"I had never come to the zad before" is collaboration between occupants of the zad, film director Leo Leibovici, The laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination and star of "American Horror Story" and "Falling Water", Lizzie Brochéré. The short film invites us on an intimate journey through the liberated territory of the zad of Notre-dames-des-landes, against an airport and its world, in search of hope in these tempestuous times.
It is also an invitation for all to come to the zone on the 10th of February to celebrate the movements victory against the airport with a carnivalesque celebration of 50 years of struggle and the future of the zad. For more details see: www.zadforever.blog
from Crimethinc.com:
Learning from 50 Years of Struggle at Notre-Dame-des-Landes
On January 17, 2018, the French government announced on television, via the voice of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, that it had given up on pursuing the highly controversial project of building a new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL). This decision capped five decades of political, economic, legal, environmental, and personal struggle. The airport was to be located approximately 30 kilometers north of the city of Nantes in western France; instead, the site became la ZAD—the Zone a Défendre (Zone To Defend). What began as a small protest camp grew into a world-famous space of autonomous experimentation that lasted almost nine years.
At the very moment we are publishing this article, a massive police operation has invaded the ZAD to evict it. The French government was prepared to lose the fight to build an airport, but no state willingly cedes autonomy to anyone within its territory. The ZAD’s moment of triumph as a single-issue struggle may have spelled its doom as a space of contagious freedom.
Yet the state alone could never destroy such a vibrant project. As we will explore in detail below, dynamics that emerged from within the occupation enabled the police to resume the offensive. In some regards, this pattern is built into the life cycle of movements based around concrete objectives; but in other regards, what took place at the ZAD is avoidable, and we should make a point of learning from it if we hope to create permanent autonomous zones.
The similarities to the story of Standing Rock are obvious. In the US, starting in April 2016, thousands of people mobilized to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through North Dakota. Following months of clashes with the police, President Barack Obama announced that the Army Corps of Engineers would deny the permit for the last leg of the pipeline; protesters declared victory and many left the camp. Within a couple months, Donald Trump’s administration reversed the decision, the police evicted the last stragglers in the camp in a brutal raid, and the pipeline proceeded after all. The ZAD and Standing Rock offer cautionary tales about the perils of victory.
As one zadist wrote presciently to the occupiers of Standing Rock at the peak of the latter movement,
“All the things you dream of: do them now, while your enemies are reeling, trying to figure out their next angle of attack. There won’t ever be less repression, less police and private security, less drones and dogs. I personally regret not pushing harder before our possibilities shifted, not taking things to the fullest expression they could have reached. I hope you won’t have these same regrets.”
In the following text, we trace the history of 50 years of resistance to the airport at NDDL and analyze the internal dynamics that set the stage for today’s police raid.
READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE: https://crimethinc.com/2018/04/09/la-zad-another-end-of-the-world-is-possible-learning-from-50-years-of-struggle-at-notre-dame-des-landes
Check THIS too!
READ: https://zadforever.blog/2018/04/11/a-call-for-intergalactic-solidarity-actions-everywhere-to-end-the-destruction-of-the-zad-of-notre-dame-des-landes/
Thanks, Seth!
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