being sought out.
The occupation movement in action: in the forest with Biotope
Among the prophets of doom and gloom who began to show up on the zad and attempt to move the airport project along were a new type: environmental experts, like those from the Biotope Company, mercenaries of greenwashing, hired by Vinci.
In the beginning of 2011 we saw the Biotope experts arrive, they came serenely in a little company car, dressed like you or me: running pants, hiking shoes and jacket, a little kerchief around the neck, a walkie-talkie in their pocket, a notebook, some sample-collecting equipment: little nature lovers! Once I ran into Inga and Oscar in the Rohanne forest leading one of these guys out. I got there not knowing the situation, I give Oscar a kiss, then Inga and then the guy, I thought he was one of us … Inga gives me a dire look and whispers: ‘He’s Biotope.’ ‘What? He’s a dope?’ ‘NO, HE’S BIOTOPE!’
That time, we let him leave in his car. We knew they’d be back. We began to research Biotope and its ecological engineering companies that are supposed to ‘protect and work for the environment’, and that are in the service of the giant corporations and their rotten projects. We ran into them more than once in the following weeks and we talked with them. And we still don’t know if it was bad faith or complete candour, but they refused to acknowledge that they were there to help build an airport. They believed they were there just to observe the newts and the frogs. And, what is more, they found their jobs pretty cool: being outdoors, hiking … We decided to organize and make them understand that they were not welcome. For that, it wasn’t enough to just follow them everywhere. From that moment on, when we ran into them, we were wearing masks and we blew up their cars.
So, after several amusing incidents, the experts’ cars came back but now accompanied by a car belonging to a security firm, Securitas. So we would show up, 10 or 15 of us around the car. The rent-a-cop didn’t have time to understand what was happening when he saw 15 masked people who said: ‘If I were you, I’d do nothing.’ And he sits in his car while the Biotope car blows up in front of his eyes. And a little later the expert’s documents are stolen out from under him. After that, they came with the Biotope car, a car full of police, and more police to escort the Biotope guy, along with a Securitas car with a guard to protect the two cars … That was when they first began sending helicopters overhead too. It was pretty panicky – we weren’t used to it. At that time, too, we discovered the best tool to blow up tires. Piercing a tire with a knife is pretty dangerous, but with a metal tube ripping off the tire valve, you twist it and it pops off directly. So, we had that great thing, everyone had one in their backpack along with a headlamp: The Tube! … The cops were powerless, we could see them arriving from far away. I remember an action where we were talking with a guard who had been left behind to watch over the cars. We saw the cops coming back with the Biotope guy, but they couldn’t see us, they didn’t realize there were a lot of us. The Securitas guy was panicked, he told us he wouldn’t do anything, and we told him he’d have to do without his car, and then he told us it was his own car! He told us about his shitty work contract, the lousy schedule, the measly pay, and on top of all that they made him use his own car! So, at that point, someone said, ‘OK, let’s calm down, put the tubes away.’ Because his story sounded true. On the other hand, the cop’s car was blown up, and everyone dispersed into the countryside, with the background noise of the helicopters and our hearts beating.
– Shoyu, occupier since 2010, member of a vegan cooking collective
In the spring of 2012, trials against the occupiers and their habitats occurred one after the other. The state was preparing to intervene, and media campaigns about the ‘ultras’ and the ‘riff-raff’ on the zad intensified their attempt to divide opinion, sometimes with the help of spokespersons from the Green Party, despite its being officially engaged in the anti-airport movement. At the same time, pressures, financial offers, and expropriation measures multiplied vis-à-vis the property owners, renters and farmers. Some of them cracked under pressure and accepted expropriation – others held firm and refused the AGO check.
In response, for the first time, a demonstration was organized in common between the occupiers and the associations. On 24 March 2012, more than 10,000 people accompanied by 200 tractors marched through Nantes, bringing with them a bit of the bocage and gallons of paint to decorate the walls. A few weeks later, the opponents, farmers from the zad, ACIPA militants and elected officials began a hunger strike that lasted 28 days, up until the presidential election. They extracted from the new government the promise not to evict the legal inhabitants and farmers before a certain number of legal appeals had been tried.
As for the squatters, they were expecting for several months to be evicted, without knowing what they could do to prevent it. Training and tools nevertheless began to be put into place in preparation for D-Day: pirate radio, a network of walkie-talkies, medical equipment, canteen, resting places … And then, pretty much everywhere, posters and pamphlets already began to announce a meeting to be held on an as-yet-unknown date: whatever happens, four weeks after evictions begin, reoccupations in great number of the Zone to be Defended would ensue. The movement was trying to get a head start.
Autumn–Winter 2012: Facing Eviction
On 16 October 2012, the Loire-Atlantique prefecture took up the offensive and launched what it officially called ‘Operation Caesar’, in a brilliant excess of arrogance in the country of Asterix. The forces of order were to expel the occupiers from the zone and destroy the houses that could legally be destroyed, in order to permit construction to begin. The operation was supposed to remain secret right up until it began and last just a few days. Certain of its outcome, the subprefect even declared that ‘when there are 150 of them hiding in a barn, they won’t last long’. This strategy had been envisioned by the occupiers for some time, and various ideas and tactics had been imagined in order to resist as long as possible.
Additionally, in the previous week, a concordance of convincing leaks and hints made it certain that an important operation was being prepared: for one group of inhabitants, occupiers, and collectives fighting the airport, this was an undreamed-of godsend: there was time to alert the networks of supporters to prepare for police invasion.
‘So Caesar, caught in the mire?’
Even though expected, the attack was confusing because of its size and rapidity. 1,200 police mobilized, so that 600 were there permanently during the day, while the number of occupiers was estimated to be less than a hundred. In the first two days, a dozen living spaces were emptied of occupants and destroyed; vegetable gardens were ravaged. But the military had not yet gotten as far as the Rohanne forest to dislodge the cabins perched in the trees. Other habitations targeted by the operation were still standing, like the Sabot and the Cent Chênes. The barricades, the harassment of the forces of order, but also the daily departure of the police at the end of the work day, allowed the resistance on the terrain to manifestly disrupt operations. Every evening at 6 p.m., the police convoys would leave to the sound of electric saws preparing new barricades and pickaxes digging new trenches into the roads. The nights were awake with a thousand gestures, large and tiny, designed to throw a wrench in the works the next day.
It was also the first confrontations with the cops here, where we had shields and where we could move through fields and stick low to the ground. ‘Over here!’ we would call out to each one, to provoke them, it became almost a ritual. One time there were four barricades in the Sabot field where most of the conflict took place, where there was a tent with coffee-making equipment. You could rest for a moment there, eat a sandwich, drink a coffee while everything was blowing up 50 yards away. At the beginning, I wondered: ‘Where are the tractors? Where are the folks who were supposed to show up?’ Little by little I saw them coming, taking up the cops’ time along the roads, then the Vacherit was opened up continuously and became a logistical centre for injuries, it was surreal. I remember saying to myself: ‘At last. It’s good, we aren’t alone.’
