Demonstrators across France are taking a page from the historic playbook of 1968, upending the country’s public landmarks, statues, and culturally significant sites to denounce severe police violence, under-resourced schools, and a worsening cost-of-living crisis. By transforming national symbols into active participants in their demonstrations, today’s student activists are forging a direct visual and political link between contemporary grievances and historical moments of civil unrest.
When students in France took to the streets in 1968 to protest the nation’s crumbling education system and the Gaullist government, they similarly transformed public statues into active platforms for their cause. Following the May 2 shuttering of Paris Nanterre University—where anti-imperialist students had launched protests in late March that year—demonstrators converged on the Sorbonne. There, they hung portraits of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Chairman Mao Zedong from the pillars of the 17th-century facade and lodged red revolutionary flags into the stone hands and bases of statues dedicated to scientist Louis Pasteur and writer Victor Hugo. During a massive May 13 demonstration that coincided with a national general strike, other protesters climbed atop Léopold Morice’s 1883 Monument à la République, which depicts Marianne, the personification of the French Republic, effectively claiming the artwork as a central gathering ground.
Today, student demonstrators in France are grappling with many of the exact same systemic issues that defined May ’68, including severely under-resourced schools and a crushing cost-of-living crisis. True to historical form, they are incorporating public statues, national monuments, and institutional spaces directly into their actions. Earlier this month, protesters draped the Monument à la République in a large white garment bearing the stark message, "Neglected high schools, youth sacrificed," to forcefully denounce poor labor conditions, chronic staff shortages, and grueling hours within the public education system.
The wave of demonstrations has touched institutions and civic buildings nationwide. On October 19, dozens of students from the École du Louvre, a prestigious higher education arts institution housed within the Louvre Palace in Paris, blocked the main entrance of the Louvre Museum, forcing its closure. Meanwhile, in Marseille, a separate group of demonstrators broke into Marseille City Hall and knocked a bust of Marianne to the floor.
Elsewhere, protesters have dressed historical statues in garments referencing more recent social movements, drawing broader, historical appeals to France’s long-standing protest tradition. On October 17, organizers gave Marianne a striking wardrobe change, outfitting her in a yellow vest bearing the message, "2026: The police mutilates high schoolers." This direct reference to the self-described gilets jaunes ("yellow vests") who flooded French streets between 2018 and 2020 to protest rising fuel prices and the unaddressed plights of ordinary citizens underscored the widening fissures between the public and law enforcement.
Since the current wave of protests began, police have overwhelmingly arrested minors and injured hundreds of students. French rights groups and lawyers have publicly accused law enforcement of inflicting what they describe as "war-like injuries" on teenagers. Among the documented incidents, riot officers maimed a 14-year-old boy with a tear gas grenade in a Parisian suburb and beat others with batons, escalating public outrage over heavy-handed crowd-control tactics.
Demonstrators at the Place de la République further amplified their message by streaking the eyes of the allegorical maidens Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—the classic personifications of the French Revolution’s core slogan and the national motto—with black tears. This symbolic gesture suggested a profound national detachment from the progressive principles and democratic actions fought for during the late 18th-century revolution, an era when civic uprisings famously involved toppled statues of the old monarchic order or their replacement with democratic symbols.
The subversion of historical monuments has long served as a powerful tactical heart of social and political mobilizations worldwide. During the global Black Lives Matter protests, activists similarly brought down or symbolically defaced commemorative statues of colonial and racist figures, including Christopher Columbus and King Leopold II. In Richmond, Virginia, a notorious monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee was dramatically reclaimed by protesters who transformed the site through graffiti, live performance, and nighttime projections. At the height of the international movement in 2020, French protesters also draped a black cloth over a statue of French military commander and colonial administrator General Joseph Gallieni in an act of historical reckoning.
France’s contemporary student activists have additionally positioned their domestic struggles as interconnected with broader international human rights movements. In Toulouse, protesters secured a Palestinian flag atop and wrapped a yellow vest around a statue of Joan of Arc. Authorities promptly removed both items, sparking a fierce online debate regarding how public monuments can and should be utilized in political discourse. While some critics perceived the demonstration as an affront to France’s traditional national identity, others championed the Palestinian flag as a universal bridge connecting distinct yet related human rights struggles across the globe.
The conscious invocation of history runs deep throughout the current demonstrations. During the May ’68 protests, student activists famously incorporated the visual language and rallying cries of the international anti-Vietnam War movement. On May 13, 1968, photojournalist Jean-Pierre Rey captured an iconic image of a young French woman, Caroline de Bendern, holding the Viet Cong flag during protests in the Latin Quarter. That photograph, which evoked the central figure of Marianne in Eugène Delacroix’s celebrated 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People, earned de Bendern the moniker "Marianne of ’68," effectively updating the symbolism of the French Revolution for a modern geopolitical context.
Beyond the tactical appropriation of public statues and monuments, explicit textual references to May ’68 have appeared prominently on banners and handmade protest art in recent weeks. Some protesters have playfully riffed on generational identities with slogans such as "Generation 67 brings you May 68," while others have utilized that revolutionary history to issue direct warnings to French authorities through signs reading, "If you screw us over, we will give you a May 68."
