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.’
– Ludo, in his 30s, occupier 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