This communiqué, from the evening of Wednesday 11th April, recounts the mood of the ZAD after 3 days of evictions. The government announced the eviction of the ZAD on the 17th January, along with its abandonment of long-standing plans to relocate a nearby airport to the land. The 31st of March marked the end of the Winter Truce, a legal convention which prohibits squat evictions during the winter months, and ushered in the ZAD eviction starting on the 9th of April.
Choosing this moment for eviction is a strategic move by the government, arguably to divert attention and energies from the wave of strikes currently ongoing across the country. This text was chosen for its zeal, explaining how the ‘convergence of struggles’ sustains the good spirits of the ZAD. The text has been translated to English. The original can be found here.
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Communiqué from Wednesday’s assembly at La Wardine after three days of evictions.
Call from the ZAD to railway workers, to students, to strikers at Air France, at Carrefour, and to all those who struggle.
Against Macron and his world.
From the dismissals resulting from the loi travail, to the sélection at universities, to the deportation of immigrants, we face the same state logic which considers human beings as commodities, the same anti-social bulldozer which attempts to wreck our lives.
However, in the occupied universities and on the picket lines, at the ZAD and in the streets, anger grows and explodes. On the numerous fronts of struggle, activities in reaction to the government’s political carnage, an urgent need makes itself felt: to unite in order that fear switches sides.
Here, in the bocage of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, the resistance to the military operation has the air of civil war: destruction of our dwelling places, armoured vehicles, surveillance drones flying overhead, dog-handlers, grenades dropped from circling helicopters, firearms on show and more than 30 injured yesterday, probably double today, of which many suffer from irreversible injuries.
Despite that, the resistance continues in the spirit of the anti-airport movement: joyous, determined and multi-formed. From the barrages of stones thrown and grey-haired OAPs on picnics, from the parades of tractors at the barricades, from the blazes of mechanical diggers to paintbombs passing by the provisions of the canteens, the energy deployed here is sourced from your solidarities. Yours, of villagers, of farmers, of ancient residents, of the local and international support committees, of all the reinforcements who grow more numerous for each hour which passes. And knowing that the universities are occupied, the trains and planes at a standstill, the supermarkets blocked, makes us feel part of a more global movement which attempts to stop this government in its foolish course towards general catastrophe.
Despite the dispensation of absurd brutality in this operation, which proves that this government now has terror as its only argument, it’s still certain that we’re going to continue to last and construct here. Those of us who know the paths, woods and meadows of the bocage are very numerous. We pull our force from all the rage and hope of all those who want to change this world. The ZAD is un-evictable.
Once we have expelled the armoured vehicles, the helicopters, the ammunition vans and the 2500 cops from our dear bocage, you can rest assured that we will meet again in your lecture theatres, on your picket lines and in the streets to continue our fights.
Thank you for your solidarities, your struggles and your diversity.
The assembly of struggle against the evictions of the ZAD.
[Image courtesy of Guillaume Souvant, AFP]
