EXCLUSIVE: France’s Protest Movement Is Bigger Than Riots, Sociologist Says

France’s most serious wave of social unrest in years began with a deceptively basic demand from teenagers: they wanted their schools to work.

For French sociologist Michel Kokoreff, that focus risks obscuring what brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets in the first place.

Speaking to the Wyoming Star, he argued that students, workers and other protesters are being connected by something deeper than any single dispute over schools, salaries or government spending.

“What they have in common is a shared anger — or even rage — against the government, the unrestrained repression meted out in response to their protests, and the total lack of any answer to their demands throughout the ten years of the Macron era.”