Category Archives: Students

Tract (10 May 1968 – UNEF)

10 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in May 6-12 1968, Students, Tract, Uncategorized, UNEF

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UNEF             UNEF            UNEF

Friday 3 May :
  The police storm into the Sorbonne to break up a rally and proceed to arrest many of the participants. A spontaneous protest that immediately breaks out in the Latin Quarter is brutally suppressed.

Monday 6 May :
  The students protest for 13 hours, demanding the release of their student and worker comrades. The police charge: 800 are wounded.

Tuesday 7 May :
  50,000 students and workers march for 20km through Paris demanding the satisfaction of 3 preconditions before any discussion and again clash with the police who attack violently even though the protest had already peacefully dispersed.

Wednesday 8 May :
  Government provocations :
1st – More promises of reconciliation! ;
2nd – but the government doesn’t even address our preconditions. What’s more, they introduce the selection process into discussions ;
3rd – the government also permit a rally of the fascist T.V. group to be held right in the middle of the Latin Quarter.

———-
THE STATE THINKS THAT OUR DISCIPLINE IS EVIDENCE OF WEAKNESS
WE WILL DISABUSE THEM OF THIS IDEA
———-

 On one hand the truncheon, then the carrot. The students have had enough.

 The state want to restore order because they want the examinations, the basis of the University, to take place peacefully.

WHY ? : Because the exam is a way of applying the politics of selection. It allows for the separation of the “good” from the poor students. It allows the state to make us into “tools” that will increase the profits of businesses.

(page 2)

So it’s necessary to prepare for the continuation of the struggle. The examinations are getting closer and they’re going to play their role: as the implement of selection. The students will not tolerate such a policy.

THE STRUGGLE HAS BEGUN, IT WILL CONTINUE.

 Planning is necessary. We have to organise into U.N.E.F. fighting committees. All of these committees will consider and co-ordinate their actions.

 We need to immediately secure: the freedom of our comrades and the cessation of legal proceedings against them, the departure of FOUCHET’s assassins, and the full re-opening of the Faculties.

 If the Government continues to prevaricate, if it pretends to be calming down, while continuing the provocations of the police, the students will learn from it.

 For eight days the students have undertaken a difficult battle. As is well understood, if incidents occur, if the students are forced to respond to provocation, it will be the Government, alone, that is responsible.

 May the Minister realise this and may public opinion take note.

 The protests must continue. They must display total resolve to all the students and to all those who join in them.

 The U.N.E.F. supports the demonstration to be held tonight, at the initiative of C.A.L. and the March 22nd Movement.

at 6:30pm at

DENFERT ROCHEREAU

Tract – “1,000 Injured – 3 Dead – CS Gas” (9 May 1968 – Mouvement du 22 Mars/CAL/Comité d’Action Lycéen)

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by in CAL, Comites d'Action, May 6-12 1968, Mouvement du 22 Mars, Students, Tract, Uncategorized

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(Translated in Fisera – Document 28)

1,000 Injured – 3 Dead – CS Gas

“LET’S GATHER OURSELVES AND TOMORROW…”

WHY?
Because students refuse to become management cadres, accessories to and profiteers from the exploitation of workers.
Because they reject the so-called “dialogue” which only reflects decisions already taken in high places.
When this rejection changes from words into action (occupation of lecture rooms, showing banned political films, boycotting of exams, etc…)
When for workers this rejection has but one means of expression:
VIOLENCE.

The bourgeois State has onIy one answer:
REPRESSION:

Blackmail via grants,
Threats of expulsion,
Blacklists
Interventions by cops in university premises
massive arrests
imprisonments
Threats of dismissal for workers.

WE DENOUNCE:

The decision to re-open the faculties with the sole aim of having exams taken. We do not want to be capital’s watchdogs.
The diversion of a worldwide movement of confrontation, by the usual bureaucratic devices, into a reformist movement fitting the framework of the imperialism of the bourgeois university.

LET US TAKE ACTION:
Let us reject the normal functioning of the university until foreign students and workers are freed. From today masses of students will occupy university premises in order to impose on it:

THE POWER OF POLITICAL CONFRONTATION
THE IMMEDIATE LIFTING OF SANCTIONS AGAINST ALL THOSE STILL THREATENED WITH PENAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE MEASURES

WE WILL NOT GIVE WAY TO BLACKMAIL.

(page 2)

– Let us not be divided, faced with an escalation of repression, let us oppose it steadfastly.
– Let us organize in order to carry on the battle in our own neighbourhoods and places of work.

WE WILL DEMONSTRATE FRIDAY 10 MAY AT 10:30AM PLACE DENFERT ROCHEREAU

“LET’S GATHER OURSELVES AND TOMORROW…”

Tract – “Latin Quarter or Workers’ Quarters?” (May 7 1968 – Comités de Défense contre la Répression)

07 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in Comités de Défense contre la Répression, May 6-12 1968, Students, Tract, Uncategorized, Workers

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LATIN QUARTER OR WORKERS’ QUARTERS?

 For three days we have been fighting around the Sorbonne. Thousands of students have fought magnificently against police repression. But we could stay in the Latin Quarter, isolated from the masses, without the bourgeoisie trembling; for them it is a lesser evil that all their spokesmen invite us to.

 What the bourgeoisie fear is that we will go to the masses of the people who have struggled for decades against the repression of cops and bosses, since the bourgeoisie know that the people are its main enemy.

 It is stirring in the factories; the workers are tired of all forms of bourgeoisie repression, they sympathise with the student struggle against the cops, but they wonder where it leads.              

 We will go to explain to them that we have joined their struggle against the repression of employers and police.

 The Sorbonne is an old pile of stones. Saint-Denis is tens of thousands of struggling workers.

 The cops may congregate in the Latin Quarter, and we can wait for them there. Let them come to the suburbs, let them come to Saint-Denis to try to prevent us from linking up with the workers. We will wait for them with the workers.

 THE CHOICE HAS TO BE MADE: KEEP IT BETWEEN OURSELVES OR JOIN THE FIGHT OF WORKERS.

EVERYBODY GO TO SAINT-DENIS TOMORROW!
MEET AT 4:30PM
METRO CARREFOUR PLEYEL

Committees for the Defense against Repression

Tract – “Resignation of Roche” (May 6 1968)

06 Friday May 2016

Posted by in May 6-12 1968, Students, Tract, Uncategorized

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RESIGNATION OF ROCHE

On May 3, 300 students assembled in the courtyard of the Sorbonne to show their solidarity with the 7 militants going before the Disciplinary Council because of their political activity at Nanterre, who had been arrested by the cops called in by the Rector ROCHE.
13 people were sentenced (with some sentences suspended) to a number of months in prison for having been present in the Latin Quarter during the spontaneous protest responding to police provocation.
The press represented the students’ fight as a protest of the irresponsible and the privileged.

WHY ARE THEY FIGHTING?

Because they refuse to become the guard dogs of the bourgeoisie.
Just as for the workers of Caen, Redon, Mulhouse and Le Mans, the government’s response is the baton and prison.
Tonight’s demonstration mustn’t only be a student protest.
Let’s all mobilise against bourgeoisie repression, because the police truncheon doesn’t distinguish between the heads of students or workers.

LET’S ORGANISE OURSELVES TO EXTEND THE STRUGGLE.

JOIN THE ACTION COMMITTEES AGAINST THE REPRESSION.

BE READY TO DEMONSTRATE TONIGHT AT 6:30pm.

Tract – “University Students, High-school Students, Young Workers” (May 5 1968 – FER)

05 Thursday May 2016

Posted by in FER, May 1-5, Students, Tract, Uncategorized

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This tract was distributed on or around May 5. Given that it was offset printed, rather than mimeographed like most of the early student pamphlets, it is almost certain that it was printed before the events of May 3 took place.

It therefore gives a good indication of the state of radical student politics on the very eve of May 1968.

(Translated in Schnapp – Document 49)


University Students, High-School Students, Young Workers


At the moment when students in Prague, Warsaw, Berlin, Madrid, Algiers, New York, Tokyo, and Rome were fighting in the streets against the forces of order and reaction, in Paris, on April 27 and 28, 200 delegates representing 1100 militants, headed by young revolutionaries (“Révoltes”) and the Liaison Committee of Revolutionary Students announced the formation of a

Federation of Revolutionary Students

University students, high-school students, young workers,

At the moment when imperialism is striking at youth and the working class with blood and iron, when Stalinist bureaucracy is striking at and imprisoning students and workers fighting for socialism and worker councils, when student combats augur huge confrontations, on an international scale, between the working classes and imperialism, between the working classes and Stalinist bureaucracy, the revolutionary students declared:

At the moment when de Gaulle is planning to make the working class and, to begin with, young workers and young intellectuals, pay the price for the rationalisation of French economy, at the moment when layoffs are increasing, when unemployment is hitting hundreds of thousands of young workers, when Peyrefitte is preparing to exclude 300,000 students from the University, THE FEDERATION OF REVOLUTIONARY STUDENTS DECLARES:

DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM!

DOWN WITH STALINISM!

LONG LIVE SOCIALISM!


RESISTANCE IS POSSIBLE,
WE MUST ORGANISE IT.

WE INSIST ON A JOINT DEMONSTRATION OF THE YOUTH OF PARIS!

 University Students, men and women, Lycée students, Young Workers,

 On April 27 and 28 the FEDERATION OF REVOLUTIONARY STUDENTS came out in favor of formation of the Revolutionary Organisation of Youth and of the Revolutionary International of Youth.

 On April 27 and 28 the Federation of Revolutionary Students declared that it casts its lot with the fight led by young revolutionaries grouped around the periodical “Revoltés” in order to assemble 3,500 young people at the Mutualité on June 29 and 30.

(page 2)

 The Federation of Revolutionary Students calls on hundreds of thousands of students to fight for socialism, against capitalism, against reformist and Stalinist bureaucracies, BY JOINING ITS RANKS.

 The Federation of Revolutionary Students calls on students to fight by the thousands under the flag of socialism!

 The F.E.R. calls on students by the thousands to help build the revolutionary youth organization.

———-

 The FER calls all Paris students to its joint proclamation rally on May 10 in Paris at 8:30 p.m., at the Mutualité.


EVERYBODY 
COME TO THE F.E.R. RALLY
Friday, May 10 at 8:30 p.m.at the Mutualité

Tract – “Call to the Population” (May 4 1968, UNEF)

04 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in May 1-5, Students, Tract, Uncategorized, UNEF

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(Translated in Schnapp – Document 31)

NATIONAL UNION OF FRENCH STUDENTS

CALL TO THE POPULATION
Police violence erupted in savage repression against the students during the evening of Friday, May 3: 596 arrests, hundreds of injured. Like the workers at Caen and elsewhere, students, passersby, even high-school students were victims of fierce repression.

In effect, their struggle is fundamentally the same: workers reject the society that exploits them, students reject a University that tends to make them the docile leaders of a system founded upon exploitation, sometimes even the direct accomplices of this exploitation.

The reactionary press aims at presenting the student movement as a revolt of privileged youth and seeks to cut us off from our natural allies. The bourgeoisie knows that it is with the workers and only with them that the students can win. Against this wall of lies the students must make known to the public the motives of their struggle.

THE BOURGEOISIE SEEKS TO ISOLATE AND TO DIVIDE THE MOVEMENT ; OUR ANSWER MUST BE IMMEDIATE 

HERE IS WHY:

THE UNEF PROPOSES THAT THE UNIONS OF TEACHERS AND WORKERS RETURN TO THE UNIFYING PROCESS WHICH ACTUALLY FUNCTIONED DURING THE DEMONSTRATION : WORKERS, HIGH-SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS HAVE SPONTANEOUSLY RESPONDED WITH THE U.N.E.F. TO POLICE AGGRESSION.

AGAINST POLICE REPRESSION
AGAINST THE REACTIONARY PRESS
AGAINST THE BOURGEOIS UNIVERSITY

GENERAL STRIKE FROM MONDAY ON, AND UNTIL THE LIBERATION OF ALL OUR COMRADES, EVERYBODY PARTICIPATE IN THE DEMONSTRATION IN THE LATIN QUARTER ON MONDAY AT 6:30 P.M.


Students, organise basic UNEF combat committees in your faculties, by departments or by class year, to continue the struggle, particularly in view of the coming examinations. Permanent headquarters will be set up from now on by the UNEF in order to organise formation of these committees. Comrades injured in the course of the demonstrations or witnesses of police aggression, are asked to get in touch with the UNEF ( tel. DAN 8601 )