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This text presents the results of the first research conducted on “green” actions and strikes for climate in high schools across Québec, a Canadian province that witnessed in 2019 the larger street protests of the international youth movement. Based on 20 semistructured interviews with students from 12 high schools, letters from school principals addressed to parents, and research in the media, this text reaffirms that schools are a place of political conflicts and struggles not only between students and adults but also between students in opposite currents of the movement. It is also a reminder of the involvement of young people in autonomous direct action groups (Extinction Rebellion). The discussion then focuses on potential implications of the movement for future elections, the legitimacy of these collective actions in relation to the philosophical debate about civil disobedience (John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Manuel Cerveza-Marzal, and Alan Carter), and the hope for a renewal of the student movement in Québec in the face of a disaster of unprecedented scale.

Comparing France and the United States, I propose a general model for assessing the birth of pro‐democratic discourse. I first explain why founders of the modern ‘democracies’ were openly and vehemently anti‐democratic. Next, I focus on two types of situation where the word ‘democracy’ is used on the political stage – when political actors want to distinguish themselves from their opponents and when political actors want to sanctify the political regime. The first case covers three specific modes of the use of the term ‘democracy’: (i) distinguishing oneself negatively by discrediting the opponent (the term ‘democracy’ is pejorative and associated with the ‘enemy’); (ii) distinguishing oneself positively by asserting one's worthiness (the term ‘democracy’ is positive and associated with ‘us’); (iii) fighting for an exclusive claim to the term in order to set oneself apart (several camps proclaim themselves ‘democrat’ and mutually accuse each other of usurping or even ‘stealing’ the title). I conclude that the use of the word ‘democracy’ generally results from a single motivation – to increase one's own political power or to diminish the power of one's opponents.

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The Black Blocs made a spectacular entrance into the Movement for Global Justice on 30 November 1999 at the "Battle of Seattle," when they smashed the windows of McDonald's, Nike, Gap, and a few banks. In April 2009, almost ten years later, a Black Bloc is involved in skirmishes with police at Strasbourg during the NATO Summit. The aim of this article, which is largely based on interviews with militants, analyses of their discourses, and first-hand observations of demonstrations, is to identify how the Black Bloc tactic originated and spread, and to understand the political factors that led activists to adopt it. Three intrinsically political questions are addressed: (1) Who should determine the plan of action within a group of militants? (2) Who should determine the plan of action during a demonstration? (3) Who should determine the criteria to assess the effectiveness of the actions taken by a social movement and speak on its behalf? To answer these questions, the notion of "respect for a diversity of tactics" and the links between the Black Blocs and other militant organizations (both radical and reformist) as well as other blocs (the "Tute Bianche" or White Overalls and the Pink Blocs) are discussed.