Communiqué - The ZAD and the Social Movement: 10,000 Demonstrators Kettled by Police/Army in Nantes

Saturday 14 April 2018

Communiqué - The ZAD and the Social Movement: 10,000 Demonstrators Kettled by Police in Nantes

This afternoon, a march organized by unions and students involving several thousand people began in the streets of Nantes in the early afternoon. 5,000 persons joined them at 4:30 p.m. to demonstrate against the expulsions in the ZAD and elsewhere. The march was highly diverse and included people of all ages. A banner at the head of the march read “SNCF, ZAD, Universités, Vive le commun !” [“SNCF, ZAD, Universities: Long Live the Commons!], and another “Enracinons l’avenir sur la ZAD ! Contre toutes les expulsions” [“Let’s Root the Future in the ZAD! Opposition to all Expulsions”]. The government was prepared to do anything to prevent this visible convergence between the social movement in progress in France and the resistance to the attacks on the ZAD. They therefore decided to block the demonstration at the start of its itinerary, just after the Castle, using an unbelievable deployment of police, anti-riot barriers, a dense and constant cloud of teargas, and water cannons. This brutal dispersion is identical to what took place this week in the ZAD. In the streets of Nantes, as in the bocage, the government is attempting to leave all of us no other path than to flee, alone and isolated. They believe that all it will take is to gas, destroy, and injure until people understand and submit to their extortion. But the collective way resists and always rises again! The revolt against Macron and his world is amplifying, everywhere.