“No more ZAD will settle in our country. Neither in Sainte-Soline nor elsewhere.” In Sunday newspaper, At the beginning of April, Gérald Darmanin announced the creation of an “anti-ZAD cell” in the wake of the violent clashes which opposed, on March 25, anti-bass demonstrators and the police in Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres.
A few weeks later, the prefect of Haute-Garonne said he was “attentive that there is no establishment” of ZAD (“zones to defend”) during a weekend of mobilization in his department. The demonstrators were protesting against the route of the future highway 69, between Castres and Toulouse. The event took place peacefully. Like the blocking, Sunday, May 7, of the A13 motorway by militants hostile to the Rouen motorway bypass project. This proliferation of protest zones worries the Ministry of the Interior, which fears that the number of ZADs will increase in the future.
At the beginning of April, still in The JDD, the Beauvau tenant unveiled a list of 42 sites classified as “more or less hot” potential hotspots. The events registered in the calendar of the Earth Uprisings, a movement present in the organization of each of these demonstrations, are obviously inspected with attention. Mobilization against the Lyon-Turin railway site or for the preservation of the Saint-Colomban bocage, in Loire-Atlantique, in June, rally in the Larzac, in August… Should we expect so many new ZADs? Guillaume Faburel, geographer and professor of urban studies at Lyon II University, thinks so.
L’Express: The terms “ZAD” or “zadiste” have been used a lot in recent months, sometimes to designate different forms of protest. How would you define it?
Guillaume Faburel: A ZAD is generally born from a point of resistance to a large project, but makes it evolve by occupying the place of installation of the project it is fighting. It is both an opposition and a proposal, and it is indeed a novelty. That of making the habitat of a place simultaneously a resistance and an alternative. History is studded with illegal occupations. But, in recent years, we have seen the development of this type of action. This is striking outside major cities, where large developments are particularly plentiful. The activists intend to create decentralized enclaves allowing, according to the activists, to keep projects deemed harmful and deadly at a distance.
Originally, the ordinary definition of the ZAD is the long-term occupation by all means to oppose, to confront. But these initiatives have entered the action repertoire of environmental movements so much that we find temporary ZADs, such as the one around the “gonesse triangle” in the north of Ile-de-France, or the “ZAD Potatoes”, on the plain of Montesson, in the Yvelines. These are very ephemeral ZADs, moments of reunion on the plot of a friend or someone who is won over to the cause. It is a bit contradictory with the original spirit of the concept, which wanted the occupation of the territory to be done over time, in a sustainable way, by making the place an inhabited environment for a long time.
The term “ZAD” therefore covers several realities…
First, note that this term is now used, especially by the authorities, to discredit a protest movement. Then, the zadisme, as I said, developed. It has become a shared mode of action which has echoed and which is widely documented by the scientific literature. From now on, it is part of life trajectories, militant experiences. More and more young people are getting political training by lending a hand or by settling permanently in a ZAD. There is a form of generalization of individual political action by the area to be defended.
Add to this the rise of environmental struggles, and the possibility of new ones emerging increases. This is, for example, the case with the opposition to projects like that of the Lyon-Turin transalpine rail link, which has been fought for a long time locally. There is a non-zero probability that the militants will decide to settle on certain fragments of the route. A few groups have already done this. The Italian No TAV movement already occupies several places. Others could germinate.
Do certain elements make it possible to predict whether a dispute will turn into a ZAD and another, not?
It is largely unpredictable. However, at least three parameters are involved in the possible birth of a ZAD. First, networks, and not only social ones. Second, the age groups. Thirdly, the local ecological organization, and the resistances already more or less durably structured. For the first point, there are exchanges of practices between the zadists. They come to support each other, lend a hand during prepared and organized events. We have here a first element which can announce the arrival of a ZAD: does the call launched upstream by a local organization have resonances in larger networks? This is a landmark of radical environmental activism of the last ten or fifteen years. The goal is to connect and rally.
The idea of foreseeing is antithetical to the very spirit of the ZAD, which is supposed to hatch not spontaneously, but discreetly. Nevertheless, some clues exist. Among them, an important sociological fact: there has been a rejuvenation of political activism by the ZAD. Political cultures are even marked by age groups. Notre-Dame-des-Landes was very enlightening on the issue: the activists present were mostly around 25-30 years old. These people have specific levels of training and educational backgrounds, a fairly high cultural capital. These are characteristics to put into the equation, although older people with other occupations (eg peasants) can also participate. Last point: territories can be conducive to this kind of mobilization in France, because they are subject to environmental pressures and tensions, climate change and rapid ecological upheavals. They become obvious centers of this contestation.
Let’s compare the demonstration in Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres, and the one that brought together opponents of the A69, between Castres and Toulouse. How to explain that two environmental demonstrations against similar scale infrastructure projects had such different outcomes?
If the question of violence and pacifism crosses a lot of militant debates, the difference between Sainte-Soline and the A69 is rather chronological. Both events basically unite the same people. By pacifying the mobilization against the A69, they wanted to show public opinion that activists are not what the authorities say of them, that environmental demands can also be expressed very peacefully, very joyfully. This is even the case most often.
The diversity of political affiliations and ecological cultures is great. The goal at Notre-Dame-des-Landes was, through a militant policy of fait accompli, to come and settle against the rules set by the State. The objective was to come, originally, to live calmly but durably. It’s not about fighting for fun. The tension emerges when the opposing forces come together physically. In the minds of activists, it is a question of taking a step aside, of decentering, of proposing an alternative way of life which can spread and help to overthrow the capitalist world against which the environmental movements are fighting.
Are certain territories more likely than others to host a ZAD?
Some territories are clearly more autonomous than others. They have shown throughout history their propensity not only to oppose but also to develop other forms of life. We can mention the Cévennes, Brittany, Drôme, Haute-Savoie, Ariège, the Basque Country. This does not mean that ZADs will necessarily be formed there, but there is a probability of the formation of local committees, such as those of the Earth Uprisings at the moment. Additionally, you now have national coalitions built around fighting entire sectors. This is the recent case of La Déroute des routes, which opposes the 900 kilometers of planned equipment supposed to see the light of day over the next fifteen years, as the case of the A69 reminded us, or even more recently that of the A133-134, near Rouen.
This movement is therefore in the process of bringing together entities which until now had neither the same objectives nor the same operating methods.
Political ecology is in the process of uniting currents that were only slightly united until now. This can show groups and filiations of thought which cohabited until now but did not come together. In the 1980s, the peasantry joined forces with people who had recently converted to ecology, often neo-rural people disconnected from the big cities, to fight the plan to militarize the Larzac plateau. This exception is likely to become the rule.
For this reason, the wishes of the dissolution of movements like that of the Uprisings of the Earth, expressed by the Minister of the Interior, can seem vain. It will not succeed in extinguishing the dispute, because it is more and more shared, widely disseminated and can be reborn almost everywhere. Zadism is no longer just a few ZADs. It has become a real thought of political ecology, irrigating other currents and other actions.