“ We spit on the life-term slavery of CDI [ unlimited work contract ] as we sit on the daily misery of precarity . What is filling the streets these days is a being fed up with this ever more unbearable world . What is appearing is a refusal of work , a maybe still imprecise but well present conscience that all law is a chain . Here and there , some small jolts in the normality of society are taking place : simmering in which we can see a refusal of daily submission and impotence , a questioning of generalised resignation .” - From the poster We have nothing to defend
“ If we ‘ loose our temper ’, of we ‘ overstep the lines ’, if we are simply breaking everything , it is not because this law will prevent us from succeeding in this society , it is because the slightest perspective of succeeding goes against everything what makes life worth to be lived : beauty , passion , happiness , freedom – let ’ s not measure them .” - From Ceci n ’ est pas une insurrection
“ To break with the schemas of this normality means also to break with the schemas of politics , of consensus , of democratic management . To make an effort to make our ideas and acts understandable does not mean to relegate ourselves to impotence , to renounce to action , to arrange things with those who want to ‘ manage better ’ this system that is structurally based on oppression and domination . The attack against power will never be consensual , not even amongst the exploited and the victims of power . But it is precisely starting from the attack against power , its ideas , its models , its structures and its men , that we want ‘ to meet people ’, no matter if we are students or workers , unemployed or precarious workers , with or without papers . It is starting from a field of shared hostility against domination , against all domination , that we could maybe one day build something different in a collective way . - Sample from Point de vue sur le mouvement contre la loi travail , in Tout peut basculer , March / April 2016
This is how it all started
The birth of this “ movement ” depended on few things : the determination of the secondary school students who were blocking their schools , the improvising of autonomous demonstrations in the mornings preceding the official demonstrations which were joined by “ non-students ”, a wild attitude that expresses itself as well in the strong will to continue one ’ s trajectory despite of the police forces as in the various damage inflicted on capitalist structures which suffer from the first days on ( for example during a wild demonstration of about 100 people that kicked of spontaneously after an assembly and which destroyed about thirty shops and offices on its way ). A lucidity also , which brings people for example to throw out , at the first demonstration , a presidential candidate of the extreme-left during the last elections , the lucidity of those who know that when a politician speaks about revolt , he ’ s lying . The unions saw in it the possibility to strengthen their position towards the government and the representatives of the bosses , when the debates and negotiations about the “ Loi Travail ” where just starting , but their attempt to frame this curious demonstration without watchwords nor flags bumps on refusal : the first fight with the security service [ of the unions and parties ] who tried to stop demonstrators from going to the front of the demo and hand some demonstrators over to the cops . ( That same night , an office of the CGT union had its windows smashed , accompanied by a claim that recalled “ what are the unions : the useful friends of the bosses and the cops .”) We will not retrace here the story of the weeks that followed , but just give some of our observations and questions emerging from different situations .
“ Because , as longs as the metros are transporting the human cattle , as long as the electrical current is feeding the factories of death and the laboratories of control , as long as money is circulating , as long as the screens continue to spread propaganda , as long as the fibre optics and the antennas are insuring our dependence , as long as the arteries of the city print their rhythm on our bodies and minds , as long as …” - A sample from the leaflet Nous sommes contre le travail
The blockades of petrol refineries and stocks which took place at the end of May ( and on a lesser scale , during the days the strikes in the transport sector were effective ) is one of the moments during which , in certain zones and simultaneously , not much lacked for everybody to be affected . The moment on which every person is , through the force of things , brought to see or take sides , because daily routine is not continuing any more , is surely an interesting moment to reach . Maybe we can therefore regret that the separation between the first ones who were implicated in these actions and the union organisations ( through their delegates ) has not been emphasised . For the latter , the stakes were nothing else then reinforcing its position towards the government and avoid letting the situation slip completely out of their hands . But if favouring the emergence of autonomous strikes is not within our grasp , and demands to go on a terrain and in relations that are not ours , the possibility remains to spread other means of action to block and sabotage the production and circulation of different flows ( of energy , humans , commodities ). Less efficient means , but surely more reproducible . Not with the aim to overturn a position in one ’ s favour , but to emphasize or prolong the caused disorder . Concerning transport for example , we have seen in different cities that arsons were targeting and spreading against the rail roads , that signalisation or command cables were cut , that rails were cemented ...
The socialist party which is currently in power , incarnation of the Left , has not only provoked discontent in the opinion , but also collected hostility in acts . End June , we learned that around hundred of its offices and seats throughout France have been damaged , vandalised , suffered attempted arsons , were “ targeted ” ( which seems
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