The French student protesters’ demands are clear: smaller class sizes, more teachers, and better classroom conditions. Even blunter has been their messaging. Across the country, high school and university students have blockaded entrances to lycées and taken to the streets, equipped with signs reading “MACRON, FUCK YOUR PROF, NOT OURS,” and “TOO YOUNG TO BE LISTENED TO / OLD ENOUGH TO BE TEAR-GASSED.” The latter is a response to the violence that student protesters have faced in response to their actions. Demonstrations in France have been met with aggressive and sometimes outrageous policing. In the northern part of the country, a police officer threw a tear-gas grenade directly into a 14-year-old’s face and shattered his jaw. Another child had his hand blown off, picking up a police stun grenade. “Street protests, a fundamental French right, can be as effective a lever as litigation or the vote,” Lauren Collins writes. Read her dispatch from the barricades: