Report of Julie Charmoillaux, a member of studies in archaeology in the Ministry of Culture and Communication and my union alliance of the CGT- Culture

The protests in Mayotte and Guyana, French overseas colonies, predated the metropolis. These protests highlighted educational inequalities in the territories marked by colonial history. Soon, anger reached metropolitan France from October 2026.

The high school students, faced with the age of their high school, the non-replacement of the teachers, and the anguish of the selection system through the Parcoursup Platform, decided to block the establishments.

Faced with the initial isolation of high school students, the students of the universities quickly joined the protest, which transformed the blockades into hotbeds of politicization. On 17, 24 and 31 October 2026 there were large demonstrations everywhere in France on an insurrectionary basis.

October 17: The first great massive inter-professional action occurred, days after weeks of rebellion of high school students, and there was the crossing and unification feared by power among the sectors of young people, employees, teachers and fractions of yellow vests. The demonstrations took an insurrectionary turn in several cities. The day was marked by a disproportionate police crackdown (through the massive use of circulation grenades and the first dramatic attacks that mutilate young people on their hands or on their faces.

On the day of 24 October it was held under high security voltage. While the base sought to maintain pressure and expand the blockages, The government's effort is focused on strengthening the law enforcement device, placing watch crews in the city center and multiplying administrative bans on protest. The mobilizations faced this strategy of suffocation. These data illustrate a tactical crystallization phase. The government is trying to exhaust the protest by making them feel fear, by trivializing the use of brute force.

On 26 October, the government announced the replacement of the Parcourtsup system by 2028, the incorporation of 15 000 additional places. At the upper level, the government announces 500 additional teaching positions and a Progressive second-class ceiling to 28 students. It also foresees four billion euros of loans, and grants to communities to renovate institutions. High school students rejected the block ads, denouncing that they are a crumb: and they decided that the mobilization had to continue.

October 31: The eve of the October 31 holiday opened with a legal and political confrontation around which were the ways allowed to carry out the demonstration (especially in Paris between mandates of rejections of the prefectures in the periphery and the resources of the associations). The government's ban on routes for mobilization is backed by the displacement of tens of thousands of police, and as mobilizations unfold union leadership, and union bureaucrats push for respect for marked routes. On 31 October he symbolized the attempt at institutional normalization of a movement that threatens to escape the control of the regime. By accepting the peripheral roads dictated by the prefecture for the mobilization, the trade union bureaucracies struggled to channel the energy of the street to avoid the overflow and the widespread fire.

On 5 November 2026 there was the call for the intersectoral where the various sectors joined with almost 1.6 million protesters throughout the country. The convergence of November 5 with the unions (A date that arrived It came too late!) showing that the trade union bureaucracy is seeking to channel revolutionary energy into institutional channels under pressure from the regime, with the aim of returning the popular base to the sterile negotiating table with the government. (For example, the Social Conference announced by Macron.) But the young people did not allow themselves to be deceived and openly criticized on social networks the attitude of the CGT during the demonstration of 5 November.

On the morning of 7 November, the new demonstrations were planned. In Paris, the cross-sectoral inter-gathering between young people and various trade unions, with regional calls to march on the route authorized by the government. A coordination of the yellow vests requires a different route from the Place de la Concorde, prohibited by the authorities. The government of Emmanuel Macron, sought to systematically corner the movement six months before the 2027 presidential election, appealing to the repressive arsenal of the police with violent interventions in front of the secondary schools, mass arrests of minors, mutilation. Systematic violations of the fundamental right to protest by human rights organizations have been documented.

All in an Islamophobic and exacerbated photobic climate, fed by the National Grouping party (the party of Marine Le Pen in French: Rassemblement national (RN) and the bourgeois media. A far-right activist armed with a machine gun and deliberately targeting the populations racistly murdered Pengo Bossio Wangi (26), He seriously injured others. This drama is part of a broader macabre plan where two other people of color lost their lives in the context of racial violence.

The driving role played by high school youth confirms a constant law of social struggles: In the face of bureaucratic immobilism in the leadership trade unions, youth is the radicalized vanguard. Avoiding the institutionalization of protest through direct action (blockades, occupations, self-organized demonstrations), High school students reintroduced the notion of imposing the relationship of forces. This youth is largely multiracial, the protest found its initial origin in the overseas territories and suburbs, but it spread to secondary schools in the center. The experience of the police management of working- class neighbourhoods is to prolong the repressive management of the demonstrations.

The resurgence of racist acts and the emergence of a far-right climate exposed activists and populations to racist violence. It is difficult to know what will be the end result of this struggle, their prospects and the result of these mobilizations that are receiving from the regime a very violent treatment with mutilation, police custody, and prison, but the young people do not lower their struggle although they are very alone.

Throughout the process of fighting the yellow vests, the union leaderships had oscillated between distrust and trying to channel discontent, refusing to build the convergence of struggles that could have paralyzed the country. The days of action were used to lower the pressure. In 2026, it is the union apparatus plays the same role as a safety valve in front of youth, trying to limit the protest to the scheduled and controlled days, avoids the explosive union between the anger of the secondary school, the rage of the suburbs and the world of work.