Here’s an interesting analysis and report of the French events.

Two of the discussed aspects caught my attention. The first citation concerns the governance of the movement, and the second concerns the swarming tactics used.

Please note I have previously collated similar quotes concerning the networked aspects of the Alterglobalisation movement, and through the P2P-Activism, P2P-Politics and P2P-Governance tags at Delicious.
Peer Governance aspects
“In any case, rather than quibbling over class distinctions as if they represented some mechanistic fate, it is more to the point to look at what the participants actually did. Many of the general assemblies held in occupied school buildings were opened up to other sectors of the population, leading to dialogue and collaboration with workers, immigrants, retirees, unemployed people and précaires. The students showed little interest in narrow “studentâ€? issues and seem to have freed themselves from many of the other faults for which their predecessors were so scathingly criticized in the classic situationist pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life (1966). If their “programâ€? was rather ad hoc, they nevertheless seem to have assimilated many of the most basic lessons of past radical struggles. In the general assemblies they brushed aside the student-union bureaucracies and imposed direct democracy, implementing open discussion and voting on all issues and coordinating with other assemblies around the country by means of strictly mandated delegates. (This insistence on rigorous democratic procedures, which had been a little-heeded demand by the situationists and a few other “radical extremistsâ€? in May 1968, had now somehow become standard operating procedure, so widely taken for granted that it was scarcely even debated.) National coordination in no way impinged on the fundamental decentralization of the movement. People in different towns and cities used their own imaginations, carrying out a remarkable variety of experimental actions on their own initiative without waiting for anyone else to tell them what to do. There were no leaders — or thousands of leaders, depending on how you define the term. (No one paid the slightest attention to the media’s pathetic attempt to designate the president of the national student union as “the leader of the movement.â€?) When they took part in mass demonstrations, they resisted being shepherded into preordained routes by either the police or the marshals of the labor unions or student unions, often branching off to carry out independent actions. They rejected attempts to divide the movement into violent “vandalsâ€? (casseurs) and “responsibleâ€? protestors, remaining focused on the goal while accepting a variety of tactics and tendencies in the struggle for that goal. Much as they detested the conservative politicians, they were almost equally contemptuous of the leftist parties. If some of them end up voting for the latter as a lesser evil, it will be with few illusions — they have learned through their own experience that direct action is more effective (as well as being a lot more personally liberating and a lot more fun).

Swarming tactics: the ‘blitzes’

”

Some of these actions were announced in advance and carried out by thousands of people. But many more were carried out on the spur of the moment by smaller numbers. These “blitz actions� (actions coup de poing) or “lightning raids� (raids éclair) undoubtedly represent the most original and most promising aspect of the movement. A few dozen or a few hundred people would suddenly converge on a single point, carry out their operation, then disperse just as suddenly so as to avoid or minimize arrests. The destination was often kept secret until the last minute so the police would not know where to send reinforcements. In many cases the goal was to invade some building — a department store or supermarket, a newspaper office, a radio or television station, a postal sorting center, an unemployment bureau, a temp agency, a real estate agency, a Chamber of Commerce office or the headquarters of some political party. In others it was to block a transportation network — a train station, a traffic intersection, a freeway, a subway, a bridge, a bus terminal or an airport. Sometimes the blockage was only partial, as in the case of “snail operations� (slowing down traffic) or “filter barricades� (blocking a street in such a way that cars could only go through slowly so that each driver could be leafleted, or blocking the entryway to a building so that individuals could be talked to on the way in or out).

Besides disrupting the usual flow of business, the blitzers often added creative or educative elements — writing graffiti, posting huge, difficult-to-remove signs or banners (the winner in this category was undoubtedly the 100-foot vertical banner mounted on a crane in Dijon), distributing leaflets exposing the social role of whatever particular institution they were disrupting, talking with workers and passersby, or engaging in various types of guerrilla theater. Frequently there was a series of raids, with alternative destinations agreed upon in case the original targets were too heavily guarded. And, rather new for France (which in this respect had previously lagged behind other countries), many of these actions were planned via email groups, then immediately afterwards communicated online by way of texts, photos and even videos, making it possible for the participants to coordinate their actions and for others around the country, or even in other countries, to compare and contrast various tactics they might want to adopt in their own situations.

Since these blitzes were carried out independently by many different groupings of people, the results were naturally very diverse. Some were probably complete flops and many others were probably of no great interest. But looking at some of the more original ones, there seems to be a new form of radical practice taking shape here, a form that as yet has not been very clearly recognized or theorized. Hopefully the participants will provide us with more detailed accounts of their experiences, including analyses of what was aimed at and what was accomplished, or not accomplished, in particular cases. For the moment, it may be useful to compare the more successful blitzes with other more or less “agitprop� forms of action (i.e. actions aimed at radically educating or inspiring or subverting people).

Nonviolent “bearing witnessâ€? types of action have the merit of fostering composure and undermining “bonds of hatred,â€? but their fear of offending anybody often prevents them from taking the offensive. Blitzes represent a more aggressive (though usually still relatively nonviolent) challenge to institutions and representatives of the ruling order. Countercultural revels can be a lot of fun, but they tend to contain a large element of self-satisfaction, complacently “celebratingâ€? this or that social identity. Blitzes have a similarly playful and prankish spirit, but the participants remain focused on their grievances, without illusions about the conditions in which they find themselves. Their sudden convergence on a particular location is reminiscent of “flash mobsâ€? (and may have been partially inspired by them); but once flash mobs have arrived at their destination their activity is generally pretty innocuous, whereas blitzes are specifically designed to attack their targets. Mass demonstrations have a greater force of numbers, but they lack the flexibility that enables blitzes to move rapidly and to disperse and regroup as appropriate. This was the main reason for the development of “black blocâ€? tactics in recent years. But black blocs are often caught up in silly fantasies of street fighting or urban guerrilla warfare. Blitzers strive to evade the system’s strengths and exploit its weaknesses, challenging it on the level of feelings and ideas as well as physical force. While black bloc actions tend to be impulsive, grimly self-important and purely destructive, blitzes contain a larger element of calculation, creativity and humor. Guerrilla theater has the merit of abandoning the traditional stage and taking its message out into the world, but a certain spectacle-spectator separation remains: the radical lesson is still being presented to an audience. Blitzers exemplify their “lessonâ€? by their concrete disruption of the institution they are critiquing, thereby presenting a more direct challenge to the passivity of whatever “audienceâ€? may be on the scene. Some of their actions verge on the surrealistic. One of the most popular was to invade a business or government office and simply move all the furniture out onto the sidewalk. Ostensibly this was a sort of symbolic “evictionâ€? intended to recall the real evictions that are constantly taking place. But the bizarre “rearrangementâ€? was probably more astonishing (as well as less risky legally) than if they had simply trashed everything, and it undoubtedly had a more radically disorienting effect than the projects of conceptual artists who get official permission to make some temporary modification of the urban landscape. At their best, some of the blitzes are almost reminiscent of the situationist-style disruptions carried out in the period leading up to May 1968. So far none of the blitzes have been as lucid or articulate as the situationist scandals, but on the other hand they have been more numerous and more physically aggressive (due to the larger numbers of people involved).”