[Squat!net]

The French State has been spreading word that it will evict the whole of the Calais Jungle, meaning the homes of 10,000 people, by “the end of October”. The latest rumour is that the attack will begin on 17 October and will feature a new weapon: blinding laser cannons developed for use against Somali pirates, now to be used for the first time against Africans and other migrants on European soil.**

Other talk is that the eviction will take just “three days”, and that not only the self-built jungle but also the official Jules Ferry day centre and maybe even the state-built Container Camp will go. Comrades from the ZAD (occupied zone of resistance to the airport project in Notre Dame des Landes) also believe that their own planned eviction may be delayed so that the state can first throw all its forces at Calais.
[Read More]

–> October 8th-9th, 2016

For over 50 years, farmers and locals have resisted the building of a new airport for the French city of Nantes (which by the way already has one). Now in these rich fields, forests and wetlands, which multinational Vinci want to cover in concrete, an experiment in reinventing everyday life in struggle is blossoming. Radicals from around the world, local farmers and villagers, citizen groups, trade unionists and naturalists, refugees and runaways, squatters and climate justice activists and many others, are organising to protect the 4000 acres of land against the airport and its world. Government officials have coined this place “a territory lost to the republic”. Its occupants have named it: la ZAD (Zone À Défendre), zone to defend. [Read More]

From Ill Will Editions

“[B]eneath the surface of that idea – that truism, black lives matter – is an unsettling challenge. What would it mean to create a world, or at least a space, where that actually was true?” [1]

A Cop-Free Zone in Carbondale 

On Friday night a couple dozen folks converged on the local autonomous infoshop in Carbondale, IL for an illegal dance party in the street. In addition to locals, cars arrived from Bloomington, Chicago, and St. Louis to participate. The plan was to throw an unpermitted street party with free food and loud music, and as things progressed and energy rose, to block off the street and visibly polarize the space against state violence with large handmade banners declaring it a cop-free zone.

[Read More]

This Wednesday 23rd March, four 2012 hunger strikers from Nantes, accompanied by four activists, met with the Calais hunger strikers. Here is their testimony:

“We are here in support, in sympathy, in bringing our experiences, but certainly not to bring advise.

Compared to theirs, our experiences were very light: they have been on hunger strike since March 2nd, isolated in the southern part of the jungle that was destroyed, with a background noise of bulldozers flattening rubble, and the polce that surround them. [Read More]

No injuries, nor arrests, instead numerous facades revisited

Nearly 400 people marched in Nantes in the context of the week of resistance. The lead banner, decorated with the cartoon bird “the king and the mocking bird”, called for resistance against the states of emergency, whilst referencing Kobane to Kurdistan, Ferguson to the United States, and Notre-Dame-des-Landes in France.

300 police offices were supposed to prevent access to certain areas but they couldn’t prevent the redesigning of facades of some public buildings, banks, estate agencies and the Socialist Party office located on the path of the demonstration.

Demonstrators dressed in black, masked, and some with gas masks – with fire-extinguishers, paint and egg bombs – were able to indulge in paint and political graffiti on the walls of the city. [Read More]

This article [from Rabble] is about developments in the ZAD (‘Zone to Defend’), the site in Western France of a 9+ year occupation against the construction of the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport by French construction giant, Vinci.

Things have been heating up in France following the decision by a Nantes court to press ahead with the eviction of the last remaining official residents on site, who refused to sell their land. The court ruled that, of the residents, the farms and three families could be evicted straight away, but gave a two month delay to the eight other families. With this legal hurdle out of the way, it looks likely that attempts will be made to evict the occupations in the coming weeks.

Attempts to build an airport have been ongoing since the 60s, with resistance taking various forms since 1972. The site has been squatted for the past nine years. Occupiers are calling on people to get ready to act on the first sign of eviction. [Read More]

This Friday, January 22nd, at dawn, people decided to blockade the road passing through the middle of the construction site for the new Eurorennes train station and in front of the women’s prisons’ main entrance.

Bins were overturned, oil spilled and the following text plastered on the jail walls and site fences:

This morning, we’re blocking this road with help from some bins tipped over and spilled oil…

Because “the city of tomorrow”, wedged between the business district’s megalomaniac construction site that is Euro-Rennes, its future LGV high-speed rail and Europe’s largest women’s prison, represents itself exactly as dreamt up in the offices of Rennes Métropole’s project. [Read More]

To the defenders of the ZAD,

Solidarity from anarchists in so-called ‘Melbourne, Australia’- the never-ceded indigenous land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, stolen and occupied by the genocidal settler-colonial state.

In response to recent threats of violent eviction by the French State, actions were taken at several locations in Melbourne, the city built on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, in colonised Australia. The actions targetted the French consulate and offices of companies of the VINCI corporate-family linked to the proposed destruction of land at the Zone-A-Defendre [Zone to Defend]. [Read More]

The mobilisation in recent days has been tremendous: thanks to the strength of the demonstration on Nantes’ outskirts, but also due to the actions and gatherings multiplying in dozens of other French cities. It’s clear that the anti-airport movement is denser and livelier than ever. This is because it’s become emblematic of so many other struggles against social and environmental destruction, the loss of agricultural land, climate change, the commodification of land and our lives. It’s also because it sprouts the discovery of inhabiting the world in other ways.

However the government confines itself in its deafness. The farmers and inhabitants of the zad are still threatened by eviction. The beginning of the airport project work is still announced in the short term.

The movement therefore calls for the continuation of actions for the coming weeks, and to pay particular attention to the judgement handed down on January 25th.

All components of the struggle also call for a day of massive mobilisation on February 27th. This mobilisation will be under the banner of stopping eviction threats against farmers and inhabitants of the zad, as well as the airport project’s definitive abandonment. [Read More]

Whilst the cases of the last legal occupants of the Zad were being judged this Wednesday [January 13th 2016], we set out to repaint the red police station facade of the Beaujoire neighbourhood, in the purest tradition of Nantes-style greenwashing.

We’re not fooled: we know well that every court defeat implies a confidence uptake for concreters to go further in the airport project. [Read More]

Lille, France: Support action to the blocking of Nantes’ ring-road

At this very moment in Lille [Saturday 9th January] a day/evening is being held of support to the ZAD of Notre Dame des Landes and the inhabitants that face trial this Wednesday 13th January. More than 100 people gathered in the General Assembly decided to show their support to Nantes protesters that are currently blocking Cheviré bridge. [Read More]