On the 25th of October 2014, the death of a man by the police on the ZAD of Testet marked the beginning of two months of struggle in Toulouse, that continued with demonstrations, public actions and occupations. This movement echoes those of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, Testet, and elsewhere where an occupation was set up to confront detrimental State projects. The different ways of organising and communal life practiced on the ZADs have been put in practice in Toulouse, in spaces momentarily snatched away from the control of the Metropol.
By the Metropole, we are speaking about the authoritarian and destructive organisation of territory, put in place by the State and the multinationals that determine our lives. A real steamroller; reducing environments to their ability to be converted and economically managed, modeling spaces and practices for the market imperatives, and extending in all directions their infrastructural tentacles of steel and concrete. Here an airport, there a fast lane, a dam or a touristic park.
On the ZAD’s like in Toulouse, the issue is the same. It is to regain our political autonomy, our ability to get organised and help each other. But it is also to take back our existence, to collectively defend and keep alive our territories. To re-appropriate what the Metropole seizes from us. To open gaps in this morbid world that generates us developers, to reinsert joy, creativity, diversity and happiness.
One year ago, tens of thousands people converged on Nantes, to express their refusal of the airport and its world, the one that requires the subordination of a piece of farmland in the outskirts of Nantes. This was also to support the ZAD, the origin of another world respecting humanity and life. Facing this popular movement, the State gets tense, represses, mutilates and kills.
The “republican union” was suddenly proclaimed everywhere, accompanied by the militarisation of public space and preparing the ground for new security laws, providing new means of state repression. In regards to these derived changes, we are determined to defend the ZADs to continue developing experiences and communal practices.
There isn’t a month that passes without a minister promising the end of a ZAD. It is clear that we oppose the vanity of the reactions of the ruling class with the power of our actions and our convictions. The ZADs are spreading. We must support them.
The 21st of February in Toulouse, 60km from the ZAD of Testet, let’s gather in numbers again. We will show our creative force during a demonstration, in all our diversity. Each in our way, we will create a new breach in the formatted world of the Metropole. We will reclaim our spaces. This massive and ephemeral gathering belongs to us. It will be the counterpart of the gradual emergence of new waves worn by the ZADs.
Everyone in Toulouse on Saturday February 21st 2015!
ZAD 31 Collective
https://21fevrier2015.noblogs.org/
[Translation by Squat!net, originally posted 13th January 2015]
