After the Paris unrest, Swiss Young Socialists plan youth strike across Switzerland

Swiss Young Socialists took part in a demonstration in Paris on Saturday, 17 October, around which serious unrest broke out. Now the international protest movement is preparing to take to Switzerland’s streets, with rallies planned in several cities on 20 November as part of a youth strike. The Young Socialists, known as Juso, will coordinate the Swiss events. Those in Paris included vice-president Julien Berthod, from Valais, and Antonin Fournier, a committee member of the party’s Neuchâtel branch.

The Swiss plans follow a violent weekend of protests in France, where more than 1,200 people were arrested and several hundred police officers injured. Those figures cover France, not just the Paris demonstration. The presence of Swiss participants does not mean they were involved in the unrest. Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs has so far received no information about Swiss nationals being arrested or injured.

An international meeting sets the stage

Berthod and Fournier travelled to Paris for a meeting of 27 organisations from more than ten countries to organise an international youth strike. The fact that a large demonstration was taking place at the same time was a coincidence, Berthod says. Cross-border organising and joining the march were therefore separate parts of their visit.

Berthod identifies two central themes for the planned day of action: “With the youth strike, we are protesting against militarisation and austerity policies in Europe.” That gives the initiative a European framework. What specific demands the individual Swiss rallies will focus on has not yet been set out in detail. The cities involved, march routes and expected turnout have not been announced either.

Organisation will be decentralised. While Juso coordinates the action, local groups will prepare their own rallies independently. The intention is not to hold a single national demonstration to which everyone travels, but to bring several local protests together on the same date. How broad an alliance will emerge in Switzerland remains unclear.

Berthod does not expect similar violence

Juso’s vice-president does not expect unrest comparable to that in France at the Swiss events. Berthod says he personally saw none of the violence in Paris, having walked near the front of an authorised march. His account describes the part of the protest he experienced, rather than the course of events as a whole.

Berthod attributes the unrest to the desperation of many people facing poverty and precarious living conditions. He also accuses the French government of foregrounding violence by individual demonstrators to divert attention from their political demands. That is his political interpretation of the escalation; it does not establish who was responsible for particular acts of violence.

For the planned Swiss protests, the distinction matters. Attending a demonstration, supporting its demands and participating in violence are not the same thing. Equally, Berthod’s expectation of a peaceful youth strike is an assessment made before the event. How the rallies unfold will only become clear on 20 November.

Other Swiss groups also joined the protests

Alongside the Juso representatives, the Anarchist Group Bern took part in the Paris protests. It published photographs from the French capital, including an image of a damaged door bearing the words “Free Andi”. The slogan refers to Andrea Stauffacher, a left-wing extremist from Zurich who is due to appear in court on Wednesday, 21 October, on charges of violence and threats against public officials.

Publishing such an image does not, in itself, establish who damaged the door or added the slogan. Nor does it demonstrate an organisational link between the Bern group and the youth strike coordinated by Juso. Swiss participation in the French protests involves different political actors; joint planning by all the groups mentioned has not been established.

Further demonstrations are already planned in France for the coming weekend. An anti-fascist group from Geneva intends to join a counter-demonstration against the Rassemblement National party congress in Orléans. Cross-border mobilisation will therefore continue before the announced Swiss day of action, with the Geneva group planning to travel to France rather than waiting for the November protests at home.

What the protests mean for Switzerland

In Switzerland, the announced demands enter a different political system from France’s. Alongside demonstrations, citizens have direct-democratic tools available through popular initiatives and referendums, which allow proposals to be brought to a vote or decisions to be challenged. Street protests nevertheless remain a way to draw attention to issues and build political pressure. Whether the youth strike will address specific Swiss budget decisions or security-policy proposals remains open.

The organisers have roughly a month before 20 November. The next questions are which local groups will join, what demands they will formulate and how they will shape their rallies. Those details will determine the Swiss expression of a protest initiative whose stated themes extend across Europe, but whose local programme has yet to be specified.

For now, the common date and Juso’s coordinating role are established. The scale of participation, the breadth of the alliance and the precise focus of each rally are still unknown. There is, however, no substantiated plan to replicate the French unrest in Switzerland.