Cover of Sparks #1: France’s school strike

Sparks #1: France’s school strike

Sparks #1: France’s school strike

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Sparks is a new short format from A Thousand Small Fires: one story from the news, and the history it rhymes with.We’re starting with France. Since mid-September, high-school students have been blockading their own schools over problems they’d been told to put up with for years. Teachers who leave and never get replaced. Classes of thirty-six. Prefab classrooms with no running water, and rooms at forty degrees in a heatwave. Teachers’ unions went on strike with them, and on 17 October pupils marched alongside workers and Yellow Vest veterans on the biggest day of the movement so far.The state has answered with mass arrests, police grenades, and a bill that could make protesters pay for damage without being convicted of anything. We look at what the pupils are actually asking for, who has stood with them, and what finally moved the government. We follow the curfews from Guadeloupe to the north of France, and set Macron’s response beside the one he gave the Yellow Vests. Then we go back to Mantes-la-Jolie in 2018 and Paris in 1986, to ask why the French state so often gives ground only after someone has been badly hurt.Facts as of 19 October 2026. The story is still moving, and some figures differ between sources.Content note: discusses police violence against teenagers, serious injuries, and deaths. Nothing graphic.In this episodeThe 2018 video from Mantes-la-Jolie, and the judge who called it proportionateFrancisco Ferrer on schools built for obedienceHow a protest at one lycée in Créteil spread to a third of the countryThe pupils’ demands, a month in, unchangedTeachers, unions, transit workers and the 17 October marchArrests of minors, the Lens grenade case, and the “you break it, you pay” billInjured pupils, and what the arguments over the fires push out of viewMacron’s Yellow Vest playbook, eight years onThe state’s first curfew, in Guadeloupe, and the ones that followed in the northMalik Oussekine and the Devaquet law, 1986What happens to a school strike when the schools close for the holidaysSourcesAl Jazeera, “Paris left reeling as student-led protests turn chaotic” (18 October 2026): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/18/paris-left-reeling-as-student-led-protests-turn-chaoticPublic Sénat, Laurent Nuñez before the Senate law committee (13 October 2026, French): https://www.publicsenat.fr/actualites/politique/mobilisation-lyceenne-laurent-nunez-annonce-louverture-de-36-enquetes-par-ligpn-dont-quatre-pour-des-blessures-mutilantesSNES-FSU, “Une répression administrative de la mobilisation lycéenne ?” (15 October 2026, French): https://www.snes.edu/article/une-repression-administrative-de-la-mobilisation-lyceenne/Europe 1, Guadeloupe curfew for minors (19 October 2026, French): https://www.europe1.fr/societe/apres-des-violences-urbaines-la-guadeloupe-a-impose-un-couvre-feu-pour-les-mineurs-1163574Euronews, “Anger over video of French police surrounding kneeling teenage protesters” (7 December 2018): https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/07/anger-over-video-of-french-police-surrounding-kneeling-teenage-protestersEpisode Tagsanarchism, France, French protests, student protests, school strike, lycée, high school students, education, direct action, solidarity, police violence, protest policing, Macron, Yellow Vests, gilets jaunes, curfew, Guadeloupe, colonialism, Parcoursup, Francisco Ferrer, Malik Oussekine, Mantes-la-Jolie, news, anarchist podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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