Dear friends,
Last weekend, 30,000 people gathered in the French countryside to protest against a water megabassin — a huge open air water reserve used to support industrial agriculture and proven to be a disaster for water tables and more generally the environment. This was part of a day of action organized by the collective "les soulèvements de la Terre" (Earth's Uprisings).
The State deployed more than 3,200 police officers armed with weapons of war. More than 4,000 grenades were thrown at protestors injuring countless protestors. Two people are still in a coma, fighting for their lives.
Since then, evidence proves police forces actively prevented emergency services from rescuing the victims. The Minister of Interior launched a procedure to disband Earth's Uprisings, as a form of legal repression.
Our message is a call for solidarity and we hope that you'll endorse it and share widely.
We acknowledge that some of you experience oppression of this kind on a day-to-day basis, under regimes that can even be more brutal. We also acknowledge that the use of weaponry and legal tricks have been first and foremost deployed in France to target people of color. We're not pretending that what we're facing here is unique: it is part of a wider system of violence, domination, extraction and racism that we are committed to fight against, today more than ever.
With love, rage and heavy hearts
The demonstrations in Sainte Soline against the megabassins and water grabbing started weeks ago. The March 25 police response was calculated to inflict fear that it is neither wise nor safe to demonstrate opposition to the government’s policies. We will not be cowered.
Today, we hold in our thoughts who was injured on March 25 along with the two activists who are still in a coma. We think of all those who faced a military repression designed to terrify and kill. Against all reason, we saw a repressive set-up of unprecedented brutality, going so far as to obstruct help.
On Tuesday, March 28 demonstrations against pension reform were in full swing throughout France. They included many acts of solidarity for those injured in the repression in Sainte Soline, where the megabassin is being built. While the demonstrations were happening, on March 29 French Minister of Interior (G. Darmanin) announced that he was initiating a procedure to disband the "Earth's Uprisings."
Disbanding Earth's Uprisings, this last-minute panic-maneuver of the Minister of Interior, is another gross attempt to make people forget the brutal repression he orchestrated. This underhanded plan was actually "leaked" to the press in December 2022, in the first of a series of articles to expose the profile of "radical ecologists activists" who "move away from the rules of the Republic".
What we understand from the interventions of the ministers of this government is that they seem determined, carried away in their own feverishness, to use the "ultra-left" label against everything that gets in their way. This notion is recycled and now perfectly encompasses the idea of "opponent", whatever the shape of opposition takes.
In this case, the government has used a double strategy. On the one hand, it trashes eco-terrorists, black blocs, and radical environmental activists for parasitizing "legitimate movements for the preservation of the planet." On the other hand, it slyly cuts off fundings to all the associations for the defense of the environment that fight to slow down the ecological disaster.
Thus dozens of social, environmental and cultural associations suspected of not subscribing to the "Republican Pact", or just too critical for their taste, have been refused funding, investigated, banned from consultation bodies, and put on mysterious blacklists that circulate from department to department.
Nothing here surprises us. What amazes us is that they can think that these old tricks are enough to stop a fundamental revolt against the continuous destruction of life.
The Earth's Uprisings are a growing coalition of forces. As the months go by it is a whole constellation of movement groups together in struggle: collectives, groups for the defense of the environment, farms, naturalist groups, popular canteens, peasant trade unionists, scientists in rebellion, unions, autonomous groups, popular education movements, elected officials, people of all ages and all horizons, who meet and organize themselves under the banner of Earth's Uprisings. No law can disband it.
Today, it is this government that the majority of the country's inhabitants want actually disbanded. So, to give some flesh to their inquisition, we, who sign this oped and all those who will not fail to join us, will make public our belonging to the Earth's Uprisings.
We will therefore be in the rallies in solidarity with the injured of Sainte Soline and for an end to police violence, this Thursday at 7pm in front of public offices, as well as participating in the local committees of the Earth's Uprisings that we are calling for today to be created everywhere in the territory and beyond.
We are all rising up against the vision of the world and of life that this government embodies, against the destruction of natural environments, the disappearance of arable land, the monopolization of water, the increase in the legal age of retirement — which is only a screen for the unjust sharing of wealth, against the sometimes fatal mutilations that they have been inflicting for too long on our friends, on our children, on our comrades.
We are rising up. Each from our place. Each in our own way. Earth's Uprising movement cannot be dissolved because it is multiple and alive. One does not disband a movement, one does not disband a revolt.
We call on everyone to join us to render this attempt at suffocation null and void. We collectively represent Earth's Uprisings.
Go to the link to sign https://lessoulevementsdelaterre.org/en-eu/blog/no...
les soulèvements de la terre
Länk: https://lessoulevementsdelaterre.org/en-eu/blog/nous-sommes-les-soulevements-de-la-terre
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