Paris student protest leaders Île-de-France, Digi Mart USA News (Île-de-France, France): Students in the Île-de-France region are calling on social media for a stronger social protest movement this week, following the return from vacation. The focus is a national strike on Thursday, November 5, along with further protests planned for Friday, November 6, and Saturday, November 7.
Within the demonstrations and in front of blocked high schools and universities, several students have taken on the role of spokespeople. Some have become recognizable figures of the student protest movement, and the article profiles several of them.
The movement began at the Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry high school in Créteil, where on September 21, students in support of their teachers blocked the building entrance. They demanded more human and financial resources.
The blockade spread to hundreds of high schools.
Abdelkader Abderrahmane, a 17-year-old terminale student who grew up in Bondy, quickly emerged as a leading voice, organizing the blockade both online and on site. He also debated former National Education Minister Gabriel Attal on the LCI set.
He now envisions a career in political science rather than aeronautical engineering.
Soumaya Sarré, 18, a former student of the Jean-Renoir high school in Bondy, is now studying history and Arabic at the Sorbonne in Paris. She won a speaking contest organized by the Shoah Memorial in May 2026 and uses her Instagram account to address national political leaders.
Her videos regularly reach hundreds or thousands of views, and she launched and presides over a new student union, the Fédération lycéenne des Quartiers.
Seydou Ba, a 17-year-old high school class representative at the Charles-de-Gaulle school in Rosny-sous-Bois, has a significant following, with between 70,000 and 110,000 followers on TikTok and 63,000 on Instagram. He criticizes insufficient funding from the Île-de-France region and the national education system.
He is an active member of the La France insoumise group in Rosny-sous-Bois and is also a member of the Fédération lycéenne des Quartiers.
Several central Paris schools have also joined the movement, where Elwan Benoît, a 17-year-old terminale student at the Jacques Decourt school complex, has stood out. Jean-Luc Mélenchon has described him as a tribune of the people.
Benoît gained attention in an interview with the far-right media outlet Frontières and his videos have reached millions of views. He aspires to a political career.
Coppélia Moreau, a 26-year-old master’s student at Nanterre, is one of the most prominent faces of the movement. She is president of the Nanterre local section of the UNEF (Union nationale des étudiants de France) and has previous political involvement with the NPA’s Jeunes Révolutionnaires and the Interfac Île-de-France.
She frequently appears on television news programs, where she denounces student precarity, university selection, high school reform and the broader social emergency.
