At Bure we won’t go mushroom-picking anymore.
#Étédurgence
In a forest, machines pull out, uproot and tear down hundreds of trees. For the last few days, caterpillar tracks plough the ground still soaked with the many spring rains. Private security guards march through the mud. These busy people are kept safe by the shadow of the subtly preserved woods, but a few trees are not enough today to hide the ongoing disaster anymore.
These machines are from Andra, the National Agency for Nuclear Waste Management, which intend on digging out here their nuclear garbage dump. This forest is Lejuc Woods, the village woods from Mandres-en-Barrois. It was stolen from the villagers last summer after an absurd trade-off, the legality of which they contest : they have already laid two judicial pleas to stop the process. Andra expects to dig two huge wells here, which makes these pleas a critical issue. These wells would eternally be exhaling the hydrogen produced by the containers forgotten in the depths of the Earth.
We are now drawing a red line. This new territorial hold-up would mark the beginning of CIGEO, a burial project for 99% of the French radioactivity. And yet, their atomic garbage dump doesn’t have any legal existence. It is based only on crazy scientific speculations and the will of stupid politicians to perpetuate the ongoing nuclear disaster.
Twenty years of internal colonisation, using bribes, political pressure and bullshit theories hidden behind technocratic language didn’t succeed in turning off the anger of a land chosen for its weak population density. The last sham public debate, in 2013, was happily boycotted . Two years later, IN THE SUMMER OF 2015 hundreds of people came to this little part of France to join in an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalistic camp. Since then, in the depth of winter, a new base for resistance was grounded. Our vegetables are now squatting on a piece of ground bought by the atomic dump project. In early June, over a thousand opponents gathered in front of the lab for a joyful weekend of punk concerts, active hikes and a little bit of fence-shaking now and then.
We cannot stand the sound of trees cracking under their machines’ assaults. We are still only few, but in the last days, we have been reactive and have multiplied the walks in the woods. We left behind their security guards, avoided the cops, and faced an anti-riot police line. On the field that they imagined open and free, we tried to raise barricades, dug trenches with pickaxes and pushed their fences down. What we modestly opened in this forest is a front, the one they carefully try not to offer us anymore.
We have to defend it together. All means are necessary to prevent the woods from being destroyed and fenced out with sharp barbed wires. Its destruction would create a new desert, which is the necessary environment for nuclear proliferation. We are thinking in terms of picnics, walks, and inclusive protests. We are also imagining sabotages, occupations, and other decentralized actions.
This round is being played right now and we know that this summer will be critical. Our only limit is in our numbers. Some have already begun to join us. As we have learned from the ongoing protest movement: when we are many, we do as we like.
Let’s meet right now and take back the forest!
And let’s be many on June 19th, 11a.m. in Mandres-en Barrois, where we will head out for an endless picnic.
Information: vmc.camp / burestop.eu / burezonelibre.noblogs.org / pandore.at
Contact: sauvonslaforet@riseup.net