2023-06-11 21:34:17
About a thousand people took part in a traveling demonstration on Sunday in the south and north of Nantes, at the call of a group of environmental activists, to denounce the exploitation of sand for industrial purposes.
In the morning, activists of all ages, leaving Saint-Colomban (Loire-Atlantique) traveling for the most part by bicycle or on tractors towards Nantes, carried out a first action of “civil disobedience” which consisted in uprooting plants of lily of the valley and the pipes that irrigated them to replace them with seeds of buckwheat seeds.
This action aimed to denounce the intensive use of water and sand, explained the demonstrators. This colorful procession brought together 1,500 people, hundreds of bicycles and 30 tractors, according to the organizers.
“LREM Free the Radishes and the Lamb’s Lettuce”
The demonstrators, who traveled about thirty kilometers, displayed signs on which one could read: “LREM Free the Radish and the Lamb’s Lettuce”, “Eco-resist against the liberal-terrorists of the climate”, or even “Darmanin, if you look for terrorists, go see Lafarge in Syria instead”.
The demonstration, with a procession also starting from the north (in Héric), was launched at the call of a group including Earth Uprisings et head in the sand, an association that fights for the protection of this resource.
A convergence of processions
The two processions converged to gather in the afternoon in front of the University Hospital of Nantes where a third group was present “Hosto standing! which demonstrated against the construction of a new university hospital on the island of Nantes.
The demonstrators of the three groups, who were between 1,200 according to the prefecture and 3,000 according to the organizers, then marched to the premises of Nantes Métropole where they covered the entrance door of the building with a mixture of straw and earth. .
“A symbolic way of marking that it is time to move on to ecological construction and renovation rather than destroying and rebuilding constantly for the sole profits of the concrete industry,” explained the organizers in a press release.
The day passed calmly, with gendarmes along the convoy, in front of the CHU and Nantes Métropole.
“We cannot continue to dry out our soils”
“We are going to be faced with a major drought next summer, we already are, and therefore we cannot continue to dry out our soils, to artificialize all our bocage”, estimated Julie Laernoes, EELV deputy for Loire-Atlantique. , present, like other elected officials, at the demonstration.
The starting point of the southern procession was in Saint-Colomban, where there are sand quarries whose extraction “disfigures the landscape, annihilates the bocage and deeply affects the water tables”, according to a press release from the Land uprisings, which the government is considering disbanding.
“The quarries are a target of choice to bring together all those who fight against the artificialization of land, in Loire-Atlantique and elsewhere”, denounced the environmental movement.
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