First of all, if you are able to spread the information about what is happening in Notre-Dame-des-Landes within you networks, that would be much appreciated. Help us resist and fight back with any means possible within our reach of means and sensibilities.
Since 3 days the french state is trying to evict the land-occupation of the zad “zone à Défendre” (zone to be defended). Since the abandonment of the project of the airport, a project contested since 50 years. since 10 years, call-outs for occupation had been spread and people came to help the struggle against a mega project that seemed useless and which they tried to impose by different means of repression.
Lots of different interests and reasons brought people to converge in theis area or to express there solidary with what was happening, the different forms and strategies the occupation managed to put in existence. Every blow the occupation had to take by the liberal state, just made it stronger. Everything they destroyed, we managed to rebuild even better and we cared for. A movement with all different components that engaged in the struggle, the citizens, farmers, anarchists, autonomous, or others who took opportunity from the occupation where able to hold back the construction of the airport project and had the determination to withstand the different kinds of attacks and pressures so far. Today, here they came again, this time with an even more oversized army in blue and equipment that made sure we knew we are at war.
Part of the movement thought they would be able negotiate some kind of legal collective “window” “agreement” for all the land and buildings that was perceived as part of a “collective movement”, this became an even bigger conflict point within the movement, in a already very fragile “composition”, where the different strategies and politics couldn’t find their crossroads. Those that opposed the negotiations, that was lacking a firm stand faced to the state and its soldiers, where pushed aside, attacked from the inside, ridiculed, marginalised. Those that wanted to negotiate where convinced that by doing what the prefect and its masters asked for, that they would also get what they ask for, so they forced it down to those that had other ways of resistance in mind, those that didn’t seem to fit in some-kind of “collective” strategy imposed by a minority of the occupation together with some other composants. Very early after the abandonment of the airport project they had to try to impose, it was clear the prefect and its state only had false promises and game-play in mind. To divide and conquer our lives. More detailed story line here : La ZAD: Another End of the World Is Possible. Learning from 50 Years of Struggle at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. https://crimethinc.com/2018/04/09/la-zad-another-end-of-the-world-is-possible-learning-from-50-years-of-struggle-at-notre-dame-des-landes
Today the state showed it will just execute its plan to recolonise the liberated lands no matter people want to negotiate, legalise or leave. It wants to have complete control, then maybe those that submit to norms and regulations will be able to buy it back, rent it. The state already declared it will only dialogue with those that regularise themselves individually. Everything else that is not conventional or conform with their rules and regulations, will be evicted. Many of us build our life’s on solidarity and struggle to create space and areas accessible to exchange between those with less means or resources, for exchange and education. Many of us have no intention to have our life’s regulated by systems that lack empathy, or lack inclusive structures where anyone can have some feeling of belonging and participation without being discriminated or oppressed. Struggles like those of the palestinians, kurds, zapatistas, indigenous tribes, antifa and other intens struggles of today shows clearly we can take back and defend our farmlands, our space (squats, streets, gardens, forests, factories, etc ), our lives to :
– live without dominant and authoritarian centralised state control, with liberal and fascist ideologies, and without their institutions of power protected by murderous and mutilating armies,
– the exploitive capitalist economic markets and their destructive and suicidal infrastructures, where everything and everyone is turned into a product with monetary value, where life is breath
– the isolating and repressive tendencies of the jurisdictional systems and their prisons and palaces of torture, solitude and humiliation.
Lot of comrades came to help and defend the area and its structures and inhabitants to not give one meter away to the state without any means of resistance. Yet faced to the forces of the state it remains a asymmetric struggle and on top of that some of the internal power-struggle of the movement, but its clear, we are many that will not back down that easily, we face the same horizon and are standing shoulder to shoulder on the same side of the barricades in solidarity and enraged, which seems most essential in current conditions, politics is action. Many of those involved with the history of the ZAD calls out for solidarity and reinforcements. Decentralise the resistance by reinforcing local social struggles, centralise our forces by international solidarity and on the frontlines of territorial and liberating struggles, in our streets and in our hearts. How long will we be able to hold ground, we don’t know, but now we are still here. To change anything, start anywhere, right now !
– Radio broadcasts (mainly french but also updates in english) : https://zad.nadir.org/spip.php?article5340
– evictions on the #ZAD #NDDL in france (Praxis, Info, Access, #AntiRep) : https://zadresist.antirep.net/article24
Resistance… is us, life is ours !
Solidarity… knows no walls nor borders !
There is no identity, only mouvement !
