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Title: ZAD’s Victory Author: Miguel Amorós Date: February 23, 2018 Language: en Topics: ZAD, France, direct action, environment, occupations, resistance, self-management Source: Retrieved on 11th May 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/zad-s-victory-miguel-amor-s Notes: Translated in April 2018 from the Spanish text obtained from the author. See also (current as of April 2018): https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/13/is-may-1968-about-to-happen-again-or-be-surpassed-mass-strikes-occupations-and-the-fight-for-the-future-perfect-in-france/
On January 17, 2018, the French Prime Minister announced the
cancellation of the gigantic construction project to build a useless
airport on land in the municipality of NĂ´tre Dame des Landes. The joy
and happiness unleashed among the resisters of ZAD,[1] farmers,
occupiers, neighbors, friends and sympathizers, reached its clamorous
peak at the festival of February 10, the date marking the expiration of
the Declaration of Public Utility for the stillborn Nantes airport. It
was a moment to celebrate an indisputable victory and to enjoy something
that does not happen very often. Of course, everyone knows that the
struggle is not over, for the State will not allow its plans to be
stymied that easily and will attempt to reconquer the lost ground
sometime in the future, and will threaten legal action, plan
evacuations, and initiate divisive maneuvers and measures to normalize
the situation. Nonetheless, the 1,650 hectares of “bocage”, a kind of
rural landscape of hedgerows and sunken lanes characteristic of the
Atlantic seaboard, will be preserved, and with them, the commons, the
new ways of life and social relations alien to the logic of the
commodity that have been established among its inhabitants. The ZADist
defenders have resolved to build barricades every time that the powers
that be try to recover the territory, and to build a more free future
around an Alternative Agricultural Zone.
The airport project is as old as the protest that has always accompanied
it, but the protest took a qualitative leap forward by abandoning
legalistic procedures and engaging in creative occupation instead. In
the summer of 2009, the name, ZAD—Zone to Defend—was popularized, and
since then the repression directed against the occupiers and the local
inhabitants was enforced in earnest, until its culmination on October
16, 2012 with “Operation Caesar”, a deployment of police forces that
failed miserably and only served to increase the local people’s
solidarity with the resistance. Against all odds, the inhabitants of the
area have been able to reconcile their interests, overcome their
disagreements and present a united front against all the anti-ZAD
initiatives of the multinational corporation, VINCI, its local
cheerleaders, judges and authorities. A community of struggle was
consolidated, supported by numerous committees all over France. In one
way or another, over the years, solidarity proved decisive at crucial
moments, mobilizing huge demonstrations, and it is this persistence that
forced the State to yield. ZAD was victorious. The largest and
longest-lasting occupation in Europe succeeded.
The struggle against the project has now reached a new stage: what is
needed now is to preserve and extend the legacy of the struggle, develop
alternative infrastructures, and engage in self-management of a
liberated territory. The main thing is: to maintain and to reinforce the
institutions of self-government, to avoid institutional traps and to
resist the pressures of the market economy. In short, to forge links, to
establish moral bonds of commitment, cooperation and mutual aid: what
the sociologists call the social fabric. The struggle has ceased to be a
principally defensive one, and has now become a constructive action
based on non-developmentalist relations. Much has been accomplished
(support networks, workshops, collective gardens, kitchens, radio, seed
banks…), but there is still much to do.
It is also necessary to prevent ZAD from degenerating into a marginal
gesture, or from succumbing to its internal contradictions. A “customary
assembly” was created in December of 2017 to mediate internal conflicts
that arose as a result of divergent practices. The same assembly drafted
a list of delegates to represent the different components of the
resistance in order to meet with the emissaries of the State. These
delegates cannot make decisions, but are limited to expressing the
mandates of the assembly (a document that consists of six points). The
assembly makes the decisions. It demanded, for example, amnesty for
those who were threatened by expropriation or expulsion for defending
the bocage, the unhindered right of the occupiers to remain to
participate in the struggle, and a moratorium on the purchase and sale
of land for at least three years, in order to prevent privatization that
would militate against the collective experience. All to bring about a
future without an airport based on the mutual respect of coexistence
amidst a diversity of opinions.
The ZADists do not devote much energy to negotiations; they know that
they are swimming against the current and that the most they can hope
for is to keep the enemy at bay, and gain time to posit new, more
firmly-rooted forms of coexistence on the terrain. They are aware of the
fact that the mobilizations have not ended, and that there are still
problems that divide the occupiers, such as, for example, the question
of the creation of a legal entity to represent the movement; and
finally, they know that the movement’s internal equilibrium is fragile
and the enemy’s resolve is strong. Without mentioning any other
incidents, yesterday the gendarmes evicted the occupiers of the Lejuc
forest, who were trying to stop a project to bury nuclear wastes in Bure
(Meuse). No one can ignore the fact, however, that the movement has
proven that it can stand up to adverse conditions; that it can
concentrate sufficient forces to resist and turn the tide of events; and
finally, that fighting is not a waste of time, and that, sometimes, you
can even win.
Viva ZAD!
For a free and self-managed society!
[1] Zone to Defend [translator’s note].