.!

the fear of the people for loosing theyr cars is the same fear they have of beeing free!! the world is a lot bigger than just the way from theyr home to theyr work!!

WELL the numbers yeasterday were amazing... and the reports i have is that with all the oposition to Villepin in his own party we can be looking into a resignation comming soon

i just hope that the ppl wont be stupid and wont choose Sarcozy for president... hes trying to fool the people by, in the same time asking for massive arrests and for the prime minister to step back and agree conditions with the unions

Aye, i saw them on Indymedia UK first.

They're very nice indeed.

Hi.

There is a kind of panic running in the corridors of my uni: people are starting to be afraid to fail their semester. Desinformation is something we have to fight against everyday. We get a whole bunch of contradictory messages every single day, from students, teachers, and administratives.

Some classes are taking place, others aren't. And nobody knows what is being said, or happening. People are getting divided and fight against each other during the general assemblies. It seems that there is no good and proper organization to strengthen this movement inside the uni: to make it last longer.... Easter holiday might be lethal (easter holidays are in 2 weeks here in the département of Ile de France).

One month without class here, out of 3 months of semester, and thoughts are running wild. Some people say we will all have to start the year over again; others say we shall have class in july and august; others say we won't have any exams and pass straight, and so on.

But there are some university which are on strike since 2 months... i just wonder what is going on there...

There is absolutely no coordination here (unlike other unis like Censier), it's totally disordered, unfortunately i was hoping last week that things would get better and people more concerned about what is happening. I was waiting for some sort of growing solidarity but it seems that we are having quite a lot of problem to take care of everyone's personal problems. "Well, i am having an entry test in september to become a teacher", "hey, i live in whatever country, i can't stay until september and i need my diploma" (but, this, i understand, of course!!!) , "i don't care if you voted strike, i want to go and have class so fuck you" or "we're sociologist students, the CPE doesn't concern us...".. Gosh, it makes me want to scream sometimes.

SOmetimes it even ends up like a kindergarden fight. Like some sort of ego / narcissic fight with a microphone in a hand. I won't say more ok? Scary.

Anyways. The Sorbonne will not reopen until after Easter. In fact, it might not reopen at all until the end of the semester, until july. That's a very famous sociology teacher who told us that today in General assembly, and he seemed very much pissed off about it.

I hope the government will react very soon because, things are starting to crumble where i am, i just hope it won't in other places...

The impression I got yesterday was that some of the longest running occupations - like Poitier, were still solid, but the more recent ones were getting fidgety as you point out - maybe because they've had less time to get organised?

The holidays will almost certainly be a big blow, I can't see many places remaining blocked afterwards, unless the students move from the universities to other public buildings for the holidays in significant numbers - employment, tax, those kinds of buildings.

I also heard a while ago that some universities were working on strategies to ensure that their students pass - do they have to have a certain success rate to generate funding for next year? We have this sort of thing even in secondary schools in the UK, so teachers and lecturers are reluctant to fail too many people for any reason.

http://telesorbonne.com/

With videos, reports, analysis. Made by Sorbonne students. In french.

Rennes was interesting. I spent the last 5 days there, sampling the delights of the most militant, unified, unmediated resistance to the CPE in the country. Rennes II, Social Sciences, was among the first universities to be occupied and it shows - while other universities, including Rennes I (hard science) which this week lifted the total blocàge, are getting fidgety, Rennes II reasserts itself. At the last AG, a motion was passed to block not only undergraduate courses but also also all masters and post-grad courses. There were also a number of scuffles when teachers attempted to organise secret seminars, and where prevented first with moral force then with physical.

The cops in Rennes have given up on active policing and have chosen a policy of disengagement for most actions, standing back and allowing many actions to go on uncontested for fear of antagonising the movement. This means that the blockades of the periph that occured daily last week and the train station occupation on tuesday were both left alone by police for the first 3-4 hours. Official demos are policed by union stewards - the only state cops involved are traffic ones at the front of the march.

It takes manifs sauvage to manifest the 'forces of order'. When it became clear on the tuesday that nothing interesting was going to happen at the train station occupation that had happened uncontested at the end of the demo, a spontaneous march of 2000 took off into the streets of Rennes. Moving resolutely through the streets, we were lead either by the city or by some few at the front of the march to the headquarters of the Socialist Party, whose shutters were down and which was protected by CRS and BAC.

Everything kicked off then. Cobblestones, chunks of iron, gas and flashballs, smashed estate agencies and temp agencies, BAC charges. It's moments like that - unity between student, lycée and banlieu casseurs - that makes Rennes so interesting. There was no tention, no mugging - unity behind the barricades. For the first time in Rennes, there were also the same pacifist scum that; along with the unions, ruined Paris for a little while. Posing themselves as human shields for the cops, standing in cop lines, they sought to deny the violence palpable in our everyday lives, the violence of the CPE, the violence of the CRS in the banlieu. After the cops launched gas and flashballs and drove us back onto a square, they took to rioting with the cops against the manif, stoning us and defending the BAC as they launched charges and snatch sqauds.

Scum. Thankfully in Rennes they are isolated. Even the most hippy node of resistance in Rennes, the protest camp in the square opposite the old Breton Parliament, voted last week to explicitly allow casseurs into the camp. Rennes II's AG still holds policy that 'nous sommes tout les casseurs'. The unity is palpable.

As I left with the militants I had come with, yesterday afternoon, we saw a manif of 1000 lycées. The militants didn't have a clue what it was about. It seemed to be heading to the centre comerciale, where a blockade had been organised for the next day. But it was a day early.

When people refuse to wait for organised days of action but just begin; when militants don't know every demo's time and place; when the cry of 'vive la commune' goes up from 2000 on a spontaneous demo in Paris against the propagation of the CPE - we live in interesting times.

It is all or nothing.

8)

Pretty inspiring stuff hermit!

Yeah - apart from my damned foot (which is horribly swollen and unusable after 2 weeks of constant manifs, savage and otherwise) I'm feeling pretty happy about the whole thing. Rennes was a nice experience.

There's an interesting text knocking around (produced tonight by the AG en lutte de Paris) called 'bifurcation' basically calling for co-ordinated wild demos in Paris.

I'll keyboard it a bit later if I can gather the energy.

that'd be lovely if you get time. many, many thanks for the report (which is now up on the blog)

Great Stuff Hermit!

hey hermit. good to see you in paris mate, glad your having fun and stuff in rennes is more inspiring than paris.

ive just watched a report on M6 about the cpe, the demonstrations, the casseurs etc etc...

oh it was so f*** ridicule!!! they show the pro-cpe has if they are the ones who have the right opinion, they even interviewed the french who work in england who agree with the cpe and with the british work laws!!! they sayd that it was better to not have stability in work so that like this they could have new experiencies, try new and different jobs!!LLOOOOOOOL i was like

bah the good part was when they showed a couple of fascists from the FN that were going during the night to an action to glue a couple of poster on the walls of the university to prostest against the strike and the police showed up and made them unglue the posters again!! AHHAHAH

I think there's an element of truth in that, too. One day strikes often accomplish little more than losing a day's pay, unfortunately. In fact, it's often questionable whether a one day strike counts as direct action, or whether it's a "symbolic protest."

And it wouldn't be the first time in French history that union leaders have (consciously) acted as a brake on popular struggle, would it?

So what's the (realistic) alternative?? The uni occupations will end soon cos of the impending Easter holidays...student support will start to stutter with the threat of missing exams (crap jokes aside, students are reluctant to skip them), the unions are intent on controlling and dominating the workers' struggle...this is doomed to failure unless students and workers form links via non-union organisations. Is there any evidence of this happening??

There's some evidence, but not loads.

I think there's the potential for some of the more militant students to take over government/public buildings during the Easter holidays - this is already happening a bit although they're usually cleared pretty fast. The past week on http://www.libcom.org/gallery/v/news/france-cpe/?g2_page=2 has got some of this.

A lot of the most interesting activity by the high school students is happening outside the schools - like this motorway blockade:

Are the networks there to keep stuff like this going though without the schools/colleges as a focus point? - in some places I think so - some occupations have their own websites etc. where they're co-ordinating stuff via timetables etc., the more iffy ones I think will just tail off.

Hermit's report from Rennes also suggests some of the longer running occupations have made good links.

Tolbiac lost its nerve today.

<a leaflet distributed today>

Appel du comité de grève de Tolbiac

Rassemblement au siège de la CGT à Montreuil aujourd'hui à 15h.

Demandons à la direction de la CGT d'appeler à la grève générale jusqu'au retrait de la loi Villepin et du CNE!

Céla fait des semaines que les étudiants sont en grève avec blocages. Comme on a pu le constater en 2003, les journées d'action dispersées ne nous permettront pas de gagner. Seule la grève générale nous permettra de gagner sur nos revendications et de chasser ce gourvernment illégitimé.

Aprés le 4 avril, nous ne voulons pas d'une nouvelle journée d'action. Dirigeants de la CGT, nous attendons de vous un appel clair à la grève générale jusqu'à la victoire!

<end leaflet>

cretins. No critique of the unions at all, no understanding of the role the unions have been playing in atomising and dissolving struggle, no understanding of the historical role of all unions not least the CGT in all worker's struggles in France since 68.

Tolbiac was the last interesting occupation in Paris. I think this means there are no longer any.