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Tag: Anti-Austerity Protests

  • ‘This Is Going Global’: Anti-Austerity Protests Spread From Spain and France to Chile, Belgium, and Beyond

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    Article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Students gather at the Gare Centrale in Brussels, Belgium on October 7, 2026, to protest against education reforms and budget cuts. (Photo by Lilli Förter/picture alliance via Getty Images)

    Protests across Europe have focused on education cuts, while a Gen Z-led movement has spearheaded demonstrations over voting rights in India.

    “We are going to sweep away the old world,” said the deputy of the French National Assembly on Thursday, highlighting a rapidly growing global protest movement, largely led by students and young people, against austerity measures.

    Clémence Guetté, a member of the left-wing French party La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, added that “the youth wants to change everything,” posting on social media a video of a massive demonstration in Paris—just one of several cities across France where students have led more than 250,000 people in protests demanding education funding and decrying cuts in the proposed 2027 national budget.

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    But Guetté noted that while France’s growing protests—and the violent response of the police—have captured international attention, with thousands of people demanding the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron in Place de la Bastille, Paris on Thursday, the movement against austerity and corrupt governance has spread across Europe and is also gaining traction across Latin America and South Asia.

    “The youth of the world are rising up,” said Guetté.

    The protests against education cuts, dilapidated school buildings, and crowded classrooms in France began in mid-September in lower-income Parisian suburbs before spreading nationwide.

    As they have shown no sign of slowing down, thousands of miles away in India, the Generation Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)—so named because the chief justice of the Supreme Court derided unemployed young people as “cockroaches” this year—has spearheaded calls for the resignation of the country’s top Election Commission official.

    The Election Commission has been accused of an illegal purge of voters over its “special intensive revision” of voter rolls, which has included removing more than 130 million names.

    The CJP initially took to the streets over the summer to demand the resignation of the Indian education minister, due to leaks of the country’s medical school entrance exam, which had delayed university admissions for millions of students and forced them to retake the intense exams. CJP organizers said the scandal has led to the suicides of more than 20 students.

    Those protests were ultimately successful in forcing Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan out of office.

    Thousands of supporters joined a demonstration in Bengaluru on Thursday as the CJP condemned the detention on Wednesday of politician Rahul Gandhi, a leader of the opposition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as other protesters.

    Leaders of the mass protest movement on Thursday rejected allegations that the protests, which have also been met with violence from police, are “destabilizing the country.”

    “When you declare living people as dead [on voter rolls] for your political gains, that is destabilizing the country,” said one organizer.

    As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, Spain residents have also been inspired in recent days to take to the streets by the tens of thousands following the eviction of María del Carmen Abascal Martín, an 87-year-old woman who died this week before she was able to return home, as the demonstrations over housing justice were underway.

    After Maricarmen’s eviction on September 23, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, announced new rental regulations and protections for vulnerable tenants, but lawmakers rejected the package. Sánchez responded by dissolving the legislature and calling for snap elections in November.

    Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have marched in Madrid, Valencia, and other cities to demand a general strike and affordable housing across Spain, where the average rent has doubled over the last 10 years.

    More than 1,000 people have set up encampments at Puerta del Sol in Madrid and Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona, saying they will not leave until the government takes concrete steps to protect tenants.

    In Chile, student unions led protests last week against proposed education cuts in the country’s 2027 budget, put forward by conservative President Jose Antonio Kast. Chilean national police blocked people from marching through Santiago last Thursday toward La Moneda presidential palace, with officers firing water cannons and tear gas at the crowd.

    According to the undersecretary of the interior, at least 17 people were arrested, and Kast condemned the protests.

    One commentator on the social media platform X called on the public to connect “the dots on these Gen Z protests.”

    Across the globe, they said, “young people can’t get hired. Can’t afford rent. Can’t afford a house. Can’t see a future.”

    “The streets are the only place left,” they added. “This is going global.”

    Another recent entry into the international protest movement came last week in Belgium, where students in Liège were reportedly directly inspired by the France protests to speak out against rising education costs and overcrowding in schools.

    The city’s main train station was temporarily closed on Thursday and traffic was disrupted, and more than 100 protesters were arrested.

    “We support each other because we’re facing pretty much the same issues,” Alfred, a 19-year-old student, told Reuters of the connection between the Belgian and French unrest.

    Students in Italy, Ireland, and Germany have also called for protests over soaring university costs and government disinvestment in education, particularly as worldwide energy costs have gone up due to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

    In Rome and Turin, high school students began occupying their schools on Monday under the slogan, “Let’s do as in France.”

    Article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Ecuador: When legitimate protest becomes ‘terrorism’

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    Original article by Rose Barboza republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

    Indigenous demonstrators shout slogans during a demonstration at Parque Central Cayambe, Ecuador, as part of the national strike on October 1, 2025
     | Felipe Stanley/Agencia Press South/Getty Images

    Taking from Trump’s playbook and reviving colonial trope, President Noboa labelled Indigenous protesters ‘terrorists’

    Recent years have seen Western governments extoll their democratic values while leading increasingly harsh crackdowns on dissent, with activists arrested and accused of terrorism.

    Now, Ecuador has gone even further. President Daniel Noboa’s far-right government met recent nationwide anti-austerity protests with a brutality that has left two protesters dead, 473 injured, 12 missing, and 206 detained, according to the Alliance of Human Rights Organisations of Ecuador.

    A 31-day national strike erupted on 22 September, nine days after Noboa removed fuel subsidies, raising the price of diesel by 55% from $1.80 to $2.80 per gallon. The demonstrations, which disrupted the movement of goods and people across the country as protesters blocked main roads, were led by Ecuador’s largest Indigenous organisation, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, which represents many of the people who will be the hardest hit by the price hikes.

    The government responded by imposing a state of emergency and deploying troops to break up protesters, leading to state-inflicted violence that drew criticism from civil rights groups in Ecuador and across the world.

    Human Rights Watch reported it had “verified 15 videos” of “soldiers or police officers forcibly dispersing peaceful demonstrations and using tear gas and other ‘less lethal’ weapons recklessly and indiscriminately”, while Amnesty International warned of “excessive use of force against protesters by the security forces, possible arbitrary arrests, as well as the opening of abusive criminal proceedings and freezing of bank accounts belonging to social leaders and protesters”.

    The unrest came as Ecuadorian voters prepare to vote on a series of referendums on 16 November. Perhaps the most controversial question they will answer is over whether to accept foreign military bases on Ecuador’s territory.

    The ballot does not explicitly refer to the United States, but it may as well do; this week, US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem made her second visit to the Latin American country in four months to scout out locations for new US military bases.

    Noboa’s government has long pushed for greater alignment with the US. While Ecuadorian opposition leaders warn that US military bases would threaten Ecuador’s sovereignty, both Noboa and Donald Trump’s administrations argue that they would help to stop transnational crime gangs from using the country to smuggle drugs from South America into the US.

    Although polls suggest a slight majority of voters are against the bases, many are still undecided. Regardless of how they vote, Trump’s influence over Noboa’s government is already clear from the reaction to the recent Indigenous-led demonstrations. Taking from the US president’s playbook, ministers accused protesters of carrying out “terrorist acts” – directly echoing language used against activists in the US – and at least 13 people have been charged with terrorism after allegedly attacking the offices of police in Otavalo, a city in northern Ecuador.

    This decision to cry terrorism is part of a strategy to turn social discontent into a security threat. Rather than answering the demands of protesters – the majority of whom were the poor people, transport workers and Indigenous peoples who will be hardest hit by fuel price increases – the government has chosen to criminalise dissent and militarise social conflict to protect its austerity measures from popular resistance.

    But protest is not terrorism. It is the democratic voice of those who suffer most from inequality.

    Unequal sacrifices

    In Ecuador, an oil-producing country, the dispute over fuel subsidies is a recurring issue.

    The subsidies have kept prices for petrol and diesel artificially low since the 1970s, but consecutive governments have argued they put too much strain on the national budget, costing the state billions, while international financial institutions have criticised them for “distorting” the economy. In 2022, the subsidies were equivalent to around 2% of Ecuador’s GDP, according to a report by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

    But for farmers, truck drivers and informal workers, the subsidies provide indispensable respite from low incomes and rising living costs. Therein lies the clash: what governments see as an easy way to make savings on their balance sheet will mean hunger for many ordinary people.

    One key measure of the cost of living in Ecuador is the monthly price of the ‘basic family basket’, a government-defined set of goods needed to sustain a family of four, including food, clothing, medicine, household items and transport costs. In May this year, the price of that basic family basket reached $812, while the monthly minimum wage remained at $470. This disparity will only worsen with the removal of the diesel subsidy, which will make transport, food and the production of goods more expensive.

    Previous attempts to scrap the fuel subsidies have caused the social unrest that has marked Ecuadorian politics in recent years. Two previous governments tried to do so in 2019 and 2022. Both instances sparked huge demonstrations that forced ministers into U-turns.

    This time, Noboa’s government, which was elected in 2023, does not appear to be backing down. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities eventually called off their strike on 23 October in the wake of the state’s brutal repression, having been unable to secure any concessions.

    If the government does succeed in removing the subsidies, it will lead to rising costs that will not be borne equally across Ecuador, a plurinational and multi-ethnic country where wealth is concentrated in certain areas and among certain racial groups.

    The most recent data finds that 72% of the population self-identifies as mestizo, a term that refers to a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. The next largest demographic group is the Montubio people (7.4%), a rural ethnic group from coastal Ecuador; followed by Afro-Ecuadorians (7.2%), who also primarily live in the coastal provinces; then Indigenous people (7%) who largely live in the highlands and Amazon; and white people (6.1%), who have historically been based in larger cities.

    The Afro-Ecuadorians and Indigenous populations in the country’s Amazon and rural coastal provinces will suffer most from the increases in transport and labour costs. Many of the families who will be affected are already impoverished, with a 40% poverty rate in these areas, far above the national rate of 28%.

    Ecuador’s coast is dominated by export-oriented agribusiness and ports; the Andean highlands by public administration, services and manufacturing; while the oil extraction in the Amazonian east accounts for a large part of the country’s national income, without translating into local well-being.

    The paradox is evident: the territories that produce wealth also face the greatest inequalities and deficits in health, education and basic services.

    Women will also be hit harder by the removal of the fuel subsidies than men. The country’s 3.6% unemployment rate masks key gender inequalities; among women the rate is 4.6%, compared to 2.8% among men. Similarly, only 27% of women have access to adequate employment, with sufficient income and stability, compared to 41% of men, according to official figures.

    The greater job insecurity created by rising food and household goods prices will disproportionately affect women. They will be forced to work longer hours to survive, particularly where they are responsible for the care of children or elderly relatives – another burden that disproportionately falls on women.

    There is no neutrality in austerity: there is a regressive redistribution that privileges fiscal balance at the expense of the country’s most impoverished.

    ‘Terrorism’ and state coercion

    While protests started in the immediate aftermath of the announcement on 13 September that the subsidies would be scrapped, the coordinated national strike began on 22 September.

    Over the following 31 days, news broadcasts were full of images of this resistance across Ecuador: closed roads in Cuenca, pots and pans banging in Quito, women and children fleeing tear gas in San Rafael de la Laguna.

    President Noboa imposed a state of emergency in many provinces, a measure that suspends constitutional guarantees such as the freedom of assembly, the inviolability of the home and correspondence, and the freedom of movement due to curfews. Last year, the Constitutional Court issued a warning to the president over the repeated use of this tool, which it said should be applied only in “extraordinary” circumstances.

    By also condemning the protesters as “terrorists”, the government aims to delegitimise collective action, depoliticise the dispute over income and enable repression. Labelling Indigenous people as ‘offenders’ revives an old colonial trope of ‘internal enemies’, where racialised bodies are seen as a threat to order.

    Noboa’s discourse is also part of a well-known Latin American genealogy: during the years of counterinsurgency, the labels of ‘subversion’ and ‘terrorism’ justified massacres, states of siege and arbitrary detentions. Today, that same language is being revived to shield a neoliberal model that is based not on consensus but on coercion.

    For now, the question is not whether Ecuador can sustain fuel subsidies in the long term, but who gets to decide this. Removing subsidies without dialogue or progressive compensation mechanisms is governing against the majority.

    A truly democratic policy would require real dialogue with Indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian and peasant organisations, and including their voices in defining policies on the prices of utilities, including fuel, water and energy.

    Wage and labour reform is also needed to link the minimum wage to the cost of the basic basket of goods and reduce gender and ethnic gaps, as well as territorial investment in the Amazon and rural areas to provide health, education and basic services. Finally, the demilitarisation of social conflict and the repeal of laws that criminalise protest.

    The Noboa government seems to be choosing another path: shielding austerity with repression. But labelling those who defend life and bread for their families as terrorists does not resolve the conflict: it deepens it.

    Protest is the language of those who refuse to be expelled from history by a model that promises order in exchange for inequality and silence.

    *Rose Barboza is a Brazilian researcher and doctoral candidate in Social Sciences at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal. She specialises in transitional justice, feminist epistemologies and critical race theory. Her current work explores comparative cases of state repression and social movements across Latin America.

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    Original article by Rose Barboza republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

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  • ‘Macron Get Out!’ Unions Lead Massive Anti-Austerity Protests Across France

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    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    At least hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets across France on September 18, 2025 to protest proposed austerity measures. (Photo by Sébastien Delogu/X)

    “We’re in a situation of injustice,” one protester said. “Workers can no longer feed themselves, students no longer have future prospects.”

    Echoing demonstrations against French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms two years ago, hundreds of thousands of people joined protests across France on Thursday, outraged by the government’s proposed austerity measures.

    While the CGT trade union—one of several labor groups that pushed for the mass mobilization—put the count at over 1 million, French authorities, whose figures are usually much lower than unions, said more than 500,000 demonstrated nationwide, including 55,000 in Paris.

    Thursday’s demonstrations followed last week’s ”Block Everything” protests, which coincided with French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s first full day in office. Macron picked Lecornu, his ally and a former defense minister, for the post after François Bayrou lost a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly over the budget plan.

    Although “Lecornu quickly scrapped one of the most unpopular proposals—eliminating two public holidays—he has not ruled out the rest,” Euronews noted Thursday. “These include an overhaul of unemployment benefits, delinking pensions from inflation, and raising out-of-pocket medical costs.”

    A protester named Alexandre told Euronews that “right now, we have a government that doesn’t listen to us and is even the opposite of what the population needs. A government that robs fellow citizens, and it’s important for everyone to mobilise, for the people of France who want to be dignified and who also want to give others their dignity throughout the world.”

    “We’re in a situation of injustice,” he added. “Workers can no longer feed themselves, students no longer have future prospects.”

    Hospital staff, railway workers, students, and teachers were among those who poured into the streets across France—including major actions in cities such as Lyon, Marseille, and Paris—rallying behind the message: “Strikes, Blockades, Macron Get Out!”

    The Public Service Ministry said that nearly 11% of France’s 2.5 million state employees were on strike. According to Le Monde, “Around 1 in 6 teachers walked out of primary and secondary schools, 9 out of 10 pharmacies were shuttered, and severe disruption occurred on the Paris metro network, where only the three driverless automated lines are working normally.”

    Protesters want the government to not only kill the proposed austerity measures but also spend more on public services and impose higher taxes on the wealthy. Sophie Binet, the head of the CGT union, said that “the anger is huge, and so is the determination. My message to Mr. Lecornu today is this: It’s the streets that must decide the budget.”

    Multiple elected officials with La France Insoumise (LFI), a party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon that is now part of the Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, shared social media posts about them joining the protests.

    “The mobilization of youth continues,” said Claire Lejeune, an LFI member of the National Assembly, after speaking with secondary school students in Essonne who “no longer want this policy that is wrecking their future.”

    Citing “the dismantling of public education,” “war policy,” and “ecological inaction,” Lejeune said: “They are absolutely right; in the country, no one wants Lecornu or Macron anymore. I was in support of this peaceful mobilization, alongside the unions and teachers, and faced with a completely disproportionate police setup.”

    Approximately 80,000 police and gendarmes were deployed for the protests. Early Thursday, LFI’s Clémence Guetté, a vice president in the National Assembly, shared footage of officers kicking and shoving a woman.

    “Everywhere this morning, the repression strikes and hits without distinction or restraint,” she wrote. “The images reaching us are shameful. Here in Marseille. To everyone, be careful. France no longer has a government: Macron is the only one responsible.”

    After the 1 million estimate began circulating, Guetté called the mass action “immense, everywhere, impressive,” and declared: “The people are in the streets! We are going to win.”

    As Al Jazeera reported: “Across the country, Palestinian flags were visible as some protesters also stood in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza during Israel’s war on the strip. Protesters blocked the Eurolinks arms factory in Marseille, which is believed to supply equipment to Israel, while holding a large banner that read: ‘Shut down the genocidal factory.‘”

    Noting the solidarity with the Palestinian people on Thursday, LFI’s Sarah Legrain called for sanctions, an arms embargo, and lifting Israel’s blockade of Gaza, where civilians are starving to death.

    Later Thursday, Legrain celebrated the massive turnout and pledged that “we will keep the pressure up until Macron leaves!”

    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).