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Title: To Seize the Moment, Still Author: Anonymous Date: Winter 2019 Language: en Topics: Yellow Vests, riots, blockade, radical movement, insurrectionary, Avis de TempĂȘtes, The Local Kids, The Local Kids #3 Source: Translated for The Local Kids, Issue 3 Notes: First appeared as Saisir l'occasion, encore in Avis de tempĂȘtes (Bulletin anarchiste pour la guerre sociale), Issue 13, January 2018
âThere remains (for all those who do not maintain that âpeople are
complicit and resignedâ) the hypothesis of autonomous intervention in
struggles â or in the fairly extensive acts of rebellion â that arise
spontaneously. If we are looking for a clear expression of the kind of
society the exploited are fighting for (as one subtle theoretician
claimed in the face of a recent wave of strikes), we might as well stay
at home. [âŠ] But who said that when workers come out into the streets on
strike, the economy cannot be criticised elsewhere? To say what the
enemy does not expect and be where they are not waiting for us. That is
the new poetry.â - At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and
its False Critics, 2001
While the militant entomologists continue in their dusty offices to
dissect the composition of the heterogeneous movement of the yellow
vests â not intersectional, proletarian, progressive or mute enough,
depending on the taste â most of the anti-authoritarians ended up
plunging into the battle, including those dragging their feet. Certainly
while telling themselves and rightly so, that after all a social
movement is nothing else than what each person makes of it. In the same
way that before the Christmas holidays the school pupils entered the
dance, or that demonstrations on Sundays started happening with women in
yellow vests to put the spotlight on patriarchy, without mentioning the
small troops of syndicalists who here or there try to reconquer ground
by organising their own block. For a lot of people, in the end the
question pertains to the classical mechanisms of politics, by adding
rage to the anger, a tag to a slogan, in a contest of claims and
presence tied to a quantitative vision of struggle. Inside such a
framework it isnât surprising that the vultures prowl who smell the
possibility of a bit of power after two months of movement and veiled
appeals from the state (by trying to organise steward teams and approved
routes, by passing from the television studios to future electoral
lists, by trying to monopolize the existing assemblies).
The fact remains that this movement is not just a sequence of riotous
Saturdays or deliberative assemblies. And if many focus on these moments
in terms of a contribution so as ânot to leave the terrain open for
reactionariesâ, it must be clear that from the beginning we are also
witnessing a multiplication of direct actions on weekdays, from which
the autonomous and diffuse character has the advantage to make them less
controllable and to allow a continuity in case of a return to normality.
They first started from the occupations of roundabouts, mostly blockades
close to home and in small groups (toll booths, commercial or industrial
zones), thereafter bit by bit through sabotage according to the
imagination of each. Why limit oneself to a ritual day of confrontations
when one can also on any night destroy everything that oppresses us? And
who knows, why wouldnât these aimed attacks fuel each other by
multiplying on one hand in good ideas and on the other in a subversive
game of to each its own? Is a social movement of this type â open and
unpredictable â not fertile grounds for such a game, everyone from their
own bases? Just to, for example, contribute to identifying the enemy, to
deepen the revolt, to undermine its recuperators, to enhance our
projects, or simply to seize the moment to carry through what we
normally have more difficulty in achieving?
If we are interested in the effects of contagion then take for example
the media, from which everyone can experience the role of mouthpiece of
power. The 26th of December during the evening in La ChevroliĂšre, south
of Nantes, the blockade of a printing centre of the Sipa group stopped
the distribution of 180,000 copies of Ouest-France (editions of Vendée
and Loire-Atlantique), of Presse OcĂ©an and of Courrier de lâOuest
(edition of Deux-SĂšvres), all already printed. The night of the 11th of
January in Anzin (Nord), the printing centre of La Voix du Nord is
blocked, preventing the distribution of 20,000 newspapers in the
Valenciennes region. The same night yellow vests in Auxerre surrounded
the printing centre of the Centre France group, blocking the
distribution of thousands of copies of Journal du Centre (Nevers) and
République du Centre (Orléans), and delaying the distribution of
LâYvonne RĂ©publicaine (Auxerre). The same happened, but with less
success because the cops cleared the barricades of flaming pallets in
time, on the 4th of January in Houdemont (near to Nancy) at the printing
centre of the Ebra group (Est RĂ©publicain, Le RĂ©publicain Lorrain and
Vosges Matin) and the 10th of January in LâIsle dâEspagnac (near to
AngoulĂȘme) attempting to block the distribution of the Charente Libre
newspaper. And let it be clear, each time it took only some dozens of
determined and well-informed persons to shut up the regional propaganda
for a moment. This didnât stop the virtual distribution of newspapers,
but weâll come back to that.
On another level; in the big cities that are since some weeks the
theatre of regular clashes (Paris, Toulouse, Caen, Bordeaux,
Montpellier, Nantes, Besançon, Rouen, Perpignan) or less regular (Dijon,
Epinal, NĂźmes, Saint-Nazaire, Lyon, Lille, Marseille, Le Mans), besides
the street furniture, the banks are typically a preferred target.
Including where the store fronts werenât used to this sport: in
Saint-Nazaire on the 5th of January, besides an abundantly stoned police
station and the burned entrance gate to the prefecture, the dozen of
banks in the town centre were systematically trashed. In Epinal on the
5th of January, besides barricades and an overturned police car, two big
banks were devastated. In NĂźmes on the 12th of January, besides the
second attempt at burning the tax centre and the destruction of six
surveillance cameras, a dozen of banks in the city centre were
consistently trashed. Even in Marseille, although not known for this
kind of riotous confrontations, there is almost not a single bank left
in the small city centre with its windows intact, while half of the
businesses at La CanebiĂšre [central shopping street] were looted,
trashed or had some kind of trouble at their shop window.
This target, certainly a usual suspect as a cog of capitalism, is also
targeted with a certain imagination outside of the collective moments
and far away from the metropolises, but always with the idea of sparing
it the least possible. In Aulnoye-Aymeries (Nord) during the night of
the 31st of December, the ATMs of 3 banks are shattered with a hammer.
In LodĂšve (HĂ©rault) during the night of 22nd of December, those of five
banks are sabotaged with silicone. In Morlaàs and Pau (Pyrénées) on the
19th of December, the toll goes up to 15 ATMs sabotaged with expanding
foam. In FougĂšres (Ille-et-Vilaine) in the 8th of December, the ATMs of
almost all banks were sabotaged with a mixture of silicone and glue.
Of course, there will always be those who without a formal letter of
intent play along with police speculations. If these actions are
isolated, or if they respond to each other without mediation. Outside of
a movement, who knows if these anonymous acts of sabotage are not the
acts of madmen, competitors or mafias? During a movement, who knows if
they are not the acts of madmen, democrats or fascists? So what? As far
as we are concerned, when the authors are unknown and donât specify
their bad intentions, it is only the action that speaks, with all the
poetry it can hold, the one that breaks with resignation and passivity.
An anonymous action that speaks to everyone that shares it. To each one
who recognize themselves directly.
At a time when domination is embodied in an endless amount of peripheral
structures that can be found at each corner of a street or field, it is
about time to finish off the Leninist myth of the taking of the Winter
Palace, of the taking or destruction of a centre or heart of the state
and capital. Even the too visible neo-Blanquists finally got it by
aiming for a destitution of power from below instead of a conquest from
above, weaving a web that stretches now from a part of the cultural and
syndicalist left to whichever sheep in search of leaders and an
efficient strategy. On the contrary when we neither want to direct the
rebels nor control the revolt, the act of defending and encouraging the
scattered attacks (which doesnât stand in the way of coordination)
corresponds not only with a territorial organisation of domination in
the form of fluxes, hubs and small interdependent units, but also allows
to limit the potential for harm by authoritarians who are always more at
ease in the quantitative and representation.
Besides, if the costly structures like speed cameras (more than 6,000
sabotaged in 2018, of which 500 burned since the 17th of November)
leaves someone indifferent, why not look then to the elected to express
what one thinks of the daily humiliation that they impose? Donât the
powerful have addresses just like the speed cameras? In
Talmont-Saint-Hilaire (Vendée) on the 6th of January for example the
home of a LREM representative was walled in with some fifty concrete
bricks during his sleep. While in Varennes-Vauzelles (NiĂšvre) on the
25th of December the mayor received his Christmas present twice over
with cobblestones against his car and a bottle with acid in front of the
window of his living room. Without mentioning the very fragile windows
of their arrogance on all sides (offices shattered from the PS in Nancy
the 23rd of December and in Lorient the 10th of January, from the LREM
in Nantes on the 6th of December and in Beauvais the 8th of January, of
Génération Identitaire in Paris on the 11th of January).
Besides, if the relentless destruction of tollbooths on the highways
leaves someone indifferent, why not look then to the railroads? Like
those sabotaged railway crossings (9 between Saint-Dié and Nancy the
28th of December, 6 around Bagnols-sur-CĂšze the 29th of December, a fire
in Dax the 9th of January), like those railway tracks barricaded (bars
and tires in Saint-Louis in Alsace the 3rd of January, burning pallets
in Vestric-et-Candiac in Gard the 13th of January) or like those
signaling and electricity boxes next to the tracks burned (Castellas the
30th of November, Carcassonne the 16th of December, Montdragon and
Lapalud in three spots the 20th of December, St-Clair-les-Roches the
24th of December, BollĂšne the 28th of December).
Or more, if the burning of tax offices leaves someone indifferent, why
not look then to the social cops? Like that social security office in
Ajaccio that had its entrance glued shut on the 2nd of January in the
early hours by two yellow vests to block the workers from entering. Or
like the facade of the dole office that was burned at the same time as
three offices from its consultants in Montluçon on the 25th of December.
There is a whole world to destroy with passion to dance a ballet without
end nor beginning, and all these actions that start to waltz from one
target to another, following the hostilities of each one during the
whole week, are actually speaking to any one who is ready to hear them.
And if not one of them speaks to the heart or oneâs own perspectives,
would it be so absurd to contribute something proper? Like for example
those comrades who turned to ashes a vehicle of surveillance technology
after a Saturday riot (Besançon the 5th of January), or those who
elsewhere caused serious damages on the construction site of a mega
commercial centre called Steel (Saint-Etienne, the 31st of December).
âWithout wanting to revive the myth that the general strike is the
unshackling of insurrection, it is clear enough that the interruption of
all social activity is still decisive. Subversive action must tend
towards the paralysis of normality, no matter what originally caused the
clash. If students continue to study, workers â those who remain of them
â and office employees to work, the unemployed to worry about
employment, then no change will be possible." - At Daggers Drawn with
the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics, 2001
Finally, besides multiplying the objectives by being where we are not
expected, another small suggestion starts to emerge here and there in
the movement. One that could inspire those who want to take care of the
pending social problem in a bit of a more radical manner. Even if
blocked at the exit of the printing centres, the newspapers continue to
spread the propaganda of power through the web, and similarly the banks
are essentially not a window but a space fed by electricity where fluxes
of digital data circulate through fibre optic cables. More generally, if
certain structures of the state (from universities to police stations,
from train yards to city halls and prefectures) and capital (from
technological control labs to the military industry, from banks to
commercial and industrial zones) are sometimes difficult to access, this
isnât always true for the fluxes with which they are eagerly fed and
that can be found in electricity transformers, connection boxes for
fibre optic cables or cell towers. Thousands of dispersed structures,
impossible to keep an eye on, and for which the functioning is necessary
for the production and circulation of goods, but also for control and
repression. It is thus maybe not surprising that a part of them have
been damaged over the last two months of this movement.
In Montélimar shortly before Christmas, on the 22nd of December, some
fifty yellow vests got organised to loot the trucks leaving the
logistical hub of Amazon, and they also took care of building four
barricades of trolleys from the neighbouring supermarket and putting
them on fire, of arming themselves with stones taken from the walls
running along the companiesâ premises, then they punctured the tires of
the trucks and opened the trailers after tearing off the cables linking
them with the cabins. But they also set fire to an electrical
transformer in a nearby street, to interrupt the street lights and the
supply of the commercial zone. Thus Orange [telecommunications company]
had to replace almost 2 kilometres of underground fibre optic cables to
restore the internet in the area, the fibre melted because of the
combined effect of the burning of the barricades and electrical
transformer.
In Bordeaux during a riot on the 8th of December that notably ravaged
the tramway network of Keolis [public transport company], a big fire on
the tracks of the tramway at the Cours dâAlsace et Lorraine [main
street] melted one of the cables of the ground-level power supply,
making necessary huge nightly works to restore the traffic as fast as
possible (200,000 euros in damages). In Caen where the riot on the 5th
of January took place along 2 kilometres of a construction site of the
tramway, providing the rebels with materials, the one of the 12th of
January followed a similar route and certain rebels had the brilliant
idea of not only burning the pylons along the tracks, but also of
setting fire to the interiors of the ground-level metal sheaths covering
the electricity supply, causing considerable damages.
To understand the vital importance of the electricity networks in terms
of the destruction of a structure of the enemy, we could mention the
example of the tollbooths of Bandol, in Var, of which the burning in the
night of the 17th of December has not been the most relayed by the
press, but of which the consequences for Vinci have been the most
serious. Four months later the eight lanes are still closed because of
the amount of repair works to be done. Besides the burning of the cabins
of the tollbooths, the unknown persons also set fire to an underground
gallery of the electricity network. As a consequence âmultiple
kilometres of cables have burned [and have to be replaced], according to
the workersâ, in the words of the local journalists to explain the
durable effect of this sabotage.
Outside of the notorious Saturdays that donât seem to end despite the
repression, merry nightbirds have also started to identify the vital
fluxes as an assured way of blocking the economy. In Saint-Vulbas on the
20th of December they dislodged the cabin of a hub of fibre optic cables
from the industrial zone of Plaine de lâAin (Pipa). Next they opened it
with a crowbar in the middle of the night, before placing a tire and
some newspapers in front of it and then pouring over it an inflammable
liquid. Almost fifty companies have been left without internet
connection directly due to this fire and indirectly some dozens more
since the nodes are connected to each other.
In a similar way in NiĂšvre during the night of the 31st of December,
âmasked individuals moving in vehicles with their number plates
concealedâ, according to local journalists, have burned technical
telephone boxes in six different districts (Guérigny, Pougues-les-Eaux,
Fourchambault, Varennes-Vauzelles, Saint-Aubin-les-Forges, Murlin)
causing serious telecommunication network cuts. Numerous businesses and
companies have thus been left without internet.
In the same vein, several cell towers have burned over the last month:
in Saint-Julien-des-Landes (Vendée) the 11th of December, in Bernis
(Gard) the 23rd of December along the highway and in Casseuil (Gironde)
the 24th of December. As said in the text published in this bulletin of
the previous month concerning non-consensual contributions, âwe donât
think that it fits directly into a struggle stuck in the technological
cages. So what?â
To seize the moment is above all a matter of autonomous ideas and
perspectives, that should at minimum have been developed before such a
social movement emerges. But it is also a matter of an open eye and an
analysis of what surrounds us. Because our actions are never totally
separated from the ongoing social war. Thus, unless one thinks itâs not
worth it, are there no possibilities in the subversive game for each to
their own so that the attacks can multiply by nourishing each other?
Certainly in a period like this one. Un peu dâimagination, que diableâŠ