Greta Thunberg joins French teens on new day of school protests

Saint-Denis: Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined protesters outside a high school in a working-class suburb of Paris Tuesday as French pupils took to the streets for another day of demonstrations over poor learning conditions. Now in its fourth week, the nationwide protest movement over teacher shortages, classroom overcrowding and crumbling school buildings has involved marches, blockades of hundreds of schools and, in some cases, clashes with police.

Pupils clustered outside several schools in Paris and other cities Tuesday morning, brandishing placards and megaphones. “We are inspired by the young people who are demanding their basic rights,” Thunberg told reporters outside Lycee Paul Eluard in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, one of the schools where the protest movement first gained traction. “Whether it’s not funding schools enough, or the climate crisis, or social injustice crises … it’s about time that young people are stepping up and reclaiming that future,” she said.

MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS, WITH OUTBREAKS OF VIOLENCE

Large crowds marched peacefully through Nantes in the west, Strasbourg in the east and Marseille in the south, holding handmade signs with slogans such as “Tear gas doesn’t make us cry as much as the state of the national education system”. Marchers were also mustering in Paris. Footage from BFM TV showed clashes between people dressed in black and riot police in Strasbourg and Nantes, with clouds of tear gas in some streets. In Lyon, the local authorities asked organisers to call off a march after a group of “hostile individuals” preceding the main procession vandalised shops and a petrol station and clashed with police. While there was no immediate information on who was involved, it is not uncommon in France for street protests to attract so-called “casseurs”, a fringe of rioters who seek to confront police and destroy property. The scene was calmer in front of Paris city hall, where a youth orchestra played Antonín Dvořák’s “New World Symphony”. Some musicians had protest stickers on their cellos and violins.