Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

The ZAD air­port protest site in France is still being evict­ed, a process that start­ed on the 16th Octo­ber. The zone is grad­u­al­ly being mil­i­tarised but there are HUGE num­bers of pro­test­ers and seem­ing­ly more every day. We’re still fight­ing and it is not over!

The ZAD is an air­port protest site in the west of France about 15 miles north of Nantes. The air­port project was first pro­posed over forty years ago and has faced con­stant local resis­tance ever since. The project is in the hands of the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Vin­ci, who also pro­vide us with such « ser­vices » as pris­ons, motor­ways and nuclear pow­er sta­tions. It is the par­tic­u­lar pet project of Jean Marc Ayrault, the for­mer may­or of Nantes and cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter of France. In 2009 the area host­ed a cli­mate camp, since when the emp­ty hous­es, fields and forests have been grad­u­al­ly fill­ing up with peo­ple dis­gust­ed enough by the idea of this project to stay and resist. The rea­sons for stay­ing are as diverse as the peo­ple but the occu­piers are unit­ed by an idea that fight­ing cap­i­tal­ism is an impor­tant part of every day life.

Until the sec­ond week of Octo­ber you could still arrive on the ZAD and tour around over 30 diverse squats spread across the two thou­sand hectares of threat­ened land. The peo­ple unit­ed there to organ­ise togeth­er and fight the air­port project but life was far from unpleas­ant. You could vis­it the beau­ti­ful straw bale house bak­ery which pro­vid­ed the whole area with free price deli­cious organ­ic bread twice a week, the numer­ous col­lec­tive gar­dens, the home made wind tur­bine to pro­vide elec­tric­i­ty, an incred­i­ble range of cab­ins on the ground and in the trees made from col­lect­ed mate­ri­als, and you prob­a­bly would have been able to go to a con­cert, join us on an action, help us organ­ise and come to a few work­shops to learn to climb, or knit, or maybe build a rock­et stove.

Right at the moment though we don’t seem to be leav­ing our­selves much time for knit­ting work­shops. On Tues­day 16th Octo­ber the large scale evic­tions of the place we call home start­ed, and they weren’t mess­ing around. Riot vans arrived en masse from six in the morn­ing and had already evict­ed sev­en squat­ted hous­es and burned down a large cab­in by ten o’clock in the
morn­ing. Approx­i­mate­ly 1200 police were mobi­lized for this so-called ‘oper­a­tion Cesar’, pro­tect­ing the work­ers who use plain white vans, hid­ing their com­pa­ny names. Since then we have seen near­ly all of those hous­es razed to the ground, and most of the oth­er hous­es, cab­ins and homes evict­ed and destroyed. We have also near­ly all inhaled a deeply unhealthy amount of tear gas and seen enough blue vans and uni­forms to last a life­time.

Novem­ber 17th marked a huge change in this strug­gle. Some­where between 20,000 and 40,000 (depend­ing who you ask) peo­ple were unit­ed togeth­er on the ZAD for the huge Reoc­cu­pa­tion Demo. This involved a march from the near­by town of Notre Dame des Lan­des (where the demo stretched for near­ly eight kilo­me­tres) and a chest­nut plan­ta­tion close to the cen­tre of the ZAD where huge num­bers of peo­ple got to work build­ing new cab­ins. All day it was hard to move with­out get­ting in the way of peo­ple ham­mer­ing, saw­ing and car­ry­ing heavy things into the for­est. Wit­ness­ing this col­lec­tive ener­gy, and around ten large cab­ins fly up in the course of an after­noon is some­thing I feel sure no one who was there will for­get. More than that, I hope that every sin­gle per­son who squelched through the mud that day now feels a part of the ZAD, and that we will not lose this col­lec­tive force and feel­ing of strength.

Since then there has been vast amounts of con­struc­tion hap­pen­ing all over the ZAD. In fact it is hard to find a place on the zone where you can’t hear ham­mer­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the last few days this has been accom­pa­nied by the all-too-famil­iar sounds of con­cus­sion grenades and tear gas bombs. All of the new­ly con­struct­ed tree hous­es and the ground-lev­el cab­in in the Rohanne For­est were once again destroyed on Sat­ur­day in a con­stant cloud of tear gas. Despite being attacked and gassed all day, the huge num­ber of sup­port­ers on the ground stayed until long after dark, until the police final­ly crawled back to where they came from. The new cab­ins from the reoc­cu­pa­tion demo remain but they seem at risk of being destroyed soon. Dur­ing the week­end there were huge num­bers of injuries for the first time since the evic­tions start­ed, and also instances of police attack­ing bar­ri­cades in the mid­dle of the night. They are now mil­i­taris­ing the zone, stay­ing all night on the roads to stop us from mov­ing around, and grad­u­al­ly upping the pres­sure.

We got the mes­sage yes­ter­day that the evic­tions will stop if we stop build­ing, and I can smile as I type that I feel quite sure that will not hap­pen. We will con­tin­ue to build, and con­tin­ue to fight against this oppres­sion and this use­less sense­less project. We will not let them win so eas­i­ly. There are more of us than ever and it is impos­si­ble not to feel strong, even as they destroy our homes again and again. We have ever more peo­ple to keep rebuild­ing.

There is a call out for sol­i­dar­i­ty actions on our web­site (www.zad.nadir.org)

The strug­gle con­tin­ues for us, and we wel­come the sup­port of those as dis­il­lu­sioned as us with this com­pa­ny, the state, and the con­trol on our every day lives. It’s far from over, this is just the begin­ning.

Call out for actions dur­ing the moment of evic­tion of the ZAD
 https://zad.nadir.org/spip.php?article175

new call out for occu­pa­tion
https://zad.nadir.org/spip.php?article348

On Sat­ur­day, after 3 weeks of evic­tions, more than 30000 came to re-occu­py the ZAD. As soon as the demon­stra­tion arrived, 5 pre-assem­bled struc­tures start­ed to get built: a meet­ing-room of 80m², a kitchen house, 2 dorms, a toi­let and bath block and a work­shop. On Mon­day, the work is con­tin­u­ing. Thanks to a sum of inge­nios­i­ty, mutu­alised know-hows and end­less human chains to bring the tons of planks, as well as cross beams, met­al sheets and straw need­ed for the work, the con­struc­tion showed rapid progress. The achieve­ment is breath­tak­ing and can only leave large smiles on the faces. In order to cel­e­brate that, and inau­gu­rate, a cock­tail is announced, this mon­day, at 17:00 on the build­ing site. We would like to remind that these new col­lec­tive build­ings are meant to become a cross­ing point for all oppo­nents and a head­quar­ter to organ­ise the resis­tance to the air­port con­struc­tion. The pre­fec­ture, who knows what they are about, have announced as of Sat­ur­day, that these new huts were “woed to dis­s­ap­pear”. But the land on which most of the recon­struc­tions were made is lent by a pri­vate own­er, opposed to the air­port and also ongo­ing expro­pri­a­tion. There­fore, there is no judi­cial way to evict these hous­es with­out lenghty pro­ce­dures, regard­ing the urban­ism laws, to be per­formed by the pre­fec­ture. We can there­fore reas­sure to every­one who got involved in the reoc­cu­pa­tion on Sat­ur­day, that, accord­ing to the law, these build­ing can­not be destroyed at least for some time. In par­ralel to these large con­struc­tions, new huts and liv­ing spaces are being rebuilt on squat­ted lands owned by Vin­ci. Dur­ing the whole week, tree­hous­es will nest again in the Rohanne for­est. Whether on lent or squat­ted land, we call for com­mon defense of each hut with all the required deter­mi­na­tion. If they evict us, we resist, and we come back!

Since the 16th of Octo­ber the French state have attempt­ed to evict Europe’s largest post­cap­i­tal­ist land occu­pa­tion — La ZAD — to build a new “green” air­port. Farm­ers and activists have joined togeth­er to resist the project and the evic­tions have lit a fuse across France. KK immers­es her­self in this rur­al rebel­lion against eco­nom­ic growth and the cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe and dis­cov­ers a utopia in resistance.(for ver­sion of text with more image see — http://labofii.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/rural-rebels-and-useless-airports-la-zad-europes-largest-postcapitalist-land-occupation/)

Octo­ber 2012, Notre dames des Lan­des, France.

Chris leans for­ward, her long fin­gers play with the dial of the car radio “I’m try­ing to find 107.7 FM“ … a burst of Clas­si­cal music, a frag­ment of cheesy pop. “ Ah! Here we go! I think I’ve got it?” The plas­tic pitch of a cor­po­rate jin­gle pierces the speak­ers: “Radio Vin­ci Autoroute: This is the weath­er fore­cast for the west cen­tral region…happy dri­ving to you all. Traf­fic info next.” Chris smiles.

The nar­row wind­ing road is lined with thick hedgerows. Out of the dark­ness the ghost­ly out­line of an owl cuts across our head­lights. We dip down into a wood­ed val­ley, the radio sig­nal starts to splin­ter. The well-spo­ken female voice frac­tures into sta­t­ic, words tune in and out and then anoth­er kind of sound weaves itself into the air­waves. We rise out of the wood onto a plateau, the rogue sig­nal gets clear­er, for a while two dis­turbing­ly dif­fer­ent voic­es scram­ble togeth­er – the slick man­i­cured pre­dictable sounds of Radio Vin­ci wres­tles with some­thing much more alive, some­thing raw­er — a fleshi­er fre­quen­cy.

“ The cops have left the Zone for the night…good rid­dance… Yeah! Keep it up every­one! ……” There is a moment of silence, we hear breath­ing, then a scream into the micro­phone “This is Radio Klaxon…Klac Klac Klac! ”We feel her emo­tion radi­ate through the radio waves “ It’s nine thir­ty five.” she laughs and puts a record on, pas­sion­ate Fla­men­co gui­tar pumps into the car.

We have entered La ZAD (Zone A Défendre) – Europe’s largest post­cap­i­tal­ist protest camp – a kind of rur­al occu­py on the east­ern edge of Brit­tany, half and hour’s dri­ve from the city of Nantes. Like a rebel con­stel­la­tion spread across 4000 acres of for­est, farm­land and marsh­es, it takes the form of old squat­ted farms and fields, DIY straw­bale hous­es, upcy­cled sheds, the­atres and bars cob­bled from indus­tri­al pal­lets, hob­bit like round hous­es, cute cab­ins built with the worlds waste, huts perched fright­en­ing­ly high in trees and a mul­ti­tude of oth­er dis­obe­di­ent archi­tec­tur­al fan­tasies. La ZAD has been a lab­o­ra­to­ry for ways of liv­ing despite cap­i­tal­ism since the 2009 French Cli­mate Camp. At the camp activists and locals put togeth­er a call for peo­ple to come and live on the Zone to pro­tect it. Now you can find ille­gal goat herds and organ­ic bak­eries, bike work­shops and bee hives, work­ing farms and com­mu­nal kitchens, a micro brew­ery, a mobile library, and even a pirate radio sta­tion: Radio Klax­on. Emit­ting from a secret loca­tion some­where in the Zone, the sta­tion hijacks the air­waves of “Radio Vin­ci Autoroute” the traf­fic infor­ma­tion chan­nel run byVin­ci for its pri­vate net­work of French motor­ways. The world’s largest multi­na­tion­al con­struc­tion firm, builders of nuclear pow­er sta­tions, African ura­ni­um mines, oil pipelines, motor­ways, car parks and the infra­struc­ture of hyper cap­i­tal­ism every­where, Vin­ci also hap­pen to be the com­pa­ny com­mis­sioned by the French gov­ern­ment to cov­er this land­scape in con­crete and open Nantes new air­port (it already has one) by 2017. Well that’s the plan.

***

The irony of this che­quered land of tiny fields framed by miles of rich hedgerows, is that unlike the rest of France, it escaped the regroup­ing process of the 60’s which anni­hi­lat­ed the ancient field pat­terns to open up large tracts of land to indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture. If the orig­i­nal air­port plans, designed to host Con­corde, had suc­ceed­ed this land would have been under tar­mac by 1985, luck­i­ly it was nev­er built and so the old field pat­terns remain, as do the fad­ed paint­ed signs that date from the first protests 40 years ago, placed along the side of the road by local farm­ers declar­ing: “NON A L’AEROPORT”.

Our car pulls into “la vache rit” a tem­po­rary HQ housed in a giant barn that belongs to one of dozen local farm­ers who has refused to sell their land to the state. A mur­al on the façade shows a plane dis­guised as a bale of hay with an indig­nant farmer, pitch­fork in hand, shout­ing up at it: “ you ‘aint going to con us !” Inside the barn, hun­dreds of peo­ple mill around, there are grey haired pen­sion­ers, farm­ers in mud­dy over­alls, a sprin­kling of hip­pies, folk in black hood­ies adorned with head­torch­es and more than a hand­ful of dogs. Food is being cooked and peo­ple are brows­ing the largest “free shop” I’ve ever seen (a space where there is no mon­e­tary exchange). Long tables bend under piles of clothes all sort­ed neat­ly and sign­post­ed: jumpers, trousers, rain jack­ets, boots (with box­es for dif­fer­ent shoe sizes) there is even a box marked dirty socks under one filled with dry ones. Locals from the near­by vil­lage of Notre-Dames-des-Lan­des wash the socks reg­u­lar­ly. Anoth­er table has moun­tains of med­ical sup­plies whilst the kitchen is drown­ing in pas­ta. Sup­port­ers from the four cor­ners of France have donat­ed all this mate­r­i­al over last week since the evic­tions began.

On the 16th of Octo­ber 1200 riot police over­ran La ZAD. What had been a state free autonomous zone for 3 years was trans­formed with­in a few hours into a mil­i­tarised sec­tor. Road blocks sealed the area, Guard Mobiles (mil­i­tary mobile gen­darme units) swarmed every­where and bull­doz­ers groaned across the fields. Despite resis­tance from the Zadists with­in two days the state had destroyed 9 of the 12 of the squat­ted spaces. On one of the days, 250 rounds of tear gas were fired into the mar­ket gar­den, seem­ing­ly to con­t­a­m­i­nate the veg­eta­bles that until that moment had fed over 100 Zadists every week. A prin­ci­ple of war is of course: cut off the sup­plies.

In the after­noon lor­ries guard­ed by con­voys of riot vans car­ried away every sign of habi­ta­tion — every lump of rub­ble or shard of bro­ken fur­ni­ture, smashed crock­ery or child’s toy — every­thing – noth­ing remained but mud and the scars of bull­doz­er tracks. This act of era­sure was not only to make sure that the wreck­age would not be used to rebuild the hous­es, but more impor­tant­ly to wipe out all traces of his­to­ry. Ruins hold mem­o­ries and sto­ries; and a prin­ci­ple of resis­tance is that sto­ries stoke strug­gle.

“The move­ment is fin­ished”… the local rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the min­istry of inte­ri­or Patrick Lapouze told the press “For two years… it’s been a law­less zone. I can’t even go there with­out police pro­tec­tion and when I go I get stones rain­ing down on my car.” Sound­ing more like a wild west Sher­iff than a twen­ty first cen­tu­ry civ­il ser­vant, he con­tin­ued: “We are going to stop them returning…When there are only 150 of them entrenched in a barn, they won’t last long!” Rais­ing the stakes some­what he ends his state­ment: “ If the République is unable to reclaim this area, then we should be wor­ried for the République.” As these words left his lips the images of an elder­ly woman col­lect­ing tear­gas can­is­ters from a veg­etable gar­den, ancient farm­hous­es being torn down and farm­ers pushed around by riot police were cir­cu­lat­ing across the coun­try and seemed to be touch­ing a nerve.

***

The air­port is the pet project of ex may­or of Nantes, now prime min­is­ter — Jean marc Ayrault. Nick named “L’ Ayrault­porc” (a bril­liant play on words merg­ing air­port and pig) his rat­ings had already hit record bot­tom before all this and now it seems his mega­lo­man­ic vision, might be a big­ger thorn in his side than he ever imag­ined.

Ayrault has pro­mot­ed the project as a “green” air­port. It is planned to have liv­ing roofs cov­ered in plants, the two run­ways have been designed to min­imise taxi­ing to save on CO2 emis­sions and an organ­ic com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ed box scheme is meant to feed its employ­ees. Next year Nantes will cel­e­brate its lat­est award: Euro­pean Green City 2013. To call this dou­ble speak is gen­er­ous. Accord­ing to a recent report a hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple will die of cli­mate dri­ven deaths over the next eigh­teen years. 80 per­cent of the slaugh­tered will be in coun­tries with low­er emis­sions. The Cli­mate Cat­a­stro­phe is no just a threat to our ecosys­tems and the species we share the bios­phere with, it’s a vio­lent war on the poor. A war whose weapons are built out of steel and con­crete, tar­mac and plas­tic, a war with a tick­ing methane bomb hid­ing under the artic. Waged by the log­ic of growth and dis­guised as every­day life accord­ing to cap­i­tal­ism, cli­mate change is the war that could end all wars and all life with it. Call­ing an air­port green is as cyn­i­cal as call­ing a con­cen­tra­tion camp humane. Per­haps in the future if we are lucky t have one, descen­dents will con­tem­plate the ruins of air­ports as we do the sites of 18th cen­tu­ry slave mar­kets and won­der how a cul­ture could have com­mit­ted such bar­bar­i­ty so open­ly.

***

I’m fast asleep in the Cent Chenes (one hun­dred oaks). For three years peo­ple from post­cap­i­tal­ist move­ments across Europe have made their way here to build alter­na­tive lives and lay a new geog­ra­phy over the car­tog­ra­phy of cap­i­tal­ism. There is a deli­cious panoply of new place names, includ­ing: La Bell­ishrut, Pinky, La Saulce, Phar Wezt, No Name, La cabane des filles (the girl’s cab­in) and the myth­i­cal Le Sabot (the clog) named for its ref­er­ence to peas­ant life as well as the fact that it is the root of the word Sab­o­tage, which lit­er­al­ly means to throw your clog into the gears of the machine.

Lit­tle do I know, as I dream of police dogs devour­ing stray cats, that Hur­ri­cane Sandy has just hit Haiti and is on its way to New York. Last time I was here in this beau­ti­ful straw­bale home made entire­ly from the waste of the world it had a work­ing bak­ery (sup­ply­ing man ZADISTS and neigh­bours with dai­ly organ­ic Bread) and an abun­dant Per­ma­cul­ture gar­den. With the threat of expul­sion the bak­er moved his oven to a safer (legal) space near­by and the oth­er inhab­i­tants includ­ing Katell, who teach­es in the local pri­ma­ry school, took every­thing of val­ue to the safe house. Now Les Cent Chenes is a ghost of what it was and has been hand­ed over as a col­lec­tive sleep­ing space for the activists that have streamed in over the last days, from across the coun­try and abroad, to put their bod­ies in the way of the evic­tions. We sleep here to be at hand when the police arrive at the Le Sabot near­by, which is still hold­ing out.

Le Sabot is the mar­ket gar­den now con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by CS gas. It was born in the spring of 2011, when over a thou­sand peo­ple armed with spades and seeds coor­di­nat­ed by the inter­na­tion­al rad­i­cal young farm­ers move­ment Reclaim The Fields, occu­pied a cou­ple of acres of land in the cen­tre of the Zone and overnight turned it into a func­tion­ing veg­etable farm. It has its own two-roomed cab­in, a poly­tun­nel, solar show­er and now a ram­shackle pent­house on the roof, to climb onto in case of expul­sion. Merg­ing resis­tance and tan­gi­ble alter­na­tives, Le Sabot reflects the post­cap­i­tal­ist pol­i­tics of refus­ing to sep­a­rate cri­tique and con­struc­tion, the yes and the no.

I spend the day with Ish­mel an art activist and one of the founders of the French Clown Army. His home La Bell­ishrut was burnt to the ground last week. “How come you’re still smil­ing? “ I ask as we walk through the dense net­work of green lanes that joins up the dots of this rebel con­stel­la­tion. “ I don’t care about mate­r­i­al things, when we build some­thing we know it won’t be for­ev­er.” We build bar­ri­cades until sun­set. Ish­mel has man­aged to get hold of the old set that the Nantes Opera House were throw­ing away, it hap­pens to be from an opera about the holo­caust. The mas­sive wood­en pan­els make per­fect­ly sur­re­al bar­ri­cad­ing mate­r­i­al.

Since the evic­tions began the art of build­ing bar­ri­cades has tak­en over every­day life here. Every­where you go there are lit­tle teams busy haul­ing mate­ri­als across fields to erect anoth­er bar­ri­cade. The idea is to slow the advance of the author­i­ties, who have named their oper­a­tion “Cesar” (Cae­sar), per­haps a ref­er­ence to Obelix and Asterix’s resis­tant gal­lic vil­lage. The police have tak­en the week­end off and so bar­ri­cade build­ing takes place unhin­dered. Now there are ones ris­ing on the main roads as well as the green lanes. The mul­ti­plic­i­ty of dif­fer­ent bar­ri­cades reflects the dif­fer­ent cul­tures at La Zad. Those liv­ing in tree hous­es in the Rohanne For­est have asked peo­ple not to cut liv­ing trees to make them, whilst in anoth­er part of the Zone a team of chain­saw wield­ing activists are tack­ing down oak trees and tan­gling steel rope in them. On one cross­roads there are at least 20 bar­ri­cades. There are huge hay rounds with cans of petrol beside them ready to set alight when the police attack, there is a steel wall of sitex – Anti squat­ting pan­els nor­mal­ly placed on doors and win­dows of emp­ty hous­es –care­ful­ly weld­ed togeth­er and one made from dozens of bam­boo poles stick­ing out of the tar­ma­ce dec­o­rat­ed with bicy­cle wheels. In the mid­dle of it all there is makeshift kitchen with its mobile piz­za oven made from an oil drum.

An affin­i­ty group armed with cord­less angle grinders and pick axes, have been work­ing day and night to cut out giant trench­es in the roads — in some cas­es sev­er­al metres wide and deep­er than a stand­ing adult. Ish­mel tells me that yes­ter­day road agency work­ers came to mend one of the small­er trench­es (not sur­round­ed by bar­ri­cades). Peo­ple talked to the work­ers, try­ing to per­suade them to turn around and not do the dirty work of Vin­ci. Despite hav­ing their boss on the phone coerc­ing them to keep going, they even­tu­al­ly turned around and left the hole in the road. One of the work­ers lat­er said “ What trou­bled me most was that I’m from around here and (clear­ing the bar­ri­cades to allow the police to cir­cu­late) feels a bit like I was help­ing demol­ish my neigh­bours house.” There have also been sto­ries of local police offi­cers that refused to join the oper­a­tion.

The crisp autumn sky swarms with stars. A full moon throws shad­ows of gnarly oak trees across the fields. We end the evening in Le Sabot, dozens of us sit­ting around the wood burn­ing Agar to eat a deli­cious Dauphi­noise (a hot pot of pota­toes and gar­lic) gar­nished with fresh­ly picked Cepp mush­rooms. Radio Klax­on plays in the back­ground as always: “We have some news: 15 more cop vans have been spot­ted on the motor­way dri­ving in this direc­tion”. There are already 30 parked up for the night in the apt­ly named Dis­co Par­adiso near­by, it seems the sec­ond wave of “oper­a­tion Ceasar” may well hit tom­morow. Lau­ra, who has been on walky-talky all day to coor­di­nate the defence, picks up a piece of chalk and on the black­board which used to be where the dates for plant­i­ng and har­vest­ing crops were writ­ten up; she scrawls angri­ly: NON! (NO).

***

It’s 6am. We walk through the thick morn­ing mist. Neb­u­lous sil­hou­ettes appear out of nowhere pass­ing us on the lane, peo­ple are calm­ly mak­ing their way to the bar­ri­cades. We car­ry a small radio, the fin­ger tap­ping beat of the Lati­no hip hop group Cypress Hill keeps us awake: “When the shit goes down you bet­ter be ready! ” Cof­fee is served in Le Sabot. Lau­ra is glued to her walky-talky. Gweno, ties his T‑shirt around his head to make a DIY bal­a­cla­va through which you can still see his cheeky smil­ing eyes. He climbs over the first bar­ri­cade, in which Ish­mel plant­ed bunch­es of flow­ers last night and nails a large sign to a tree oppo­site: Zone of Strug­gle: Here the peo­ple com­mand and the gov­ern­ment obeys. It’s a phrase from the Zap­atista autonomous indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties in Chi­a­pas. Mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty have been sent from Chi­a­pas and many of the activists here feel a strong link to the masked rebels who since 1994 have built zones free of the state and cap­i­tal­ism in the jun­gles of south­ern Mex­i­co. Many of the Zadists also wear masks dur­ing actions, to resist being iden­ti­fied by the police, but also per­haps, to be in tune with the spir­it of Zap­atismo, where a masks both hides you and makes you more vis­i­ble and where being nobody and yet every­body is a source of free­dom.

“They are com­ing!” Lau­ra shouts! The cab­in emp­ties except for Marie, grey haired and in her six­ties, who con­tin­ues cook­ing un phased by the news of attack. Through the mist the glint of dozens of riot shields can be seen advanc­ing down the lane towards Le Sabot. Time speeds up: the bar­ri­cade is set alight, huge flames cut through the dawn light, we hear the sharp crack of tear gas can­is­ters being shot at us, rot­ten veg­eta­bles, paint bombs and stones arc into the sky. I see Gwen run­ning through the field hold­ing one of the shields he has lov­ing­ly made: “Be care­ful you are walk­ing on our beat­root,” it says on it. For a moment we can’t tell what is CS gas and what is morn­ing mist, then our skin begins to scream in pain, Ish­mel pass­es us lemon juice. The boom of con­cus­sion grenades being fired sev­er­al kilo­me­tres away thun­ders across the plateau, Radio Klax­on tells us that they have attacked the for­est simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and are try­ing to take peo­ple out of the trees.

It takes sev­er­al hours for the police to get through the bar­ri­cades at le Sabot, by the time they arrive in the gar­den most of us have dis­solved into the land­scape. A few peo­ple remain on the roof of the cab­in and Marie con­tin­ues to cook inside. “You will nev­er get rid of us” a woman in a pink ban­dana shouts from the roof “we will be back and we will plant even more veg­eta­bles!”

We hear the sound of the sam­ba band in the dis­tance. We fol­low the rhythm to try and meet up with it, weav­ing through fields and hedgerows to avoid the roam­ing riot police. We pass through a field of high corn, sev­er­al trac­tors and a huge har­vest­ing machines are plough­ing through it. For a minute the image of nor­mal agri­cul­tur­al life tak­ing place a few hun­dred metres from burn­ing bar­ri­cades and fly­ing rub­ber bul­lets seems incon­gru­ous, but then we see that it’s Syl­vain Fres­neau dri­ving the machine. Fres­neau is one of the 100 local farm­ers who are due to be expro­pri­at­ed. He has refused to be bought off by the state. On the lane next to his field there are a thir­ty trac­tors fly­ing the Con­fed­er­a­tion Paysan flag (Inde­pen­dent peas­ants union) backed up against a line of riot police. The trac­tors were meant to have reached Le Sabot in sol­i­dar­i­ty, but got blocked here. It seems how­ev­er that they have at least man­aged to allow Fres­neau to har­vest his silage. For Fres­neau to sim­ply do his every­day job on this land is an act of resis­tance.

We final­ly meet up with the sam­ba activists. They have marched across the fields to the side of the Zone where bull­doz­ers are clear­ing bar­ri­cades off the roads and the relics of rur­al riot­ing lit­ter the tar­mac. We fol­low the band into the near­by for­est where they play under the tree hous­es, the police haven’t got here yet. Like a nim­ble tree sprite Natasha glides down from her plat­form. Rolls of rope and jan­gling kara­bin­ers hang from her climb­ing har­ness. Some­one on the ground below has just picked a mush­room and is won­der­ing what species it is. A pro­fes­sion­al botanist, Natasha imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fies it: “ it’s a Rus­sule — super tasty!” she declares before climb­ing grace­ful­ly back up into her tow­er­ing tree.

More than any­one she is aware of how ecosys­tems are net­works of com­ple­men­tary rela­tion­ships, con­stant­ly in the process of becom­ing more com­plex and diverse. She under­stands the uni­ty in diver­si­ty that makes up the rich inter­de­pen­dent webs of life with­in this for­est and is hor­ri­fied by the cul­tur­al vac­u­um that wants to anni­hi­late it. There have been sim­i­lar cul­tures, cul­tures out of touch with their ecolo­gies and stick­ing to entrenched beliefs. They all wrecked their life sup­port sys­tems and even­tu­al­ly col­lapsed. Rob­bing the future to pay the present was the hall­mark of every civil­i­sa­tion whose ruins now scat­ter the deserts.

***

The gov­ern­ment has said they want to “cleanse” La Zad before Novem­ber 2012, so that they can begin the archae­o­log­i­cal sur­veys and ecosys­tems ser­vices swaps. By law the head­lands of all water­shed should be pro­tect­ed and for every wet­lands destroyed two have to be cre­at­ed else­where. Vin­ci how­ev­er, is try­ing to chal­lenge these laws in court, the ver­dict will be heard next month. If the ecosys­tems ser­vices project goes ahead it plans to move newts from twelve marsh­es to a new habi­tat. It’s the twist­ed log­ic of cap­i­tal­ism that thinks that you can swap one ecosys­tem for anoth­er, a mar­ket mind­set where every­thing has become a com­mod­i­ty — a thing devoid of con­text. It’s the final gasps of a cul­ture that has for­got­ten that our world is made up of rela­tion­ships and not things.

The state assumed that by destroy­ing the Zadists hous­es and gar­dens they would demor­alise the move­ment. They thought it would col­lapse when its mate­r­i­al base had been removed. But quite the oppo­site has hap­pened. “ Our home is not the cob walls and hay bails, the bricks and mor­tar,” says Sara, whose house was raised to the ground last week, “but the land and the neigh­bours and its those con­nec­tions that have been strength­ened dur­ing the evic­tions”. It’s not just the friend­ships between activists on the bar­ri­cades but also the com­plex rela­tion­ships between the Zadists, the locals and farm­ers that have evolved. “It’s been a roller coast­er over the years,” Sara con­tin­ues. “ There have been strong moments of togeth­er­ness but many of mutu­al mis­un­der­stand­ing and mis­trust. There are some huge ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences between us “the squat­ters” and the folk at ACIPA (The anti-air­port NGO made up of local farm­ers and res­i­dents) but since the evic­tions, new lev­els of mutu­al aid and sup­port have emerged that were once thought impos­si­ble.” Not only did Syl­vain Frenau’s open his barn as an HQ for every­body, but the ACIPA has set up a dai­ly meet­ing point to bring new­com­ers into the Zone to resist the evic­tions, farm­ers and locals have stood as human shields between the masked activists and the riot police, whilst oth­er have helped build bar­ri­cades with their trac­tors and loaned out chain saws. The French state and media has tried under­mine exact­ly this kind of shar­ing and sup­port over the years by labelling the “ squat­ters” as mem­bers of the “Ultra­gauche” (the ultra left­ists).

A myth­i­cal term invent­ed by a neu­rot­ic gov­ern­ment Les Utra­gauche has been used to crim­i­nalise ant­i­cap­i­tal­ist anti­au­thor­i­tar­i­an move­ments and throw the shad­ow of ter­ror­ism on to any­one influ­enced by the so called: “insur­rec­tion­ist sect” that wrote the now infa­mous, and accord­ing to right wing U.S TV anchor Glen Beck “evil” book — The Com­ing Insur­rec­tion. The term is a weapon of repres­sion used to divide the “good pro­test­ers” from the “bad” and to pre­vent diverse move­ments aris­ing. What the gov­ern­ment can’t con­trol is a move­ment where farm­ers plough­ing and plant­i­ng mono­cul­tures are rebelling side by side with Per­ma­cul­tur­ists who prac­tice no dig gar­den­ing, where old­er trade union­ists sit in meet­ings with young anar­chists who demand an iden­ti­ty beyond work, where lib­er­tar­i­an com­mu­nists teach pen­sion­ers how to for­age wild foods and Anti civil­i­sa­tion veg­ans are lent tools by dairy farm­ers. It is the dynam­ic diver­si­ty of ecosys­tems which keeps them strong and resilient to shocks, move­ments that find uni­ty in diver­si­ty are much hard­er to destroy than hous­es and forests and the new social­ist gov­ern­ment knows this.

Novem­ber, 2012

It’s been three weeks since the evic­tions began, Le Sabot and Les Cent Chenes have been razed as have many of the oth­er spaces. Two squat­ted farm­hous­es are still wait­ing for evic­tion papers whilst every time the police tear down the bar­ri­cades around the Phar Wezt they pop up again like mush­rooms — as I write, its tree hous­es and huge com­mu­nal kitchen remain intact and peo­ple are already rebuild­ing in hid­den nooks and cran­nies of the Zone. Thanks to the pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment from hunger strik­ing farm­ers last sum­mer, locals who have refused to sell can­not be evict­ed until all legal recours­es have been exhaust­ed. The tri­al around the destruc­tion of wet­lands is due to end in Decem­ber.

In many strug­gles, the moment of evic­tion tends to be the last great cry after which the move­ment fades. But quite the oppo­site has occurred, some­thing in the fight to save La ZAD has res­onat­ed with peo­ple. The last three weeks have com­plete­ly trans­formed this strug­gle from a rel­a­tive­ly local debate into an issue of nation­al impor­tance. Every­one on the ground expect­ed the media to run images of masked youth throw­ing molo­tovs (3 in all were thrown!) and to play the “Ultra­gauche” card which would have scared peo­ple away and opened the door to harsh­er police repres­sion. But this did not hap­pen and instead sol­i­dar­i­ty began to flow and flow. Sup­port groups sprung up in cities and vil­lages across France. Meet­ings, demon­stra­tions and actions erupt­ed from Toulouse to Stras­bourg, Brus­sels to Besançon: Graf­fi­ti and ban­ners appeared on dozens of motor­way bridges, a clown army invad­ed the offices of Vin­ci, thou­sands marched in Rennes, Nantes and Paris, a go slow blocked com­muter traf­fic into Nantes, Vin­ci car parks were occu­pied and made free for motorists, the stu­dios of a nation­al radio pro­gramme were invad­ed and state­ment read on air, a street the­atre pieces mar­ried Vin­ci and the state and the win­dows of sev­er­al social­ist par­ty HQ’s were smashed.

Front pages in the region­al and then the nation­al press includ­ing Le Monde, began to talk about La ZAD as the “new Larzac”. Begin­ning in the 1970s the Larzac was a rur­al area of South­ern France where a mass move­ment brought farm­ers and activists togeth­er against the expan­sion of a mil­i­tary base. It is seen as an icon­ic strug­gle not only due to it link­ing rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent cul­tures but also because it won. In 1981 the recent­ly elect­ed social­ist pres­i­dent François Mit­ter­rand can­celled the project. To name La ZAD as new Larzac is like a lit­tle known rock band being tout­ed as the new Lady Gaga!

The dis­course has expand­ed too. Many now see the choice to build an air­port as yet anoth­er symp­tom of a sys­tem total­ly out of touch with real­i­ty. It’s a choice from anoth­er age, an age where cli­mate change and peak oil were not yet threats, an age where the ide­ol­o­gy of infi­nite growth was all that defined progress, an age where peo­ple talked about eco­nom­ic cri­sis rather than the econ­o­my as cri­sis. It seems that what is touch­ing peo­ple is the destruc­tion of ways of life that refuse to be part of such an anti­quat­ed soci­ety. It is the farmer’s firm stand, risk­ing every­thing so that they can con­tin­ue to pro­duce food from their land that moves us. It is the Zadists’ sim­ple lives, lived accord­ing to their pas­sions and their needs that gives us glimpses of the future in the present. These things make so much more sense than a new air­port built for polit­i­cal ego, cor­po­ra­tions and prof­its. And now the sto­ry is no longer just about an air­port, but about mak­ing the choice to oil the sui­cide machine wreck­ing our future or becom­ing its counter fric­tion and open­ing new visions of what it means to live.

A year ago, the Zadists put out a call for a day of Reoc­cu­pa­tion to take place four week­ends fol­low­ing the antic­i­pat­ed evic­tions. They asked peo­ple to come with ham­mers, planks and pitch­forks, to reoc­cu­py the land and build. When they wrote the text lit­tle did they realise that the evic­tions would have trans­formed La ZAD into a house­hold name. The date has been set for the 17th of Novem­ber. Every Tues­day for the past three weeks 150 peo­ple have packed out a hall in Nantes to plan the reoc­cu­pa­tion. There are groups of local archi­tects and car­pen­ters busy design­ing a meet­ing house; mass cater­ing kitchens from across Europe are prepar­ing food for thou­sands; 200 trac­tors are being mobilised; farm­ers, artists and activists from the Mor­bi­han are plan­ning a toi­let and show­er bloc com­plete with caca­pult; a kit house is due to be brought 800 km from Dijon and there are even rumours that some­one wants to build a “spe­cial” tow­er in the field where the con­trol tow­er is planned.

How many peo­ple will turn up on the 17th of Novem­ber no one knows, how many homes and farms will be rebuilt remains a mys­tery, but what is clear is that this move­ment is far from being fin­ished, in many ways its has just begun.

For more infor­ma­tion see: zad.nadir.org