France, 30 000 to oppose Notre Dames des Landes airport construction
On Saturday, November 17, 2012 after 3 weeks of evictions, more than 30000 persons joined the mobilisation to re-occupy the ZAD (1700 hectares of land near Nantes where the future airport of Notre-Dame-des-Landes is planned to be). As soon as the demonstration arrived, 5 pre-assembled structures started to get built: a meeting-room of 80m², a kitchen house, 2 dorms, a toilet and bath block and a workshop. Thanks to a sum of ingeniosity, mutualised know-hows and endless human chains to bring the tons of planks, as well as cross beams, metal sheets and straw needed for the work, the construction showed rapid progress.
The achievement is breathtaking and can only leave large smiles on the faces. These new collective buildings are meant to become a crossing point for all opponents and a headquarter to organise the resistance to the airport construction. The prefecture, who knows what they are about, have announced as of Saturday, that these new huts were “woed to dissappear”. But the land on which most of the reconstructions were made is lent by a private owner, opposed to the airport and also ongoing expropriation. Therefore, there is no judicial way to evict these houses without lenghty procedures, regarding the urbanism laws, to be performed by the prefecture. Everyone who got involved in the reoccupation on Saturday 17, can be reassured that, according to the law, these building cannot be destroyed at least for some time. In parralel to these large constructions, new huts and living spaces are being rebuilt on squatted lands owned by Vinci (the private company in charge of the airport construction). During the whole week, treehouses will nest again in the Rohanne forest. Whether on lent or squatted land, “Zadist” (defensors of the ZAD) call for common defense of each hut with all the required determination. “If they evict us, we resist, and we come back!”
From http://zad.nadir.org
To know more about this struggle against this airport project : read this article