Marches, rallies, blockades: multiple mobilizations of young people were planned from Friday across France on the occasion of a new world day of school strike for climate justice, the movement launched by the Swedish Greta Thunberg in 2018. In Lyon on Friday morning, activists from "Youth for Climate France" marked this new international meeting by blocking the entrance to a TotalEnergies site for an hour, denouncing a mega-oil project in Uganda recently pinned down by Parliament. European.
“Block places of power”
The activists
"no longer hold their signs sitting in front of the places of political power, as Greta Thunberg did, but by blocking the places of power of capitalism: the multinationals specializing in fossil fuels"
, justified in a press release the organization, one of the two to present itself as the French branch of the movement initiated by the Swedish environmental activist.
“Youth for Climate” also claims the organization of rallies scheduled for Sunday in around twenty cities, including a parade in Paris, to
“demand the banning of advertisements in the Ile-de-France public space”.
Multiple mobilizations of young people were planned from Friday across France on the occasion of a new world day of school strike for climate justice.
THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP
For its part, the organization "Fridays for future France" had called to mark this world day by demonstrating at 11:30 am in front of the town halls instead of going to class.
In Lille, a hundred young people gathered in front of the town hall, armed with signs
"When it's melted, it's screwed"
,
"nature is not just a wallpaper"
and "Act now or swim later," noted an AFP journalist.
"Our youth is suffering from an evil of the century, eco-anxiety
," said one participant, Jeanne Sidoli, a political science student in L1 for whom mobilizing allows us to
"reduce our fear of the future".
"We're not here to skip class - by the way, we don't have class this morning - but to revive the cause, it's a bit dead after the Covid"
, adds his comrade Fannie Grandin who participates in the movement since college.
"We have 800 people who have reported striking on our site"
, in
"500"
schools, said one of the national spokespersons, Pablo Flye, during a press briefing in Paris.
The movement also organizes marches in major cities, including Rennes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Marseille, Montpellier and Paris.
“In 2019, the movement in France had been overwhelmed by the wave of mobilization and we were not structured enough.
After the breathlessness caused by the Covid, the catastrophic summer that we experienced remobilized us and we are ready to continue until we obtain victories for the climate, that is to say the respect of the Paris agreements ”
, he added.