Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined French high school students demanding better learning conditions yesterday as a day of mostly peaceful blockades and street marches was again marred by flying projectiles, police charges and tear gas.
Four weeks into nationwide protests over teacher shortages, classroom overcrowding and dilapidated school buildings, more than 161,000 people took to the streets of major cities, according to interior ministry figures. That was down from 266,000 on a similar day of action a week ago.
The government has pledged to address the protesters’ grievances, but with public finances already strained and borrowing costs at decades-high levels, it has limited options to invest in public services despite pressure from the streets.
The day started with pupils clustered outside schools with placards and megaphones. In Saint-Denis, a working-class suburb north of Paris, Thunberg joined one of the gatherings.
“We are inspired by the young people who are demanding their basic rights,” she told reporters outside Lycee Paul Eluard, one of the schools where the protest movement first gained traction.
“Whether it’s not funding schools enough, or the climate crisis, or social injustice crises ... it’s about time that young people are stepping up and reclaiming that future.”
In front of Paris City Hall, a youth orchestra played Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Some musicians had protest stickers on their cellos and violins.
The education ministry said 214 schools were closed, down from 800 on a similar protest day a week ago. It said 94.2 per cent of high schools were open.
Six months out from a presidential election that polls suggest could usher in the first far-right government since the Second World War, the youth protests, which have been supported by the left, have added to a sense of uncertainty and polarisation.
While most demonstrators marched peacefully yesterday, riot police charged and fired tear gas in locations in Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg and Nantes, while a fringe of protesters lit fires, vandalised property and hurled objects at police.
In central Paris, at least one car was set on fire during running confrontations between police and protesters down a central, tree-lined avenue.
In Lyon, the local authorities asked organisers to call off a march after a group of ‘hostile individuals’ preceding the main procession vandalised shops and a petrol station and clashed with police.
While there was no immediate information on who was involved, it is not uncommon in France for street protests to attract so-called ‘casseurs’, a fringe of rioters who seek to confront police and destroy property.
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