Leaders in the Protest

While reading Fraser in the chapter of The French May, 1968. There tends to be this pattern that when students prepare to protest, not many leaders of the protest are present. This leaves the students in a disadvantage because some are still in their teens and they still do not know what to do. For example, In the night of the barricades there also was not a leader present to help them. Instead the students themselves had to make a plan to make the barricades and try to fend off the police, which is really amazing considering all the times the students and the police met, there were always casualties and people badly hurt. My question to the class would be: why is it that the leaders, when the protest are happening, are not present. Also, why do you think the government does not want France to hear that the protest are going on. In the instance when the soccer commentator got turned off. On page 212-214 “Radio reports were spot on, transmitting live news of the events all over France… A well known soccer commentator was reporting the events from one station… his voice went dead- they had cut him off”