Friends from here, friends from elsewhere,

We, the evicted and those threatened by eviction, inhabitants resisting the airport project and its world, want to thank you.

To thank you for coming from the neighboring villages of Vigneux and from Turin, from Rennes and from Brussels to participate in this struggle today to rebuild together the material basis necessary to continue resistance on this land.

To thank you for having made this struggle your own, by organizing gatherings, by wheat-pasting, by holding meetings in your marketplaces, your cities and your villages, and by creating local committees...

You expressed our anger against the planners of this project through a great variety of gestures of solidarity. From free toll stations, to parades of tractors; from acts of sabotage to solidarity concerts; from taking over radio stations to sending all the messages of solidarity that have been arriving for several weeks now.

You participated in this huge wave of solidarity; solidarity, a word which has taken on its true meaning today and has spread like wildfire.

It is you, the anonymous, encouraged by unshakeable convictions, who are carrying out this struggle. You, who look neither for the superficial glory of flashbulbs and cameras, nor the privileges and comforts of the position of member of parliament or minister. You, who are humbly among us and who have decided to act instead of merely submitting. The words of the politicians should not drown those of the inhabitants. This is our struggle and it is yours, because it is with you that we will achieve the immediate shutdown of this project and be able to defeat the planners here and elsewhere.

We have always said: “A territory must be defended by those who inhabit it.” And these last weeks have proven that the inhabitants of the Zone defend themselves! An armada of police landed and with their mechanical brooms they swept away houses, cabins, oaks and lizards in a dance of death... We are overcome with sadness and anger in the face of VINCI and the Socialist Green state, who disfigure before of our very eyes this familiar landscape. They ravage nature, they try to erase our memories. Whether they beat us to the street with their batons or compel us to move by harassment, it is always the same violence and the same arbitrariness that they inflict upon us. It is legitimate that we reverse this violence against those who impose it.

In the face of the state, all of our gestures of resistance may seem insignificant, but they are as just as they are necessary. Meetings, demonstrations, defense of our living spaces, collective reopening of abandoned houses, occupation of the forests, restocking supplies, blockading roads, rebuilding, having assemblies... We want to show that we are not merely furniture which they can rearrange however they please: we can organize ourselves, resist and say no!

These weeks are just the start. The struggle is only beginning: the defense of “le Rosier,” the reoccupation of the forest of Rohanne to prevent its destruction, blocking of the construction of the connecting highway, upcoming trials and evictions of the precarious inhabitants and the farmers. There is so much to do. Hollande, Ayrault and the executives of VINCI must understand that there will not be a return to normalcy until the project of the airport is abandoned. Watch out because the more strongly our struggle is rooted in the terrain and the more it will grow!

Our dream is that all of our friends from here and elsewhere will take home a bit of the determination which grew in these fields; that this struggle, nourished by those in Val de Susa, Plogoff and Larzac, will reinforces others in turn.

Our uprising is not limited to Notre-Dame-des-Landes and its airport. While the cameras and the attention are focused here, they continue to evict and pave over the forests elsewhere, every day, in silence... The state oppresses, imprisons, and represses everywhere and at all times. It is comfortable to close your eyes, it is easy to resign yourself, but it is indispensable to revolt. Everywhere, against all of the ’Caesars’ that want to restructure our lives and our lands, we will continue to create hotbeds of unyielding resistance.

Here and elsewhere, we will defend our dreams and grow our revolts into their nightmares!