In Germany, Gen Z takes to the streets over schools, and looting steals the show

According to France 24, tens of thousands of young people marched on Saturday in dozens of German cities, including Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne. Called together by the collective "GenZ regelt" ("Generation Z will sort it out"), they demand more funding for education, taking their cue from the French movement. They also protest the cost of living and the possible reintroduction of military service, and they raise the alarm about global warming. In Frankfurt, clashes escalated into rioting and looting, still according to France 24. The precise toll, the circumstances and the responsibilities are not in the dispatch: we do not yet know them.

What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

These marches can be seen as a matter of social reproduction, that work which produces people rather than commodities: raising, caring, teaching, housing. The school is a central cog in it. When it lacks resources, the work does not vanish, it shifts. It falls on the teachers who plug the gaps, on the parents who pay for private tutoring or supervise homework in the evening after a day at work, and, in the vast majority of households, on mothers. A crumbling school is a disguised bill sent to every kitchen.

The "misery of the schools" and the "cost of living" are therefore not two separate angers. They are the two faces of one transfer: the state and the market step back, and households pick up the slack. The young people marching live this from the inside. They are pupils, apprentices, students, soon precarious workers, and they can see that rent, the shopping basket and overcrowded classrooms all squeeze the same budget. In this context, the prospect of military service sounds like one more requisition: they are asked for time, body and availability, while the state balks at funding their classrooms.

Then there is Frankfurt. It would be dishonest to sweep the riot under the carpet, and just as lazy to make it the face of an entire movement. Dozens of cities saw marches, yet it is the image of smashed shop windows that risks dominating the debate. This is a classic: looting lets people talk about public order rather than class sizes and budget ceilings. Without excusing the vandalism, one can note that this shift of focus suits those who would rather not discuss budgets.

Another question comes later: what becomes of this energy? A Saturday demonstration does not win teaching posts. It will take lasting organisation, links with teachers' and staff unions, in short solidarity in the workplace as much as in the classroom. That is where resources are won, not on the pavement for a single day.

For now, the dispatch tells us what the young people want, not what the governments intend to answer. We will follow it.