” To be one of them “. It is with these two words that Justin* describes his presence at the camp organized by the Uprisings of the earth in Maurienne (Savoie) against the Lyon-Turin high-speed rail line. This 30-year-old agricultural worker, accustomed to environmental struggles since his early youth, “regretted not being able to be Sainte-Soline”. Between professional activity and family life, it’s difficult to “be there” every time. Less far from home, therefore, he did not want to miss this “historic” weekend of mobilization.
A weekend that “allows us to reopen a file that seemed closed for ten years,” said Lorenzo, one of the movement’s Italian spokespersons during a press conference marked in particular by the overflight of a helicopter. of the gendarmerie.
“The chosen ones ahead! “, the talks fail
Like Justin, who came with three friends, a little more than 3,000 people made the trip to this deep valley dominated by several peaks, on which the winter snow is finally melting. However, the sun is crushing, this Saturday, when the procession sets off around 1 p.m., heated by the speeches of representatives of the various organizations. “The briefing! “, demanded several times the audience, finding the time long and in a hurry to leave in demonstration, although prohibited by the prefecture and whose route was kept secret until his departure.
Behind the head banner announcing “The mountain is rising”, mingle young people with camouflaged faces, activists equipped with helmets, umbrellas and gas masks, older people protecting themselves from the sun under a straw hat. “Take care of yourself,” a lady whispers to a group of young people donning protective gear. “Fill up with stones, you have to fill the tunnel,” says a young woman in black bloc clothing, ironically. It is done in numbers, well served by the railway line along a good part of the two kilometers of route which separates the base camp, located in the town of La Chapelle, from the first police checkpoint.
The procession then stops a few hundred meters from the position held by the gendarmes: “The elected officials in front! “, is it asked, so that those present, like the parliamentary leader LFI Mathilde Panot, who came alongside several elected Greens and LFI, try a negotiated solution. Reinforced banners and some 300 to 400 determined demonstrators then take the front of the procession. The talks failed and, the elected officials gone, the pebbles quickly ended up flying in the direction of the gendarmes, who prohibited the demonstrators from crossing a bridge spanning the departmental road, the A43 motorway and the Arc river.
“You will not pass” announces a banner of the procession featuring Gandalf and his famous replica of the Lord of the Rings. They probably didn’t think it would be them. It’s most definitely panache. Brief clashes continued sporadically until almost 6 p.m., to the rhythm of the overflights of the gendarmerie helicopter. A hundred demonstrators, among the 300-400 most determined, cross the river with strong current, to briefly occupy the highway.
Facing the bridge of the gendarmes, a few barricades are formed before the demonstrators decide, under the pressure of the action of the gendarmes and exhausted by this day, to turn around.
The procession returns to its base camp, making the afternoon battlefield quiet for a short time, before cars and trucks move through it again. A retreat in good order and in song: “I tell you, I tell you, I tell you / Cursed be the war / Cursed the tanks, the guns, the fighting”, intones a man under his balaclava. On the way back, a body of water. Ideal for a collective bath. You have to soak up the sweat and tear gas in a “sweet mix of eroticism and politics”, notes a young woman.