benzaden

Great spiritual leader of the ZAD occupation - where the future airport of Notre-Dame-des-Landes is planned to be.

The ZAD - to the developers it is the Zone d’Aménagement Différé’, the differed development zone and for us it’s a Zone À Défendre: a zone to be defended. Either way, it’s a part of the countryside close to Nantes in France, which according to the decision-makers should make way for an international aiport.

Their construction project "Grand Ouest" is an economic platform of international importance stretching from Nantes to Saint-Nazaire, which will form a singular, huge metropolis. Fulfilling this project means taking over the sky, the sea and the land in replacing the current airport in Nantes with a new one at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, but also enlarging the port at Saint-Nazaire and constructing new roads and highways...

Our goals, in coming to live here on the proposed site of the airport, are many: to live on a protest site, where we can be close to those who’ve been opposing the project for 40 years and to have the power to act when construction happens; to make use of abandoned spaces to learn to live together, to cultivate the land and to be more autonomous from the capitalist system.
Site: zad.nadir.org/?lang=en