In May , a wave of protests, demonstrations, and strikes engulfed France. At one point, over nine million workers were on strike, bringing the country to a standstill. Social roles were challenged, politics re-imagined, and new voices heard. He would leave the party in , after the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
This was purely a matter of chance. At the time we were dispatched to schools based on where we lived. I lived in the eighteenth, in Montmartre, so I was sent to Nanterre.
I never contested this and asked to go to Paris. As for me, opposed as I was to groups, I had friends in both. I was also a sympathizer for about a year of the JCR, and at the end of that year they told me I could join, but I chose not to. I enjoyed all the discussions that were going on at Nanterre, between the anars, the Maoists, and the Trotskyists.
As for the strike, there were posters everywhere, there were picket lines everywhere, we discussed non-stop. There were a bunch of us from Nanterre who went to support him. It was very well organized and there were about of us. No one was arrested at the time and the next dayβor maybe two days laterβXavier Langlade, one of the organizers, was arrested.
He was a wonderful man who died a few years ago. So immediately the decision was taken to occupy the faculty council room of Nanterre. The school had a lively cultural life, and that evening there was a concert of classical music and we went there to speak.
