Category: Transport

They hurl sticks, stones and gaso­line bombs. They have spent bru­tal win­ter months for­ti­fy­ing mud­dy encamp­ments. And now they’re ready to ramp up their fight against the prime min­is­ter and his pet project — a mas­sive new air­port in west­ern France.

An unlike­ly alliance of anar­chists and beret-wear­ing farm­ers is cre­at­ing a headache for Pres­i­dent Fran­cois Hollande’s belea­guered gov­ern­ment by mount­ing an esca­lat­ing Occu­py Wall Street-style bat­tle that has delayed con­struc­tion on the ambi­tious air­port near the city of Nantes for months. The con­flict has flared anew at a par­tic­u­lar­ly tricky time for the Social­ist gov­ern­ment, amid a grow­ing scan­dal over tax-dodg­ing rev­e­la­tions that forced the bud­get min­is­ter to resign, and ever-wors­en­ing news about the French econ­o­my.

A protest held over the week­end is like­ly to trig­ger a new round of demon­stra­tions like those that drew thou­sands of pro­test­ers to the remote wood­lands of Brit­tany in the fall. In those ear­li­er protests, heav­i­ly armored riot police bat­tled young anar­chists and farm­ers, caus­ing injuries on both sides. On Mon­day, sim­i­lar clash­es erupt­ed, with three demon­stra­tors injured, accord­ing to the rad­i­cals’ web­site.

The fight has brought togeth­er odd bed­fel­lows: Local farm­ers who rep­re­sent tra­di­tion­al French con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues are col­lab­o­rat­ing with anar­chists, rad­i­cal eco-fem­i­nists and drifters from around Europe — who see the anti-air­port move­ment as a flash­point against glob­al­iza­tion and cap­i­tal­ism. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists and the far-left Green Par­ty also oppose the air­port, argu­ing that it will bring pol­lu­tion.

The clash has been par­tic­u­lar­ly dam­ag­ing for Prime Min­is­ter Jean-Marc Ayrault, Nantes’ long­time may­or and the airport’s high­est-pro­file cham­pi­on. He and the project’s sup­port­ers say the air­port will attract busi­ness at a time when France sore­ly needs an eco­nom­ic boost and job cre­ation. The Aero­port du Grand Ouest is intend­ed to replace the exist­ing Nantes Atlan­tique air­port, with run­ways able to han­dle larg­er air­craft such as the A380 super­jum­bo and room to expand from 4.5 mil­lion pas­sen­gers a year at the open to 9 mil­lion in the longer term.

With an approval rat­ing at his­toric lows, Ayrault’s lever­age to push through the project is shrink­ing. Mean­while the oppo­nents’ threat to remo­bi­lize is lead­ing to new fears of vio­lent clash­es.

Pro­test­ers have spent months ille­gal­ly occu­py­ing the site of the planned Notre-Dame-Des-Lan­des air­port, which is set to start oper­at­ing in 2017. In Novem­ber, more than 500 riot police tried to remove thou­sands of squat­ters in the wood­ed area near this vil­lage 15 miles (24 kilo­me­ters) north of Nantes. Pro­test­ers respond­ed by hurl­ing rocks and Molo­tov cock­tails. Police fired back with tear gas in clash­es that dom­i­nat­ed the nation­al news.

For the farm­ers, it’s all about pro­tect­ing the land.

“This will be a run­way,” says Syl­vain Fres­neau, ges­tur­ing toward the two-sto­ry house built by his grand­fa­ther and the dairy farm that has been in his fam­i­ly for five gen­er­a­tions.

Fres­neau and his cousin Dominique are among the local farm­ers who are hold­ing out, refus­ing to sell up and clear off the land where they have lived and worked their entire lives. Sylvain’s 88 cows pro­duce 550,000 liters (580,000 quarts) of milk a year. “Since Jan­u­ary,” Fres­neau says, “we are squat­ters and so are the cows.”

While some local farm­ers have accept­ed buy­outs from Vin­ci, the giant con­struc­tion firm that was select­ed to build and run the air­port, the Fres­neaus and many of their neigh­bors have fought the project for years.

“It’s not a ques­tion of mon­ey,” Syl­vain Fres­neau says. “You can’t put a price on five gen­er­a­tions of peas­ants. It’s my duty not to accept that mon­ey from any builder.”

He says his 80-year-old father was one of the first to resist the air­port project when the idea sur­faced 40 years ago. Long-moth­balled, the air­port plan gained fresh impe­tus when Ayrault’s Social­ist Par­ty came to pow­er nation­al­ly in the late 1990s. The plan then wound its way through a slow and tor­tur­ous­ly com­plex process of stud­ies, com­mis­sions and advi­so­ry com­mit­tees.

Although Syl­vain Fres­neau claims the farm­ers “could make one call and block Nantes with our trac­tors in half a day,” the real­i­ty is that the farm­ers alone could not have delayed the project as long as they have with­out help from a sur­pris­ing quar­ter: the main­ly 20-some­thing rad­i­cals who call them­selves “ZADists.”

Their name derives from the French acronym for “devel­op­ment zone,” the gener­ic name giv­en to the area where the air­port is to be built. The ZADists have delight­ed in appro­pri­at­ing the acronym for their own use, but with var­i­ous new takes: Zone To Defend, or Zone of Defin­i­tive Auton­o­my, among oth­ers.

Since 2009, the activists have been occu­py­ing the fields where the air­port is to be built. Some squat in aban­doned farm­hous­es or homes opened up to them by locals who refuse to sell. Oth­ers spent the win­ter in inge­nious­ly con­struct­ed cab­ins set up deep in the wood­ed and mud­dy scrub­land out­side the vil­lage.

“With­out the ZADists we wouldn’t have kept the land,” admits Syl­vain Fres­neau.

Up to sev­er­al hun­dred ZADists live on the site at any giv­en time. Police con­trol access to the zone with check­points at road cross­ings, but the ZADists avoid them by sim­ply cut­ting across fields to their camp­sites.

ZADists have also built their own for­ti­fi­ca­tions, ram­shackle assem­blages of wood, wire, mat­tress­es and hay bales. The entrance is con­trolled by ZADists who cov­er their faces with scarves and hoods, not only to ward off the cold but also to hide their iden­ti­ties from the police post­ed at the road cross­ing bare­ly 100 yards (meters) away.

Clash­es between the two sides are com­mon. On a recent vis­it, ZADists who all iden­ti­fied them­selves by the pseu­do­nym “Camille” described an expe­di­tion the night before in which they suc­ceed­ed in splash­ing some police with paint, traces of which were still vis­i­ble on the road.

For the farm­ers, the fight is most­ly a mat­ter of keep­ing their land. The ZADists, on the oth­er hand, say they have wider, lofti­er goals. “Against the Air­port … and its World” is one of the slo­gans spray-paint­ed on signs around the zone.

Some of the ZADists have tak­en part in anti-glob­al­iza­tion and Occu­py move­ments across Europe. They see the move­ment to sup­port the farm­ers of Notre-Dame-des-Lan­des as an exten­sion of their goal of “learn­ing to live togeth­er, cul­ti­vate the land, and increase our auton­o­my from the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem,” as their web­site explains.

“It’s a bit utopi­an, but some­times you need some utopia,” said Dominique Fres­neau. The farm­ers’ appre­ci­a­tion for the ZADists’ ener­gy and the atten­tion they’ve brought to their fight against the air­port is mixed with bemuse­ment at some of their rad­i­cal posi­tions.

At meet­ings between the two groups of allies, Fres­neau admit­ted that “we clash” some­times. But more often they find ways to work togeth­er. Some farm­ers have used their trac­tors to set up a pro­tec­tive bar­ri­cade around one of the encamp­ments. A ZADist who was also a grad­u­ate stu­dent in agri­cul­tur­al stud­ies helped a farmer com­plete a geo­log­i­cal sur­vey of his land. Farm­ers bring in food and build­ing sup­plies for the ZADists.

In ear­ly April, a com­mis­sion set up by Ayrault to try to calm the debate over the air­port deliv­ered its report. It rec­om­mend­ed fur­ther eval­u­a­tion of the cost of expand­ing the Nantes Atlan­tique air­port instead of build­ing a new one at Notre-Dame-des-Lan­des, and sug­gest­ed that addi­tion­al noise, traf­fic and envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies be car­ried out.

The gov­ern­ment wel­comed the commission’s report, say­ing it under­scored the need for the new air­port. Oppo­nents, mean­while, said that on the con­trary it bol­stered their case that the new air­port should be scrapped. In any event, the activists said, all the new stud­ies will delay the start of work on the air­port, like­ly push­ing back its open­ing from the orig­i­nal­ly planned 2017 date.

Ecol­o­gists went as far as to cry vic­to­ry.

“As it stands, car­ry­ing out all the rec­om­men­da­tions called for in these reports amounts to a ‘mis­sion impos­si­ble’ and post­pone the project indef­i­nite­ly,” the Green Par­ty said in a state­ment.

Mean­while in the fields around Notre-Dame-des-Lan­des, farm­ers and activists are not going away.

Their next action is Sat­ur­day, when they plan a day of plant­i­ng, clear­ing and repair work at their camp across the site of the future air­port.