Springtime in France Begins With a Broad Street Mobilization for Employment, Retirement, and Other Social Rights

Truthout - Only two days after the end of French regional elections, in which candidates associated with conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy took a drubbing, civil servants and other workers took to the streets to protest a broad range of neoliberal reforms that are contributing to growing social and economic insecurity. On Tuesday, March 23, an "inter-professional day of action," called for by all major trade unions, mobilized over half a million in the streets of French cities, including about 60,000 in Paris. Public elementary and secondary schoolteachers, who are fighting not just cutbacks, but an authoritarian reorganization of the whole teacher education program, were among the most mobilized in the one-day event. Read more.