Reflourishing the road of the barricades

Position of the ZAD in Saint-Denis, Dionysian support commitee to the ZAD of NDDL and the struggle against the airport and its world. (this text was read at the general assembly at the wardine (in the occupation zone ZAD Notre-Dame-des-Landes in france) on tuesday, may 2, 2017

About the D281, or road of the barricades, and what we are fighting for.

If we support the ZAD in NDDL it is because we would like to see it become a Definitive Autonomous Zone (Zone d’Autonomie Définitif) which can inspire and reinforce others, it is (among others) because we are anti-capitalists.

This means that we are against the laws of private property, from wich we should accept any imperative imposed by those who possess the land or places of life. The land belongs to nobody - even those who work on it should only have usufruct, right of use.

It also means that we are against productivist agriculture, whether small or large, agriculture that uses harmful fertilizers or pesticides on life and subjects the territory to the constraint of machinery that serve, first of all, an imperative of profitability. These machines come from the same world as the airport, let’s not forget it. And this form of agriculture has also been imposed by capitalist witchcraft - by indebtedness, manipulation, competition - transforming peasants once autonomous into stakeholders in spite of themselves and of the world that oppresses them.

If we support the ZAD NDDL, it is also because the possibilities it has opened up are anchored in the reality of a territory, committing us to live and organise there. But also, above all, to liberate it from the dominions which are deployed there to exploit it in favor of the totalitarian system of commerce.

From this liberation, the road of the barricades is one of the most beautiful emblems which have been given us to see. A road, at least since the Roman Empire, is the instrument par excellence of Power.

Do not just block a road to protest, like so many social movements, but make it, by the force of our hands and our bonds, a place of struggle that becomes a place of life, creation, sharing, it is countering in advance the recuperation of our desires in claims, by starting now to build a habitable world.

When the road of the barricades became the road of the chicanes, and now becomes the road of the speed-bumps, that once a "victory" obtained the zad becomes a small village, maybe a little more alternative than the others, that would be on the contrary the symbol of our defeat, even without an airport.

We understand the complexity of a territory, and the deep diversity of the components of the airport movement. But we have not engaged in this struggle to defend the property of a few and their right to pollute water and soil to fuel the capital markets.

Above all, we know that preventing the construction of an airport will in no way interrupt the destruction caused by capitalist society, well nested in the usual operations that we often reproduce without even noticing it.

With this text, we do not intend to dictate to anyone his behavior, simply to affirm the political position at the foundation of our involvement in the struggle. We understand that inherited practices will not be changed at once. But we also know that we must start somewhere. We therefore call on those involved in the fight against the airport, particularly in the agricultural sector, to question their relations with the world that want to give birth to the airport: their relationship to property, the market and money, their reproduction of a productivist model, even on a smaller scale, even under the "peasant" label.

We are in solidarity with those who, beyond the airport, struggle against its world. As such, we take the following position: the Zad committee in Saint-Denis would like to see the road to the barricades re-flourish, and will support and participate to any initiative in this direction.

Contact : zsd@riseup.net