17 October―a glorious day of French revolt

A great cry of revolt rang out across France on Saturday. Despite intense police intimidation and repression, hundreds of thousands of people joined over 1,000 mobilizations over the cost of living, inequality―and against cop violence and in solidarity with the school and university students’ protest.

Anger against the system exploded onto the streets. The fires and barricades could signal the end of this political regime if the movement keeps growing.

The police brutality was systematic, brazen and urged on by those at the top of society. A protester had his hand torn off on Saturday in Saint-Etienne by a police grenade launched by law enforcement.

But in nearly every case, despite police attacks, the heroic demonstrators gathered, marched and made their voices heard. And they did it in vast numbers.

As school students face the challenge of maintaining momentum during the two-week holiday that has just begun, 17 October showed how new forces, particularly the working class, can take up the struggle.

Student unions said 800,000 people were on the streets, even while many wildcat demonstrations were still underway. Even the Ministry of the Interior reported 550,000 demonstrators across France.

Don’t believe any official count of protests. They will say they were a few hundred events, and perhaps that’s true of actions in the big cities. But many more took place, with a few dozen or hundreds of people gathering at roundabouts and petrol stations to show their fury at a system rigged for the rich and corporations, and at what passes for the democratic process, which treats the majority with contempt.

Ryad Rani, the head of the USL school students’ union, said, “The government is trembling, and it’s right to tremble, because when the French people are angry, they never let up.”

From early morning, Paris was a city prepared by the police for war.

The authorities banned demonstrations in the city’s power centers of power, including the Élysée Palace (presidential office and residence), Matignon (prime minister’s residence) and the Champs-Élysées (the 2 kilometer-long avenue through the center, lined with luxury shops).

In addition to the areas off-limits to demonstrators, the Place de la Bourse, Place du Châtelet, Place de la Bastille, Place d’Italie, the Les Halles district, as well as the Ministry of the Interior, the National Assembly, the Senate, City Hall, and several Parisian train stations were also closed.

Police vehicles saturated the Paris ring road, while the BRAV-M (Rapid Intervention Brigade) patrolled from station to station.

Around 25 metro and RER stations in central Paris closed, some from 8am.

Police dispersed demonstrators who tried to gather on the Champs-Élysées early in the day.

By 9.30am the Paris Police Prefecture announced that it had already recorded 40 arrests “for carrying prohibited weapons or protective equipment.” By 11am, this number had risen to over 60 arrests, and by mid-afternoon nearly 300 people had been arrested across France.

But none of it stopped magnificent marches.

Among the protesters gathered near Strasbourg-Saint-Denis in Paris, young people stood consciously in the tradition of the yellow vest revolt of 2018.

Ali, 17 years old, told the Mediapart website that he was demonstrating “because I don’t want to end up like my mother. Constantly struggling. We’re done with that.”

He sees himself as part of the next generation of the Yellow Vests, like his friend Mehdi, also 17, from the same department. “This is the only way we have to make ourselves heard. We’ve been denouncing things for years, and nothing changes.”

At the Paris march where most of the trade unionists gathered, healthcare workers in white coats, CGT union members in red vests, and protesters in yellow vests all marched together. It took more than three hours to pass near Place de la République.

As it went by, people leaned from their windows and balconies, banging pots and pans while the crowd chanted “Macron resign”.

Paul, from the CGT section at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, said, “The joy and energy of this demonstration are impressive, despite the violence surrounding us. We see the failure of this violence: it doesn’t manage to dampen the fervor,”. He described the processes that select students for higher education as “enormous, suffocating machines that crush the lives of young people” and serve as “a smokescreen to hide the destruction of universities over the last 20 or 30 years.”

Also in Paris, Karelle and Tatiana, both master’s students in public administration, said they were hit by grenades and tear gas before the march began. “It was chaos, but now they’ve calmed down,” they said. And, in any case, nothing could have discouraged them. “We’re staying because we’re not here for nothing: we represent the youth of working-class neighborhoods, we’re saying, ‘We exist too, and we want to succeed too.”

By 5pm, marchers had reached the Champs-Élysées, the area that police had determined to defend.

Later, barricades went up on the Champs-Élysées itself.

One marcher in the northern city of Lille said, “In all my years of protesting, and I’ve been demonstrating since 2006, I’ve never seen so many people in Lille. This is one of the biggest demonstrations I’ve ever seen. I saw high school students, university students, workers, elderly people, quite a few people from working-class neighborhoods.

“There’s a convergence of struggles. It touches many different backgrounds and generations.” He added, “The unions and political parties are here, but they’re not the ones initiating it.”

In Lille protesters then smashed their way into the town hall.

In Angoulême, southwest France, protesters pushed back the police at the Girac roundabout as chants rang out, “Everybody hates the National Front”!

In Bordeaux, nursing students organized as Street Medics for the demonstration said, “We’re fed up with working in shitty conditions, for €1.30 an hour. We need a clear call for a general strike to get our demands met!”

In Saint-Pierre on Reunion Island (a French colonial possession in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar), people marched through the city, and then danced the maloya, the dance of the Malagasy slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries.

There is now a coordinated attempt by the authorities and some on the left to say that across France there are some good-hearted marchers, but they are harboring “vandals”, “violent leftists”…and are turned wild by Mélenchon’s crew.

Fascist Marine Le Pen accused socialists of legitimizing violence and holding the demonstrators’ demands “hostage”.

“Legitimate social demands have once again been held hostage by the far left and the speeches of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s deputies, who, by legitimizing violence, viewing order as oppression and disorder as a right, seek to plunge the country into chaos,” she said.

Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu also said “far-left groups” were responsible for “the violence in several French cities.” But he added, “delinquents joined in to loot and destroy.”

Lecornu also lavished praise on the cops. “At a time when some are trying to discredit our law enforcement, I want to tell the French people that they can be proud of their police officers and gendarmes. They deserve our full support.”

Vile rubbish. The protests expressed the bitter anger in society that Le Pen says she articulates but, in reality, opposes as soon as it is directed towards the rich and capitalist policies. And violence comes from the police.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon wrote on X at 3pm, “In Paris, the disorder is orchestrated by the prefect who bans access to Place de la République by relentlessly gassing it. And yet, it’s the official and authorized starting point. The confrontation seems to be the goal of this ‘maintaining order’ strategy. Pathetic. So, everywhere, spontaneous processions form to demonstrate anyway. And everywhere there are no police, it’s calm and good spirits!”

In the southern port city of Marseille, some protesters briefly forced their way into City Hall’s lobby. “We’re taking the Bastille,” one demonstrator shouted, referring to the 1789 storming of a state prison during the French Revolution.

In Toulouse, dozens of police vans were deployed throughout the city’s central districts an hour and a half before the scheduled march assembly time. “Anti-crime squads” and their unmarked Skodas skulked on the Allées Jean-Jaurès.

A young man was walking around in an inflatable Jurassic Park-style costume. A police officer stopped him.

None of this stopped a huge march through the city later on the day, with constant slogans for a general strike and against the fascists.

Vast numbers have protested despite some trade unions turning their back on the movement and others supporting it, but only very late.

The anger in France―and in nearly every country in Europe and vast areas of the globe―is the force that can beat the far right and the fascists and overthrow the bosses and their political parties.

But celebrating isn’t enough. Activists are calling for

A massive turnout at the demonstration at the fascist RN congress next Saturday, 24 October in Orléans
Student and school student assemblies next week to plan street actions, marches, occupations and to take the message of revolt to more workers
Worker assemblies to coordinate with students and to launch strikes and protests.
Workers must push their union for action under workers’ own demands, as well as supporting the students’ program
Build for a general strike, if possible before 5 November, but if not, extend the official unions’ call for 5 November strikes.
Coordination with the insurgents in the Spanish state, Albania, Italy, Germany, Ireland… and wherever people fight back.

Don’t trust the union leader or rely on the politicians. The events of 17 October show that grassroots movements can be an immense, independent force.

Courtesy tigerofwrath.substack.com