The ballet becomes almost familiar: an environmental struggle polarizes activists at the local level. The local organization was quickly joined by the Uprisings of the Earth (SLT), which communicated and amplified the visibility of the mobilization at the national level. An event is scheduled. Suddenly, the Ministry of the Interior made it known that it was worried. strongly. In recent days, the outskirts of the Tarn have begun to strongly resemble those of Deux-Sèvres where, on March 25, violent clashes broke out between anti-basin demonstrators and the police. A note from territorial intelligence obtained on April 17 by RTL indicates that 1,500 to 2,000 people are expected on Saturday April 22 in the Tarn, including “a hundred radical elements”. Several environmental organizations – La Voie est libre, the Confédération paysanne, Extinction Rebellion (XR) Toulouse and the Uprisings of the Earth – announce a weekend of mobilization against the A69 Castres-Toulouse motorway project.
This mobilization, presented as “act II of season 5” of the Uprisings of the Earth, follows Sainte-Soline. Almost a month later, the information alerts to a “high-risk” day, including in particular “sabotage operations on the various construction sites or infrastructures” linked to the A69. These fears contrast with the speech of the organizers of a mobilization presented as “festive and family”, aiming to denounce a project deemed “useless and ecocide”. They are counting on an influx from all over France. To accommodate the demonstrators, camps near the village of Vendine (Haute-Garonne) are planned. What arouse the fears of the prefect, who declared to be “attentive that there is no establishment of zone to defend (ZAD)” around the project. Questioned on Tuesday April 18 on LCI, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin in turn alerted on the “risk” of the presence of “radical individuals” at the demonstration this weekend.
A national qualified as “accident prone”
After the mega-basins, the object of dispute is still an infrastructure. At present, Castres is connected to Toulouse by a 78 kilometer long national road, or an hour and twenty journey by car. To shorten this time and limit traffic on a road they describe as accident-prone, supporters of the A69 project want to build a motorway a few dozen meters from it. According to’impact study commissioned by Dreal Occitanie (the Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing) in 2017, it would “improve travel”, by reducing transport time to 35 minutes between the two cities. The motorway would also be a way of improving the safety of motorists, the expressway being “the safest road infrastructure”. According to the report, it would also be an advantage for “the attractiveness of the South of the Tarn and the development of the territory”, which it would open up. The department has, for the time being, neither motorway nor TGV service. The project is expected by Tarn business leaders, for whom it will “create jobs today and tomorrow” and “boost (the) businesses and create new ones”, according to a manifesto signed by more than 300 of them and available on the Tarn Chamber of Commerce and Industry website.
But its work, started in March, is confronted with a collective of resolute opponents. For several weeks, the village of Vendine, near the route, has become the center of the dispute. An association, led by Thomas Brail, creator of the National Tree Monitoring Group and one of the standard bearers of the citizen collective La Voie est libre, assures on its site that the project “would condemn 400 hectares of agricultural land, wetlands , of forests, of life”. “Given the conclusions of the public inquiry, we were convinced that the project would not be done”, he regrets to L’Express.
“No interest in ransacking the land that remains to us”
On paper, the project has nevertheless been validated unanimously by the public inquiry commission which was to assess its environmental impact. Not without her expressing some reservations, however. In the conclusions of their report published in October, the investigating commissioners insist on “the significant loss of agricultural and natural land” (343 hectares) which they consider “incompensable”. They also note that the cost of the toll – around 17 euros round trip – “will exclude the most modest and will be expensive for the working people”. Prudent, the commission “recalls that the object of the investigation did not relate to the principle of making the motorway or not but to appreciate how to make it” and that it “cannot therefore conclude” on the requests “of the numerous contributions calling for the withdrawal of the project in favor of a development of the RN126”. “It seems ultimately that the choice made among the possible solutions for the fast Castres/Toulouse link is only really justified by the insufficient will of the State and the local authorities to raise the necessary funding for the complete development of the RN126”, she remarks.
So many arguments taken up by opponents of the motorway. “The authorities have been doing everything to make this project for years, too bad if it has become anachronistic, believes Luc*, an activist from XR Toulouse. We believe that given the current climate challenges, we have no interest in ransacking the lands we have left.” The Toulouse branch of XR is taking part in the organization and will be present at this weekend’s event alongside La Voie est libre, the Confédération paysanne, and the Uprisings of the Earth. For a week, the movement has been communicating on its networks to rally demonstrators. The mobilization baptized “A69 road exit”, would be “act II of season 5”, of the carefully scripted action of the organization – act I being the demonstration enamelled by clashes of Sainte-Soline. On the side of the organizers, however, we want to dissociate ourselves from the images of violence that symbolized the mobilization of March 25. “It’s an educational and fun gathering, assures Thomas Brail. The weekend is organized around conferences, concerts, soapbox races… It will be very family-friendly.”
“We are more Molkky than pétanque boules”
Nothing to do, assure the organizers, with the alerts given by the Ministry of the Interior on the hundred or so radical elements to come. At first glance, the organization seems in any case different from that of Sainte-Soline. Already because it is a declared and authorized event. “The prefect takes note of the declaration of demonstration and calls for a constructive dialogue,” she said in a press release sent to L’Express on April 19. They nevertheless prevented, because of “a declaration of demonstration still imprecise”, the “crowds and protest rallies”, in particular in certain surroundings of the construction site. But the authorities show their willingness to have a peaceful discussion with the organizers. Probably because no confrontation has yet taken place on the site – unlike that of Deux-Sèvres, where anti-basins demonstrators and police had already opposed during a previous mobilization, in November.
In the Tarn, the organizers seem to want to distance themselves from these clashes. “We don’t want a Sainte-Soline bis”, assured an activist during an “information meeting” organized online on April 14. “If everyone is welcome, the antifa label is to be left at the entrance, he insisted. That we all find ourselves as human beings, with no label other than pacifists and pro-nature”. Faced with a Ministry of the Interior warning about the risk of violence, the activist insisted on the interest of marking their difference. “The best way to avoid sending back an image that could give weapons to the politicians who lead us is to have an event that happens gently. We are more Molkky than petanque balls”, has he joked. However, the organizers consider it impossible to control the actions of all those present. “We are absolutely not in a perspective of violence, but it is true that we do not have control over the people who come”, notes Thomas Brail.
A call broadcast in circles close to the ultra-left
Difficult to predict, three days before, who will or will not come to the rally. But the circles and the way the event is broadcast give some clues. First, the organizers do not completely exclude the possibility of clashes with the police. On the public and accessible Telegram loop “info A69 22/23”, which serves as an information relay for the demonstrators, they warn: “In view of the current repressive delirium of the government, it is possible that the police seek to prevent us to walk here or there. Everything will be done to avoid their violence without renouncing to express our opposition to the motorway project.” Everyone is invited, they warn, “to judge whether it is appropriate to bring the children to the march or to stay at the camp when the time comes”.
Then, the information meetings ahead of the gathering sometimes take place in very connoted places. As in Valence, in the Drôme, where it took place at the anarchist laboratory, known in the middle of squat militants, close to the ultra-left. The call to participate in this weekend’s demonstration is relayed on the many sites and social networks of this microcosm, such as that of Anti-authoritarian Info Toulouse, Monday morning, or Lyon Insurrection. We also find traces of it on the Telegram loop of Autonomous Action, a small group from Toulouse whose content testifies to the attraction for clashes with the police and vandalism.
Sivens’ trauma
The communication work carried out upstream by the Uprisings of the Earth – and of which the press release mentioned above is a part – largely explains the diversity of the activists present in Deux-Sèvres. Families, casual curious, environmental activists, black bloc practitioners… The movement, which claims its fluidity, had then agreed to aggregate all profiles, but also all methods. From the most placid to the most offensive. The presence of activists like Serge Duteuil-Graziani, a 32-year-old Toulousain still in a coma since the events in Sainte-Soline on March 25, was an illustration of this. Fiché S, close to squat circles, he had for example recently started to frequent the small group of Autonomous Action.
However, the similarities with Sainte-Soline are to be taken with distance. “The Earth Uprisings are certainly not the cause of a dispute that has existed for a long time. The galaxy around the A69 is much more structured around more “institutional” associations such as France nature environment or Agir pour l’ environment, notes Anthony Cortes, journalist and co-author of The coming confrontation: from eco-resistance to eco-terrorism? (editions of the Rock). The arrival of groups belonging to the autonomous or anarchist movement, for example, will be less simple than in Deux-Sèvres”. The memory of Sivens, in the same department, also left traces. Eight years ago, Rémi Fraisse, a 21-year-old young man demonstrating against a dam project, was killed by the explosion of an offensive grenade. “The trauma is still alive in the region so that the possibility of violence is rejected, continues Anthony Cortes. The atmosphere among the demonstrators will undoubtedly be more Gandhi than Malcom X.” Enough to avoid the conflagration?
*Name has been changed