Early this morning, on November 25, 2024, we set fire to the construction machinery of the Charpentier group, particularly those of its public works subsidiary.
The disarming of these machines at the site of L’Oie in Charente is a direct response to this company’s participation in the Mega-Basins projects. Indeed, TP Charpentier is the most involved, whether in Vendée, Charente-Maritime, and of course in Deux-Sèvres. Putting these machines out of commission allows for the concrete halt of ongoing construction sites and serves as a reminder that no one responsible for them is untouchable.
This disarmament is not the first. It takes place in a context where the opposition against the Mega-Basins, its model of water grabbing, and its promotion of agro-industry, has only intensified and deepened for more than three years. This historic struggle has taken a turn by multiplying and diversifying the forms of resistance against these projects. Since then, the movement has continued to expand and demonstrate possibilities to halt the ongoing disaster.
We have marched on these construction sites many times, like on March 25, 2023, when we were more than 30,000 in Sainte-Soline, on a day that will forever be etched in our memories and in our bodies. We have sown crops, uncovered Mega-Basins, made festive incursions, carried out a peasant blockade of the port of La Rochelle, built international alliances, etc. Through these actions, we have made the Mega-Basins sector visible, along with the profiteers who benefit from it. More broadly, we have opened a breach in the fight against agro-industry.
We indeed believe that if the agro-industrial system is a system with multiple tentacles, we can fight it in many places. The mega-basins, the last desperate move of a system in agony, are concrete actions to fight against the appropriation of a common good.
The fight against extractive agriculture is a breach that allows us to reclaim our material and political relationship with food, its conditions of production and consumption. This system destroys our territory, makes farmers disappear, speculates on the fruits of our labor, and actively participates in neo-colonial plundering. Continue reading “L’Oie, Loire, France: Claim of responsibility for arson attack”