France: Communiqué from occupiers at the Nantes airport site

By SnakeArbusto, 99GetSmart

Tuesday, in the early hours of the morning, the socialist-environmentalist government of France unleashed its attack dogsto break the resistance that had established a presence at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Department of the Loire-Atlantique) in protest of the proposed new airport. It has taken this government less than six months in power to reveal its true face to the general public – the face of hatred against those who dare try to oppose its policy of spreading concrete everywhere. More than 1,000 police began what can only be called a mop-up operation to expel residents who are opposed to the project and who – for months and in some cases for years – have continued to live on the future construction site, and to destroy the houses they had built.

The police order is being methodically put in place: After the expulsions of the Roma camps and of the various squats, including the CREA in Toulouse, all the social revolts that are certain to arise out of their crisis are now being targeted.

The proposed new airport, like all the grandiose and useless construction projects (freeways, high-speed rail lines, the new nuclear reactor with its high-tension lines, etc.) is being given a forced birth. The productivist takeover of spaces is in no way a response to the real needs of the population, but rather to the need of capitalist multinationals (in this case Vinci) to maintain their logic of profit at any cost – even at the price of repression and environmental destruction. The discourse of this government, led by Jean-Marc Ayrault – who [as longtime Mayor of Nantes] is the leading promoter of the “Ayraultport” – about “sources of growth and jobs” bears witness only, in a capitalism that is straining to find new sources of profit, to the permanent and unfailing support of the French State for this moribund and deathly model, for this “forward retreat” into social and environmental devastation. Faced with resistance from the populations, these so-called “private partnerships of public interest” also reflect the will of the power in place to continue to subdivide and maintain ever-increasing control over our common life spaces. First there was the episode of the “pigeon” entrepreneurs, and then the refusal to confront the layoff plans in the automotive industry. Now, this act of provocation against the social movement shows the obstinacy of the government in cleaving to its productivist model.

We call on everyone to demonstrate solidarity with the inhabitants of the ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes by all means at our disposal.

Signed by the following citizens’ groups:
Alternatifs
Comité poitevin contre la répression des mouvements sociaux
Collectif poitevin pour l’arrêt immédiat du nucléaire (copain)
Démocratie réelle maintenant – Poitiers
Droit au logement (DAL 86)
FA86
Les Amis de la Terre
NPA86
OCL Poitou