since 2011
And so, Operation Caesar did not end on 16 October at 10 a.m., unlike what was announced on the media by a somewhat harried prefect. The operation was bemired to such a point that the resistance continued for several weeks, in a common impetus uniting all the groups and their numerous supporters. Farmers’ agricultural machinery from around the region reinforced barricades made of heavy telegraph poles and imposing bales of hay, when they didn’t themselves serve as obstacles to the police convoys.
I remember one General Assembly where there were quite a few people from outside along with people from the zad. It was chaotic, but we began to put together the structure for a long-term resistance to the evictions. With Julien, for example, the ACIPA office in Notre-Dame-des-Landes was used, so that food supplies could be taken there before being moved to the zad, finding ways to not be blocked by the police barriers. I was getting around in my van in which I could carry everything I could to the inhabitants of the zad – there they loaded things onto tractors and drove them across the fields to make deliveries. We were able to get through the police lines.
– Cyril, in his 30s, farmer, joined struggle at time of the
tractor–bicycle march organized by ACIPA in 2011
The houses and buildings that could not be cleared out, of which most belonged to inhabitants opposed to the project, became so many spaces of welcome, places to sleep and regather strength. Radio Klaxon was going full force, on airwaves pirated from Radio Vinci Autoroutes, its news bulletins enabling the coordination of actions and copious insulting of the police, who were listening. At the same time, the ‘external committee’ group put into place its newsflashes on the website zad.nadir.org, which made it possible for thousands of people outside the zone to keep abreast of events almost in real time.
If the resistance on the ground could not prevent the early destructions, its tenacity managed to arouse considerable sympathy. While the prefecture looked ridiculous trying to check the movement with a series of arrests, the supporters from outside the zad came in great number, populating the muddy fields with tents and caravans, or bringing dry clothes and food. Those circles close to the occupiers had begun to arrive with the first alert, soon to be joined by farmers and members of the opposition collectives, who made their way, more and more, onto the terrain. Dozens of people outside of any militant network arrived to take part in the battle.
The police checkpoints set up at the principle crossroads of the zone to keep control of the territory while waiting for the end of the legal pause accorded by the justice before the Rosiers could be evacuated (sometime in November) were harassed by some and bypassed by others. Galvanized by its own determination, the common resistance became organized for the long run. Soon the cabin at Vrais Rouges was draped with an amusing banner: ‘And so, Caesar, stuck in the mire?’
During the physical confrontations, the antagonisms internal to the movement were momentarily overcome and the relation to what was considered legitimate, possible, or violent was shaken up. Everyone, each in his or her way was taken up, body and soul, with the effort to defeat the enemy: in the media, logistically, legally, physically. An insolent hope rose up, the idea that we were not destined to be crushed by the backhoes of territorial development.
That hope took on a real shape on 17 November, when, on the date set by the preventative call of the occupiers, the demonstration of reoccupation attracted more than 40,000 people onto the zad and resulted in the collective construction all day long of a new hamlet: the Châtaigne. All those who were fighting against the airport, whether it was for a few months or for decades, knew that a decisive moment had been reached. But the prefecture believed that it was still possible to destroy the symbol and rid itself of the ‘cyst’.
On 23 and 24 November, hundreds of police tried to retake the Chat-Teigne* and to evacuate the newly reconstructed tree cabins. In response to this offensive, farmers and committees blocked the major axes and bridges of the region. Demonstrations, blockades and occupations took place as well throughout France. Thousands of people joined the skirmishes in the Rohanne forest where the Nantes prefecture was converging. The police wounded a hundred or so demonstrators, but in vain: they lost the battle.
The evening of 24 November, the government announced the end of the operation and the creation of a ‘Dialogue Commission’ whose explicit purpose was not to question the validity of the project, but rather to explain it better to the crowd of troublemakers who certainly didn’t seem to understand it. That very evening, a permanent police occupation of the crossroads of the zad began that would last five months. The next day, 40 tractors came and encircled the Châtaigne to defend it. Dozens of new occupiers moved to the zone and a great period of reconstruction began.
The local committees
If some local committees were created in preceding years, largely within a radius of a few dozen miles around the zad, 200 new committees were born during Operation Caesar, everywhere in France and outside the country too. In these committees could be found the same heterogeneity that characterizes the movement: card-carrying members of left political parties, anarchists and a number of people without any precise affiliation – all carried away by the reverberations of the movement. The committees relayed what was happening on the zone and joined up with local combats.
When I went there for the first time, things were heating up in the Rohanne forest and I was super shocked. What I saw going on, the police violence, it frankly put me over the top. And it hasn’t stopped enraging me. I couldn’t imagine that it could be so violent in France just to impose on you what they want, it really shocked me, such a thing was inconceivable. This is a so-called democracy … That’s when I said to myself: ‘Have to do something’. But I didn’t know too much what, I didn’t know many people, and the people I knew didn’t share my ideas. I was a bit isolated, I had to find people, especially since my husband isn’t at all militant. So when I saw in the paper a committee was starting up in my town, I went. Because it isn’t easy when you are alone to find people who you don’t know and tell them that you want to do something.
– Anne-Claude, member of the Blain support committee
The ‘Naturalists in Struggle’
The ‘Naturalists in Struggle Against the Airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes’, supported by certain associations to protect the environment, was created after the evacuations. By conducting inventories of the terrain, organized walks, and denunciations of the environmental good intentions of the pro-airport people, they gave material and weight to the ecological preoccupations that animate many of the opponents to the project.
When I came to the zad, I was more of a naturalist than a militant … I couldn’t help getting involved in an inventory of what could be found on the zad and making a map of it. I was by myself and didn’t talk to anyone. I tried to once during one meeting but someone yelled at me and said, ‘Why not spend your time looking for Merovingian vases!’ Then came the moment of the evictions when, because of the media attention, other better-known naturalists started to get interested in the subject … We wanted to make it known that in addition to the people who lived there, the houses, the farmers, all that, there were also beautiful plants, rare animals, with the idea that that might help out legally too. But we didn’t talk much about the legal side, we wanted to keep the surprise factor and also because we weren’t sure what we would find. And just like me when I made my first inventory, the naturalists who came found the richness of what they found incredible when they looked at it closely. In the end, we located new protected species among the plants and amphibians and showed that some of those species could endure only thanks to being on the zad … And just a few weeks after the creation of the ‘Naturalists in Struggle’, there we were, 200 of us, on a horribly foggy and frosty day, when there was absolutely nothing to be seen in the nature. But it didn’t matter, there were folks who had come from Alsace or Provence, and all the local zealots. This
