workingclasshistory:

On this day, 10 May 1968, the “night of the barricades” took place in Paris as the May 68 rebellion escalated. Thousands of high school and university students took to the streets that evening, occupied the Latin Quarter and began barricading the streets with overturned cars, billboards, repurposed construction site materials and paving stones.
Le Monde newspaper reported that: “Sixty barricades will be put up in this way and be continually fortified. Many of them were higher than two meters tall. A veritable frenzy takes hold of the demonstrators in their hunt for materials that can reinforce the barricades they are building: cars, wood beams, rolls of wire, breeze blocks, scaffolding. Construction sites are pillaged. Helmets are taken, work vests; bulldozers are started up. There are soon anthills piling up, built of all that can be dragged along… There’s a sort of laborious, almost meticulous exaltation. A contagious enthusiasm, almost a joy.”
Meanwhile, local residents fed the demonstrators, passing them food into the streets. At 2:15 AM on May 11, riot police moved in to try to clear out the protesters with tear gas and truncheons. Protesters singing the “Marseillaise” and the “Internationale” fought back with paving stones, while locals poured water from their windows onto the students to help them deal with the teargas. Police responded by firing tear gas into people’s apartments.
By the early hours of the morning, police had forced most of the demonstrators to retreat. But their violence provoked widespread sympathy for the students, and the protests continued to grow, culminating in a general strike with factory occupations by millions of workers.
We have books as well as reproduction artwork from the uprising available in our online store: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/may-68 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1984406955077778/?type=3