‘Solidarity among young people’: four lessons the US can learn from the youth protests in France

Despite structural differences between countries, protests are a reminder of what makes demonstrations so powerful

Since mid-September, students in metropolitan France have been mobilizing against poor conditions in public high schools. The mouvement lyceen has spread from a single campus in a Parisian suburb to include high schoolers and university students nationwide, with public sector workers, climate activists, labor unions and everyday people joining in solidarity. The unifying concerns have largely centered on the climbing costs of daily life, shrinking funds for social services and general anxiety about the future.

For two weekends running, France has seen hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets: first on 17 October, when a day of largely peaceful gatherings ended in looting and vandalism; then on 24 October, as the state met the movement with aggressive policing and protest bans intended to keep people at home.