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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
10 May 2016
Updated: 04 December 2020
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Jean Demars is a 2015 Fellow and former Housing Lead at Praxis Community Projects. Jean is interested in the nature of complex change within various systems.
Notre-Dame-des-Landes is a small village in a bocage and wetland area, situated 20 miles North of Nantes (France). Wetlands are considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, serving as home to a wide range of plant and animal life.
Notre-Dame-des-Landes has been the site of a struggle between the French state, who decided to build an international airport on the land; Vinci, the largest construction company in the world who obtained concession for the development of the site in 2010; and the local population, who try and protect the land on which they have been living for generations.
Since 2009 it became the site of the first ‘Zone à Defendre’ (ZAD) when the local population invited people to occupy and repopulate the area which had been partly bought through compulsory purchase orders. Occupant-squatters came from radical[1] environmental movements and anti-capitalist struggles to live in the area and link up with the 50+ local groups fighting against the airport and its developers.
Commune for the 21st Century
In contrast to most social movements, which funnel difference and diversity into a unified whole, the ZAD cannot be simplified. For some, it is a local struggle against the building of an airport, whilst others see it as a concrete example of capitalist expansion and environmental destruction. Both these strands still believe in the legitimacy of democratic institutions, considering reform and more democracy to be the response.
Those most committed to social transformation go further in expressing that it is also ‘to defend the possibility of sharing a common future on this bocage’[2]. In order to create and maintain new social relations, another struggle is necessary, this time, against that which is embedded deep within us.
‘The autonomy that is being experimented in the bocage can’t be reduced to our food and material elements. We are not interested in self sufficiency for itself. What is happening here is political autonomy. What we are inventing, through trial and error, is the capacity to collectively decide our own rules.’ [3]
This typifies the depth of the social transformation at stake in the making of the ZAD. It should not be interpreted as some form of self-management, so prevalent in advanced capitalism, but rather as an exploration in modes of being and interacting that break with the imperatives of the market.
Tactics for Social Change
Legal proceedings against the French state have been going on for 15 years with the support of committed lawyers, expert economists and ecologists. Despite irrefutable proof of the damage the airport would cause, and despite the possibility of expanding the existing airport, the law continues to rule in favour of the state.
Outside the legal process, the primary form of resistance is expressed through regular protest marches, demanding the termination of the project. Similarly, some elements of the movement have engaged with existing political parties to access the higher echelons of power and attempt to influence the process and outcome.
Direct action has been an important element of resistance. When evicted by riot police in 2012, occupant-squatters resisted the destruction of farm buildings and refused to leave the area. The local community supported them and organised a re-building event that brought together 40,000 people. Following this, attacks were launched against machinery attempting to enter the ZAD along with acts of sabotage to ensure no preliminary works could be carried out.
Direct Action doesn't stop at self-defence. It has brought together the various elements of the ZAD via environmentalists recording protected species in the area, local farmers sharing knowledge and lending cattle to start a cheese-making workshop, the exchange of seeds, the weekly non-market where produce is exchanged and ‘sold’ for what can be afforded. The list is endless because it continues to be created in the everyday interactions of people inhabiting or engaging in the ZAD, without any external, superior or hegemonic body to arbitrate or intervene.
What lessons can be learnt from the ZAD for ethical leadership?
- Strong ethical principles guiding an experimental daily practice is key to the transformation of social relations.
- The importance of negating what exists as much as creating the new. Negation is a necessary but insufficient condition for the creation of the new. Trying to build participatory communities without first rejecting the current social order will sooner or later bring it against the existing order, whether that is in the form of eviction or recuperation.
- Dispersing power has to be a key feature of the new so that autonomous communities remain non-hierarchical. One consequence of this may be that mass movements are not desirable to build, unless they are the result of individual actions.
The ZAD is a community of struggle in becoming. Its inherent ‘messiness’ is its strength if only those involved don't see ‘difference’ as inhibiting, but the engine of the movement, the affect unleashed on its outside and the potential it can actualise in the everyday. As such the exchanges between local people fighting the building of an airport, and occupant-squatters building a commune for the 21st century are key, even though they could just as easily be exploited by the state to split the movement.
What makes this struggle so important is that it contains the world, old and new, within it and provides a concrete pressure point for people to get engaged in, far away from depoliticised community organising or abstract, even if radical, ideology.
Footnotes:
[0]: Crested Newt is a protected species found in the local area, which has been taken as a symbol for all species that will disappear as a direct result of the armed concrete poured over the wetlands to build the airport.
[1] : The use of the word ‘radical’ need to be reviewed in the current political context where states have been so radical in the imposition of inhumane policies. It is used here in the conventional sense of those seeking transformation rather than reform.
[2] : Defending the ZAD, Mauvaise Troupe Collective, p. 22, éditions de l’éclat.
[3]: Ibid, p.20
[4] : Ibid, p. 20
Further Reading
http://zad.nadir.org/
https://www.acipa-ndl.fr/
Defending the ZAD: A new little book about the struggle against an airport and its world.
Tags:
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
21 March 2016
Updated: 04 December 2020
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What happens when you get people from three different leadership programmes together for a day? The joint workshop with Clore Social Leadership, Clore Leadership and the BBC Senior Leadership Programme did just that.
When I arrived I wasn’t sure what Clore Social Fellows might have in common with the other two programmes, but by lunchtime the three groups were networking, comparing notes and sharing our work. Immediately I found myself talking to people who use theatre to celebrate diversity, cultural events to foster social change and art to promote mental well-being. Not so much difference between us after all.
On any day like this there will be one stand-out moment. For me, and I suspect for many of us, that was 2010 Clore Social Fellow Alexander McLean, founder of the African Prisons Project (APP). He stood out both because of his work with APP and and also his leadership story. Going to do voluntary work in a Ugandan Hospice many years ago, Alexander discovered the appalling conditions in prisons and set up APP to do something about it. It was a brilliant example of doing things with, rather than for, people with lived experience. APP tackles conditions in prisons by empowering prisoners to work on improvements such as enabling prisoners to take correspondence law degrees. Long term, as these prisoners come to the end of their sentences, this will mean that the legal profession will contain lawyers with experience of the prison system from the inside. APP also realised that they couldn’t bring about dignity for prisoners without tackling the needs of prison staff, and so staff began to be included in the work. Rather than seeing them as the problem they also became part of the solution.
Many of us used the term ‘blown away’ to describe our reaction to Alexander’s presentation. Not to undermine the fact that APP is an amazing organisation, but it was also Alexander’s ability at storytelling that impacted us so much. Many of us have been considering using part of our Fellowship budget for storytelling courses, and I suspect those of us who witnessed the power of good stories at the workshop will now be raising that up our list of priorities.
The final speaker of the day, John Kampfner, Clore Social Chair and Chief Executive of the Creative Industries Federation, gave some salutary warnings about the risks in the social sector at present; supermarkets have a higher trust rating than charities. ‘The more challenges there are, the more call there is for inspired leaders’. In Alexander McLean we all saw what an inspired leader looks like.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
01 February 2016
Updated: 04 December 2020
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Almost 100 years ago the famous Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli said: ‘eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.’
I think she got how we feel about food and eating pretty spot on - if only it were that simple to eat well and feel well. In my capacity as Specialist Older People’s Clore Social Fellow (funded by Tudor Trust and John Ellerman Foundation) I’ve taken up the mantle of raising awareness around the rising tide of poor food access, poor nutrition, malnutrition and dehydration among our older population, in addition to chairing Scotland’s first Malnutrition Summit and speaking recently in Parliament to the Cross Party Group on Food about malnutrition. Food definitely feeds the mind as well as the body, but what if you’re not able to get out to shop, what if cooking is difficult, what if poor health means you’ve little interest in eating, and what if most meals are eaten alone?
One of the most obvious, yet under-recognised factors in mental health is the role of nutrition. The body of evidence linking diet and mental health is growing at a rapid pace. As well as its impact on short and long-term mental health, the evidence indicates that food plays an important contributing role in the development, management and prevention of specific mental health problems such as depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Alzheimer’s disease.
At Food Train, our volunteers have been helping older people to access food and eat better for over 20 years with simple solutions to everyday problems. Our weekly shopping volunteers collect shopping lists, offer help with what’s in the shops and then deliver the groceries, making sure our customers get the food they like and need. Our befriending service incorporates food and drink in all activities; the friendship clubs have group lunches, the trips include a great lunch out venue and one-to-one visits always need a cuppa or two.
Our meal sharing service matches local volunteer cooks to older people in need of lovingly home cooked meals. These volunteer cooks visit their matched diner regularly to share extra portions of meals from their own kitchens. Across Scotland today our volunteers are helping feed the bodies and minds of over 2,000 older people, giving joy to their life, contributing to their goodwill with happy companionship and hopefully bringing a welcome boost to their mental wellbeing too.
This blog originally published on Mindwavesnews.com.
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