Activists from the NGO “Last Renovation” hit hard this Friday evening, temporarily blocking the A6a motorway in the Paris region and interrupting a performance of “The Magic Flute” at the Opéra Bastille in Paris.
A dozen activists temporarily blocked the A6a motorway at Arcueil (Val-de-Marne) towards Orly airport around 6:30 p.m.
According to images posted on social networks, scenes of tension erupted between protesters and sometimes violent motorists.
The police began to intervene around 6:30 p.m. and the action ended ten minutes later. At 6:40 p.m., traffic resumed as normal, according to the collective’s Twitter account. The blockade lasted 40 minutes in all and eight activists were arrested.
“This Friday, October 28, around 6 p.m., a dozen citizens supporting the Last Renovation civil resistance campaign blocked the A6a motorway near Arcueil,” wrote the association, which fights for the renovation of colanders. thermal, in a press release.
The aim of the action was to “force the government to adopt an ambitious plan for the thermal renovation of buildings by 2040, the first step towards a significant reduction in France’s carbon emissions”, according to the press release.
Other actions planned
In the evening, a 25-year-old member of the same collective interrupted a performance of The Magic Flute at the Bastille Opera. “Around 9:30 p.m., he invited himself on stage and then clung to the decor using an anti-theft device in order to alert the public to the danger of climate change and remind the government of the imperative to act at the height of the emergency,” the NGO wrote in a statement.
“What is celebrated in this room will no longer exist. Even as you gaze upon a representation of the beauty of the world, outside, the real world burns and crumbles. And yet the government does nothing,” wrote Victor, the play’s disrupter.
The collective specifies that non-violent civil resistance is the “best chance to obtain a real change” and announces “the beginning of the third wave of disturbances” which “will last at least six weeks”.
On the model of the British NGO “Just stop oil”, “Dernière Rénovation” has already carried out actions of “disobedience” since the spring at the Roland-Garros tennis tournament, then by interrupting the Tour de France cyclist and blocking the ring road of Paris. Six activists will be tried on November 22 in Auch (Gers) on the charge of “obstructing the circulation of vehicles” on the Tour de France. On October 16, an activist of the movement also burst onto the lawn of the Parc des Princes in Paris during the Classico PSG-OM.