(Translated in Schnapp – Document 61)

AGAINST THE POLICE STATE WE MUST CONTINUE THE FIGHT

Following in the footsteps of the workers of Caen, Mulhouse, Le Mans, Redon, and the Rhodiaceta, during the night of Friday, May 10, 1968, University and high-school students, teachers, and workers who demonstrated against police state repression, fought in the streets for several hours against 10,000 cops. The bourgeoisie tried to crush a form of protest and demands that directly threatens the regime. The repression was fierce, the resistance tenacious. The cops used all means: incendiary bombs, DEADLY GASES (C.B. and C.S. gas are forbidden by international agreements and unknown to the medical services), chlorine grenades, bullets made of hard plastic. The demonstrators and the population were asphyxiated by the gases, wounded by gunflash, beaten with bludgeons and blackjacks, pursued into apartment houses, given the “third degree” in the police stations, arrested by the hundreds. Red Cross first aid stations were sacked; wounded on stretchers were beaten hard.

The demonstrators, fully supported by the inhabitants of the Latin Quarter, met this violence with political determination; at the barricades the mercenaries of the bourgeoisie were treated to the delights of Molotov cocktails and a shower of paving stones. Several hundreds of them were put out of commission. Students and workers will not forget this lesson.

Faced with this resistance and increasing support from the working masses, the police state is forced to retreat and would appear to be giving in to the three conditions the demonstrators have posed as prerequisites to any discussion. But the basic problems remain unsolved.

The fight against police repression is the fight against the State and against capitalist exploitation. The cops are nothing but the flunkies of de Gaulle and de Gaulle is nothing but the current flunkey of the bourgeoisie.

In the present stage of the struggle, we demand as a prerequisite to the resumption of University life:

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– The definitive release of all demonstrators who are being held, whether students or workers, French or foreigners, and including those whom the bourgeoisie has described as “looters.”
– The immediate and final cessation of legal and administrative action because of political activity, whatever the pretext.

On the other hand, since we have proof of criminal acts committed by the cops during the night of Friday, we demand as a new prerequisite:
– The resignation of the killer, Grimaud, Chief of Police, chief of the Paris coppers.
– The resignation of the killer, Fouchet, Minister of the Interior and number one cop in France.

For such acts not to be repeated it is necessary:
– To start a legal investigation of police crimes, with the participation of representatives of the demonstrators side by side with the magistrates of bourgeois justice
– To disarm the CRS = SS, the gardes-mobiles and other detachments specialised in repression.

It is clear that the bourgeoisie will not want to disarm their executioners.
We will force them to do so through our action.

To make an end to repression, workers and students must win their freedom in the streets. As long as the cops are armed, students and workers must organise their self-defence to victoriously resist organised repression.

DOWN WITH THE POLICE STATE! DOWN WITH CAPITALISM!!
FOR SOCIALISM. WORKERS AND STUDENTS, WE MUST FIGHT IN THE STREETS!

EVERYBODY COME TO THE DEMONSTRATION,
Monday, 13 May 1968
GARE DE L’EST, 1:30 pm

MARCH 22ND MOVEMENT