Editor’s note: This story by Matt Alley originally appeared in BlueCollarWriter Labor Media here.
There is a lesson in the streets of Paris that goes well beyond France, and it has little to do with whether you agree with every person carrying a sign or marching in the streets. A younger generation is looking at the world it is inheriting and asking a question that makes the comfortable deeply uncomfortable: Why the hell should we accept a system that keeps telling us there isn’t enough to go around while those at the top keep getting richer?
Before dismissing these students as troublemakers, consider what got them there in the first place. They are demanding more teachers, smaller classes, better-funded schools and buildings that are actually fit for learning. They are dealing with overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, deteriorating facilities and exhausting school schedules. During summer heat waves, some students have endured classrooms reaching 40 degrees Celsius — roughly 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Imagine trying to concentrate on your education in that kind of heat while the adults in charge debate budgets and tell you to be patient.
Sound familiar, America? We have our own battles over public school funding, teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and crumbling school infrastructure. Different countries, different systems, but the same basic question: How can we expect young people to build a future when we’re unwilling to provide them with the tools to do it?
These protests aren’t simply about uncomfortable classrooms. Students are also challenging an education system they believe offers unequal opportunities and leaves too many of them feeling that their futures have already been decided. Their grievances have resonated with teachers, union members, university students and others who recognize something bigger at work. When people from different generations and walks of life start recognizing their frustrations in one another, something beyond a school dispute is taking shape.
And this isn’t just about France. Across countries, people are increasingly fed up with an economic order that seems to work exceptionally well for the wealthy while asking everyone else to tighten their belts, lower their expectations and be grateful for whatever scraps fall off the table. Housing costs too much, wages don’t stretch far enough, public services are strained, and the people making the decisions too often seem insulated from the consequences.
The bourgeoisie — to put it plainly, the wealthy and powerful who benefit most from the existing economic order — aren’t the only ones facing growing resentment. The political establishment protecting that order deserves scrutiny, too, from the right-wing politicians openly catering to corporate interests through tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation and attacks on organized labor to the centrist Democrats who promise a kinder version of the same corporate-friendly politics. In America, progressives have grown increasingly fed up with corporate Democrats who put donor interests and political convenience ahead of working people. That strain of corporate centrism took deeper root during the Clinton administration, when the Democratic Party embraced a more business-friendly approach and moved further away from parts of its traditional working-class base.
These factions aren’t identical, and pretending otherwise misses important differences. But when both sides leave concentrated corporate wealth and power largely untouched, working people have every right to question the alternatives they’re being offered. One side may sell the arrangement as free-market freedom; the other may sell it as pragmatic moderation. Either way, compromise too often comes at the expense of the people who need help most. When the so-called reasonable middle insists meaningful change is unrealistic, people begin to wonder whose comfort that reasonableness is really protecting. You don’t have to be a revolutionary to get tired of being told to wait your turn by people who never seem to have to wait for anything.
Let’s be clear about the destruction of property. I’m not promoting vandalism, looting or setting things on fire. Small businesses and ordinary people shouldn’t have to pay the price for someone else’s anger. But property damage has accompanied unrest throughout history, and pretending it is the whole story doesn’t explain why people took to the streets in the first place. Nor does condemning it make the grievances that brought people out into the streets disappear. We can oppose destruction without using it as an excuse to ignore the conditions fueling the unrest.
That’s the part too many people miss. It’s easier to focus on a broken window than a broken promise. It’s easier to show footage of a burning car than to explain why young people have lost faith in institutions that insist everything is fine, or at least that things could be worse. And it’s politically convenient to reduce an entire movement to its most destructive moments rather than confront the legitimate questions being raised by those demanding change.
None of this means every protester is right, every demand is practical or every tactic is justified. It means that a society unwilling to listen until its streets are full of angry people has a problem much bigger than a few shattered windows.
The young people of France aren’t obligated to inherit the world’s mess quietly just because older generations learned to live with it. They’re fighting for their education, their opportunities and a future they have every right to expect. They understand something that too many people in positions of power would prefer they didn’t: the way things are is not the way things have to be.
And that’s why, despite the inevitable arguments over tactics and the destruction of property, there’s something worth respecting about a generation willing to stand up and demand better. The kids are alright. They’re paying attention, asking uncomfortable questions and refusing to accept that their future should be sacrificed to protect somebody else’s comfort and privilege.
I only wish more of my fellow Americans would do the same. We’ve got plenty to protest here at home, from underfunded public schools and unaffordable housing to stagnant wages and politicians who seem more concerned with keeping wealthy donors happy than making life better for working people. Yet too often, we’re encouraged to treat politics like a spectator sport, complain from the sidelines and accept whatever we’re handed.
The question isn’t whether we should celebrate every action happening in Paris. We shouldn’t. The question is whether we’re willing to listen to what these young people are telling us — and whether we’re willing to stand up for our own futures with the same determination.
Because if the only thing we take away from these protests is the price of a broken window, we’ve missed the cost of everything that was already broken.
The kids are alright. Maybe it’s the rest of us who need to remember what standing up for something actually looks like.
Find Matt on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/bluecollarwriter
