Earth uprisings: more than a thousand demonstrators in Nantes

June 21, 2023

About a thousand people, according to the organizers, 1,200 according to the prefecture, gathered Wednesday evening in front of the prefecture in Nantes in support of the Uprisings of the Earth, the dissolution of which was announced that same day in the Council of Ministers.

“Whatever the name of this collective, we are the weed that will continue to grow for the common good,” Mathilde Peyrache, 39, secretary of the Sud Solidaires 44 union in Loire-Atlantique, told AFP. “fully assumes its mobilization” alongside them.

Several unions (CGT, FSU, Solidaires) participated in the rally in Nantes where many activists, marked by the long struggle against the airport project at Notre-Dame-Des-Landes finally abandoned, are particularly sensitive to this dissolution in the context of the ongoing climate crisis.

“The Earth Uprisings are the only chance for our generation to get out of it,” said Esther Le Cordier, 19, an anthropology student and member of the movement. “We won’t be able to stop our anger because we can’t tell young people that it’s going to be fine. It’s scientifically false,” she added.

The members of the Nantes support committee announce new gatherings in France on June 28 and call for action in “a thousand ways” in the period to come.

Several dozen rallies were scheduled for Wednesday evening throughout France in support of the collective, accused of violence by the government.

In Lille, around 200 people also gathered in front of the prefecture.

“The uprisings are civil society reacting to the climate emergency and that does not correspond to the economic interest of the government,” Martin Stachowicz, 23, a student at Sciences Po, told AFP.

For Valérie Maniglier, 55, unemployed with disabled status, “a group that says that the destruction of the environment has to stop, that obviously supports each other”.

In Toulouse, between 200 and 300 people gathered, noted an AFP photographer. Among them, several members of the La Voie est libre collective, opposed to the construction of the motorway to link Castres to the Pink City, according to which, instead of “acting in the face of climate change, (…) the State prefer to break the thermometer”.