A group of architects, artists and constructors (born and raised in 93) launched a counter-project that envisages the restructuring of “Galion” and of the neighbourhood, which does not imply projects of speculation and gentrification (the project excludes property developers). The counter-project designed collectively for the dwellers of the neighbourhood foresees the transformation of abandoned buildings in a centre of urban agriculture, the construction of a centre for the arts and popular culture managed by residents, and the transformation of the market square (that will be moved inside the “Galion”) in a space for neighbourhood democracy, which will host assemblies of residents and new cooperatives, trying to rethink the productive activities of the local territory. The strength of the movement, steeply growing during the last months, resides in the fact of being a vector of political subjectivization for the inhabitants of French banlieues through, for instance, the struggle for public housing that the donors neglect on purpose. The resort to empowering strategies and the engagement in self-government practices by the people and from below has allowed the movement to get past the boulevard périferique (Paris’ ring road), tracing new alliances. Since last summer, the movement has been involved in the struggle for refugees and sans papiers (without papers), denouncing the colonial practices of immigration shelters, and committing to the endorsement of self-government strategies. Furthermore, LREM has tightened an alliance with ZAD, the movement opposing the construction of a new airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, that has occasioned several moments of interchange between the militant experiences. The discovery of a long-term, victorious struggle and of the biggest experiment of self-government in France has allowed LREM to import and adapt “zadist” tactics to an urban context.
some sectors that have been part of the experience of Nuit début will translate into a joint candidature for the municipal elections in 2020; this may be the occasion to question the neoliberal and neo-colonial project of Macron’s La République est en marche.
References: Deluz-Labruyère Joëlle (2004). “Les grands ensembles ou l’impuissance de l’utopie: L’exemple d’Alger.” In Frédéric Dufaut, Annie Fourcaut, (eds.). Le monde des grands ensembles, Paris: Créaphis, 183-198. Fredenucci, Jean-Charles (2003). “L’urbanisme d’Etat: nouvelles pratiques, nouvelles acteurs.” Ethnologie française 37, 13-20. Kipfer, Stefan (2013). “Urban Marxism and the Post-colonial Question: Henri Lefebvre and ‘Colonisation’”, Historical Materialism 21.2, 76–116. Kipfer, Stefan (2016). “Neocolonial Urbanism? La Rénovation Urbaine in Paris”, in Antipode 48/3, 603-625. Lefebvre, Hernri (1978). De l’état IV, Paris: Union générale des editions. Rigouste, Mathieu (2009). L’ennemi intérieur. La généalogie coloniale et militaire de l’ordre sécuritaire dans la France contemporaine, Paris: La Découverte.
The fight to defend the “Galion” has also permitted the movement to enter the Assemblée contre le Grand Paris, that reunites different collectives implied in territorial struggles against urban renewal projects in the Ile-de-France. For the first time in French recent history, a convergence has taken place between the struggles of the racialized working classes residing in the banlieue, and those of young precarious workers rebelling against the state of emergency and the neoliberal government of crisis, as happened during the movement against the loi travail et son monde (a set of neoliberal job reforms) in 2016. The alliance with
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