France: Youth is waking
Yesterday in France, a national call for strike was launched in
Education; 1/3 of teachers were in strike; and a lot of people in the
streets (8000 in Paris). The best new is the come back of youth; in all
the General Assemblies, students were many, more than they were since
the beginning of the new scholar year. The hope comes from high school
pupils who blocked and came in the demonstration in mass. A new day of action and held of GA is announced for December 3th.

The Sorbonne students, teachers and worforce voted a message to students on strike:

"We, the students, professors and the university workforce of the
Sorbonne ( Universities Paris I and Paris IV), having gathered at the
Sorbonne in a General Assembly today (November, 24th 2009), proclaim
our solidarity and our greatest respect for the Universities of
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Hungary which have joined
forces and are taking action.

Since the 1999 Bologna declaration, and the enforcement of the LMD (
Bachelor/Masters/Doctorate ECTS) system, we have been undergoing the
same unceasing attacks against our state universities, attacks which
aim at their privatization and the dismantling of higher education as a
public service.

The common ground to our struggles throughout Europe is that
universities remain free (no tuition fees), that students of all
backgrounds have access to higher education, that research be
independent, that all funding for research and higher education be
public, and that the budget for Education increase.

For the first time in decades, Europe is uniting in its struggle
against  the selling (out) of higher education and against the notion
that knowledge is for sale.

We will do all we can to join the European universities in this
struggle and we call upon all French universities to do so, and to
carry on the fierce struggle we led for 4 months, all winter and spring
of last year. Now is the time for universities all over Europe to fight
back — let us all rise to the occasion !"