Union members, parents and teachers joined the demonstrations, broadening the student-led protest movement that has closed hundreds of French high schools since late September.
PARIS Demonstrations swept across France on Tuesday as labor unions rallied in solidarity with high school students who have spent two weeks blockading schools to protest understaffing, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings.
Marches were held in more than 40 cities, from Caen in the north to Marseille in the south, as activists, teachers, parents and university students joined swelling protests that had spread to hundreds of schools across the country. Tuesday’s marches drew roughly 256,000 people, according to the Interior Ministry; a major union said the figure was more than twice that many.
Some protesters just clashed with police officers in Place de la Nation. Some called for the crowd to sit, and demonstrators are chanting “we are all antifascists” and “ACAB,” the acronym for a derogatory slogan about the police.
President Trump has weighed in on the protests, calling them evidence of France’s “out of control mass migration.” “This isn’t about schools,” he wrote on his social media account, “this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!” Neither immigration nor religion have figured in the demands of students, who are calling for more teachers and better school facilities.
The protests eclipsed a big moment for France’s far-right leader, Marine Le Pen. She presented her economic agenda on Tuesday. But the two news events were more linked than they may appear. Since Le Pen leads polls in the race to be France’s next president, her proposals to reduce France’s red ink were closely watched. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the crowds of students in the streets, she promised that France’s education budget would be “safeguarded.”
Though Tuesday’s protests have been largely peaceful so far, violence has flared regularly during recent demonstrations and the fact that many of the protesters are just 14 years old has troubled many people.
On Monday, a 15-year-old in the northern city of Lens had his hand blown off by a grenade, according to the interior minister. In southern France, a 15-year-old was arrested after he aimed a makeshift flamethrower at a health care assistant during a protest in Marseille, according to the local prosecutor.
The police have come under serious criticism from human rights groups for using disproportionate force, but the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, defended the officers’ actions, saying they acted correctly in all but a few cases.
One French leader has kept a conspicuously low profile on this day of national protests: President Emmanuel Macron. On Tuesday morning, as the students were massing in Paris and other cities, he traveled to a ship off the French coast to watch the firing of a new ballistic missile from a French nuclear submarine. In recent days, Macron has appealed to protestors not to resort to violence. But on Tuesday afternoon, he left the job of discussing the unrest to his prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
