As dustbins burn and college students chant “everyone hates the police” in the French metropolis of Lille, one teenager explains why he and his buddies have taken to the streets.
“There aren’t even enough chairs. We have to go and find some at the start of every lesson,” the 16-year-old, who did not need to give his identify, says of his college.
“We’ve got 50 minutes to eat at lunchtime but there are 2,000 of us that need to get through the canteen.”
He is one of a whole bunch of 1000’s of college students who have protested across France since the finish of last month over workers shortages and dilapidated amenities in the nation’s lycées, secondary faculties attended by 15 to 18-year-olds.
Despite the authorities’s obvious makes an attempt to make concessions, the college students show no signal of backing down.
“They have armies, they have the police, they have the powers,” says Massicella, 18, as she marches through Lille. “But we have the mass population.”
The protests, which have turned violent, have become a focus in France’s polarised politics, with all sides accusing the other of escalating tensions. As a presidential election approaches, politicians on both the onerous proper and onerous left have sought to capitalise on the unrest and on what many see as the authorities’s incapacity to resolve the disaster.
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