Union of Young Communists, the youth organisation of the Revolutionary Communist Party of France issued the following statement on the recent protests in France, made by the students.
Union of Young Communists of France on recent protests
Let's support and amplify the struggles and demands of high school students!
For almost a week now, high school blockades and demonstrations have been multiplying across France. The High School Union (Union syndicale lycéenne) claims to have blockaded more than 600 high schools, with universities and student unions also joining the movement and mobilizing. In this spontaneous union movement, young people are demanding the effective replacement of absent teachers, more non-teaching staff (school counselors, teaching assistants, special needs assistants, nurses, etc.), increased funding for education, the renovation of dilapidated school infrastructure, and the withdrawal of selection platforms like Parcoursup. The struggle led by working-class and popular youth is taking the form of extra-parliamentary actions. We welcome this initiative and call on others to join it to amplify its impact. Faced with these demands for a decent education, police repression has been swift and continues to be unleashed: the use of tear gas, violent arrests, and intimidation.
The Union of Communist Youth stands in solidarity with these demands and calls for their expansion in order to strengthen a class-based and mass unionism among working-class youth, vocational high schools, and apprenticeship centers, by increasing membership in high school, university, and professional unions. The Union of Communist Youth also calls for broadening the demands for an end to all forms of compulsory and unpaid work, such as internships in companies at the secondary and higher education levels.
As successive bourgeois governments under Emmanuel Macron move towards a war economy and ever more austere budgets, the repression of high school students demonstrates the rapacious nature of French monopolies and their state. The violence unfolding today is that of a mode of production that prioritizes imperialist wars and anti-social offensives over education.
Popular youth, organize your anger!
Let's all join the struggle, let's support and amplify the high school and university student struggles!