> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ilesanglo-normandes.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # “54 billion reasons to go on strike.” - URL: https://www.ilesanglo-normandes.com/54-billion-reasons-to-go-on-strike/ - Published: 2026-09-29T08:44:05.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-30T07:36:21.000Z - Description: France’s public sector is on national strike Tuesday against the €54 billion cuts in public services in the government’s draft 2027 budget, with students blocking schools across the country facing police violence. - Author: îles *From Paris to Grenoble to Marseille, a public sector strike across transport, hospitals, schools and other sectors converges with student blockades of schools throughout France Tuesday. Unions are protesting the current draft budget's proposal of a* €*54 billion cut to public services, while France's spending on weapons, one of the worst industries for climate destruction, continues to increase. Meanwhile France's lycéens, or sixth-form school students, protesting the deteriorating conditions they're forced to study in - including dangerously hot classrooms this summer, are being assaulted by law enforcement using weapons their government has invested in instead.* --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/2026/09/snapshot3.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/2026/09/snapshot2.jpg) Screen shots before and after a 14-year-old was shot - by a tear gas gun- by a police officer -from video posted by Assa Traoré & independent media The [video](https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd1yuirgU9-/?hl=fr&ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com) is hard to stomach. A teenager is seen in an altercation with three CRS, riot police officers, who start hitting him, one with a truncheon. The boy is seen moving away as one of the officer’s advances aggressively. When the boy makes a kick back, the police officer fires and next the boy is writhing on the ground. Smoke pours. Other teenagers come to help him up and run away. This is France. According to one of France’s foremost campaigners against police violence, Assa Traoré, the police officer has shot the boy at close range with a so-called “non lethal defence” gun, called an LBD. (*update - the family's lawyer said he was actually shot with a grenade of tear gas*) The school student, referred to as E, has a double fracture to the jaw and some of his teeth have been shattered. According to his mother, reached by telephone by Traoré, who posted the video alongside independent media, the police picked on her son when he started filming them. He is going to need an operation to repair his jaw. A complaint has been filed with the police of the police, called the General Inspectorate of the National Police, IPGN. E is 14-years-old. Another video circulating from Monday, 28th September shows a police officer dousing teenagers with the toxic chemicals, commonly referred to as tear gas, from less than a metre away. As investigated by [Amnesty International](https://www.amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2021/07/Amnesty-position-paper-chemical-irritants.pdf?ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com), tear gas is a euphemism for what is essentially chemical weaponry, a cocktail of burning substances including potassium nitrate, which is used in gunpowder and potassium chlorate, which is common in explosives. The documented health impacts range from chemical burns, breathing difficulties, coughing and choking, vomiting, severe allergic reaction, including blistering of the skin, lacrimal, or excessive, tearing of the eyes. And in extreme cases, depending on exposure levels, death - either by suffocation or from allergic reaction. While the exact chemicals inside the tear gas with which a French police officer covered students at the Lycée Suger and the Lycée Paul Eduard in Saint-Denis, plus numerous other schools yesterday, is not known, [UN guidelines](https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/CCPR/LLW%5FGuidance.pdf?ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com) stipulate tear gas should be used at a distance, with warning and when other methods of control have been exhausted. This is how Macron's government is treating the future of France. The sixth-formers are protesting for schools they can learn in. Among their complaints: ovens of classrooms they had to survive in this summer, lack of teachers, class overcrowding, long hours, buildings falling apart and the stress of the Parcoursup, the competitive system for applying for higher education. This summer teachers found themselves having to DIY solutions, without the most basic of equipment, such as window coverings, to reduce room temperatures to protect pupils. The government has since reneged on an announced promise to help schools adapt to extreme heat, reducing an announced €60 million budget to [€16 million](https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2026/09/04/renovation-thermique-des-ecoles-le-gouvernement-ampute-le-plan-d-urgence-canicule-de-40-millions-d-euros%5F6765625%5F3224.html?srsltid=AU7gw4WkK-zWk16BYExN0EsiSUWCtfD69Tuu7Vpi5t%5FXLit3oL827RtT&ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com). Education is just one sector on its knees. France’s striking firefighters are calling on the government to listen to their demands for the water-bombing planes and staffing they need to keep people safe. In a statement, the Fédération Syndicale Unitaire, FSU, a union representing 21 different branches including teachers declared that each year several hundred billion euros eludes the State's budgets. "The FSU denounces the government's stubbornness in refusing to significantly tax the wealthiest and thus use taxes as a tool for redistribution and fiscal, social, and ecological justice, while the poverty rate is the highest in the last 15 years, climate change is wreaking havoc, and the fight against violence against women and children, as well as for professional equality between women and men, would require massive resources at all levels. The tax secession of the ultra-rich only exacerbates fractures in society and drives social anger." > Slamming a freeze in public sector salaries, the FSU noted there's always an increase in France’s defence budget "which has almost doubled in 10 years." Macron “is responsible for the growing impoverishment of women and men who hold public service yet are bled dry," the FSU said. "The last few months have confirmed that in times of crisis, like extreme heat, they truly embody the public good. The big losers of these draft budgets are public servants, retirees, people who are sick or have had an accident, communities, and, in general, public services, and therefore the entire population." Slamming a freeze in public sector salaries, the FSU noted there's always an increase in France’s defence budget "which has almost doubled in 10 years." France’s funnelling of growing amounts of taxpayers' money to its weapons industry, while failing to respond to the climate crisis, has been denounced by more than [1000 organisations](https://www.ilesanglo-normandes.com/we-want-to-live-france-climate-protests-denounce-government-inaction/). France's weapons industry is now the world’s second largest after the U.S. Around [436 billion euros](https://www.defense.gouv.fr/actualites/actualisation-lpm-france-intensifie-son-effort-rearmement?ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com) is earmarked on military spending for the 2024-2030 period. Arms manufacturing, led by the US military, is the number [one consumer of fossil fuels](https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/?ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com) and among the worst for carbon emissions. Over the last few years, the government has also increased its spending on military equipment for its law enforcement, according to the organisation [Stop Fuelling War](https://stopfuellingwar.org/fr/?ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com), a French campaign against the arms trade. “Militarisation inevitably leads to an escalation of violence. The easy availability of weapons, whether at local/national/European levels, increases the chances that these weapons will be (mis)used.” The LBD gun is officially classified in France as being a “category A2” weapon, according to Mediapart, the same as rocket launchers. As documented by [Mediapart](https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/271023/rules-french-police-use-rubber-bullets-loosened-despite-life-changing-injuries?uid=MTUyOTMyNA==&ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com) \- the use of the LBD has left people with life-altering wounds and killed. During the *Gilets Jaunes, Yellow Vests* protests, which began in 2018 against the price of petrol and overall cost of living, [11 people were killed](https://www.humanite.fr/politique/gilets-jaunes/gilets-jaunes-les-invisibles-reclament-justice-771559?ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com), 32 lost an eye and 5 lost a hand, while the police also counted a number of injured officers. The current government is the first in France’s history to support a bill, long-championed by the far-right, for a presumption of legality when police shoot or injure people. Addressing media Monday, minister of the interior, Laurent Nuñez referred to “pure violence” on the part of school students with no mention of any violence by police. Nuñez highlighted that 12 officers have been injured then mentioned 12 school students injured and referred to "hooded students using fireworks." Questioned by the French [media Brut](https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd1y6h5MIOH/?hl=fr&ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com) specifically regarding the police officer shooting the 14-year-old, Nuñez noted the use of an "intermediary weapon" and said the case has been referred to the IGPN police inspectorate. He stated that police officers act within a legal framework, the IGPN investigates when there are suspicions, yet also tells Brut "everyone can see the young man approaching the police." Nuñez reiterated that officers are liaising with school staff in how they're policing the blockades. That’s not how it appeared on Monday, at the Lycée Paul Eluard in Saint-Denis, just outside Paris. Teachers and town officials joined together to form a protective cordon, placing themselves physically between school students and the police. With schools blocked from Lille to Lyon, Rennes to Montpellier, scenes Tuesday morning showed dogs unleashed and toxic chemicals again being fired at children. Today's main demonstration starts at 2 pm from place de la République in central Paris. --- *This article was updated to include a question from a Brut journalist to Laurent Nuñez regarding the police shooting a 14-year-old child at close range Monday.* --- *Update following family lawyer* [*statement*](https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd4jmgdNNQV/?hl=fr&ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com)*: Sept 29* ### "These extremely serious events illustrate the outbreak of violence that the police unleashed near a school and against a child." lawyer representing Eden L and his family *Press release following police violence against Eden, targeted in the face by a shot of a tear gas grenade.* The family of young Eden L., 14 years-old, targeted in the face by a close-range tear gas grenade shot, has entrusted me with defending their interests. Hospitalised, he presents, according to first medical examinations, **a double fracture of the jaw, all the upper teeth are broken and 4 teeth are missing from the bottom.** These injuries will require several weeks of immobilisation and significant medical care. In addition to these severe physical consequences, there is a major psychological trauma. **These extremely serious events illustrate the outbreak of violence that the police unleashed near a school and against a child.** **This Friday, his parents, in deep shock, were heard by the IGPN and a separate case will be filed at Pontoise prosecutors office.** We also demand that the author of the shot, perfectly identifiable in the videos in our possession, be immediately suspended. We remain available to any witnesses of the incident. They are also aware that they are embarking on a long battle to obtain justice for their child. Therefore, **we will be particularly vigilant regarding public statements that could harm his dignity, honour, privacy, or that of his family.** Any abusive accusation or dissemination of statements likely to constitute an offence will, if necessary, be subject to appropriate legal action. Any form of accusatory inversion will be firmly opposed. Elsa Marcel, lawyer.