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VICTORY AFTER EPIC STRUGGLE.. WHO NEEDS POLICE… WHO NEEDS GOVERNMENT ?
A Rally called for 10th February 2018 to defend the autonomous area will likely now become a massive celebration of how we can live peacefully and creatively without authorities. Now is the time to spread the network of ZADs across the planet.
In a communique the famous horizontal community Zone à Defendre (ZAD) has declared a “historic victory” and called for “expropriated peasants and inhabitants to be able to fully recover their rights as soon as possible.”
Up to 300 eco-warriors live in the ZAD: officially the Zone d’aménagement différé (zone for future development), renamed by protesters as the Zone à défendre (zone to defend). The local mayor, Jean-Paul Naud, says 75% of the area’s residents oppose the proposed airport. Critics of the plan pointed out there is already an airport at Nantes just 26km away
The entirety of the land area devoted to the airport project — 1,650 hectares of land declared as being of public utility in 2008 — currently belongs to the State, with the exception of three roads crossing it. The ZAD has argued that this land should be kept in public hands and, rather than turned into an airport, put into forms of public lease for the benefit of the community and wildlife.
Protesters block access to a farm inside the ‘Zone à défendre’. Photograph: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images
Responding to reports that the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport project is now officially dead, reps for the ten-year environmental occupation campaign wrote:
This afternoon, the government has just announced the abandonment of the project.
We note that the declaration of public utility [key to enabling large projects to function and compulsory purchases to happen] will not officially be extended. The project will definitely be null and void on February 8th.
This is a historic victory against a destructive development project. This has been possible thanks to a long movement as determined as it is varied.
First of all, we would like to warmly welcome all those who have mobilised against this airport project over the past 50 years.
Regarding the future of the ZAD, the whole movement reaffirms today:
- The need for expropriated peasants and inhabitants to be able to fully recover their rights as soon as possible.
- The refusal of any expulsion of those who have come to live in recent years in the grove to defend it and who wish to continue to live there and take care of it.
- A long-term commitment to take care of the ZAD lands by the movement in all its diversity — peasants, naturalists, local residents, associations, old and new inhabitants.
To implement it, we will need a period of freezing the institutional redistribution of land. In the future, this territory must be able to remain an area of social, environmental and agricultural experimentation.
With regard to the issue of the reopening of the D281 road, closed by the public authorities in 2013, the movement undertakes to answer this question itself. Police presence or intervention would only make the situation worse.
We also wish, on this memorable day, to send a strong message of solidarity to other struggles against major destructive projects and for the defense of threatened territories.
We call to converge widely on February 10th in the grove to celebrate the abandonment of the airport and to continue building the future of the ZAD.”
and another statement:
”We call for the spirit of the zad to continue to spread, taking a unique path every time, but with the desire to open cracks everywhere. Cracks in the frenzy of security measures, cracks in the ecological disaster, cracks in the tightening border regimes, cracks in the omnipotent surveillance, cracks in a world that puts everything up for sale. In these disenchanted times, the zad and all that it represents, like the struggles of yesteryear and elsewhere, is a glimmer of hope in the here and now.”
Acipa, Coordination of Opponents, COPAIn 44, Naturalists in struggle, the inhabitants of the ZAD.
”Some residents are political activists, reminiscent of the heroes who protested against military installations such as Greenham Common in the UK and Larzac in southern France in the 1970s and 80s, and the tree protestors who fought the Newbury bypass in Britain in the 90s. Others are inspired by the 2008 Kingsnorth climate camp in Kent and the Christiania commune, the historic self-proclaimed autonomous district in Copenhagen, Denmark. For the majority, the ZAD offers an alternative, simpler and more utopian way of life.
”The French media has had a field day: Le Journal du Dimanche recently claimed the “Zadists” – a now perjorative term the zone’s occupants dislike – were gearing up for violence, suggesting there are tunnels, watchtowers, firearms even. Standing near the camp’s “lighthouse” – built by squatters with a flashing light and alarm to warn of imminent police action – Camille dismisses the article as “utterly ridiculous”.
“It’s just another attempt to make us out to be some kind of extremists. Really, it’s complete nonsense. They said we had dug series of tunnels like the Vietcong; in fact, it was one person who’d dug a well,” she says.
There is already an airport at Nantes just 26km away, and that the hedgerows of Notre-Dame-des-Landes have been declared a “zone of natural interest” for their exceptional flora and fauna.
The local mayor, Jean-Paul Naud, says 75% of the area’s residents oppose the proposed airport
To find out more, check out Defending the ZAD, a new little e-book on the struggle against an airport and its world.
The Free 
