Perrine, Sarah and Baptiste did not know each other. They are students in their twenties and only recently became activists. On Thursday, September 25, during a protest organized by student groups against the French government's proposed austerity measures at Place de la Sorbonne in Paris, they marched among a crowd of motivated and politicized young people. Now, all three are preparing for their next protest.

On Thursday, October 2, unions and student political organizations are once again taking to the streets, as they did on September 10 and 18. The student union group Union Etudiante recorded 80,000 young people in the streets on September 10 and 110,000 on September 18.

For Sarah (who asked not to be cited by her real name), a Paris native and daughter of two computer engineers, the seeds of revolt were sown as early as middle and high school. What sparked it? Reading books in the curriculum "that dealt with colonialism, fascism, censorship, like 1984 by George Orwell, or The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck." Currently in her second year studying psychology at Paris Cité University, she has been an activist in the youth wing of the far-left political organization Révolution Permanente-Poing Levé for a year.

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