Trouble 14: Fighting Where We Stand

Greetings Troublemakers
... welcome to Trouble.

My name is not important.

From the endless turf battles
found within the animal kingdom,

to the mechanized
carnage of modern warfare...

the drive to control territory is a
potent and recurring source of conflict.

Yet within the artificial borders that
fortify the so-called “developed world”,

this type of conflict, like all others,
is carefully managed.

Which is not to say it doesn’t exist.

People quarrel with their neighbours
all the time, even in suburbia

… and in places like
Chicago’s South Side,

young men routinely get shot
fighting over street corners.

As groups and individuals,

we face differing types and levels
of conflict in our everyday lives

... but at the end of the day,

the ultimate manager and
mediator of these conflicts is the state.

Through their police,
courts and prison systems,

states enforce laws
that reproduce power dynamics,

restrict our choices,
and regulate our behaviour.

The allocation of resources is determined

by the logic of
the so-called “free market”,

whereby ownership over
land is given official sanction

by the state-backed illusion
of private property.

The key to the state’s
control over our lives

lies in its ability to regulate all
conflict within a given physical area.

It follows, then, that those of us
seeking to steal back the power

to resolve conflicts on our own terms
must first draw a firm line in the sand,

and deny access to the state and its
sophisticated apparatus of social control.

In order to meaningfully
assert collective autonomy,

we must be capable of defending territory.

Over the next thirty minutes,
we will explore three autonomous zones

serving as living embodiments
of defiance to state rule:

the ZAD, or Zone to Defend,
in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France,

the Unist’ot’en Camp located on the
Wet’suet’en territories of so-called BC,

and the autonomous spaces movement
in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Along the way, we will speak
with a number of individuals

who are flaunting state authority,

asserting control over
the spaces they inhabit

... and making a whole lot of trouble.

The ZAD has many realities.

But mostly it’s kind of a
community where people try to

experiment other ways to live
their social and political life.

In the end of the 1960s,
somebody came up with an airport project

for this area,
Notre-Dame-des-Landes.

And during all those years, the bocage
itself is put under the status of ZAD

– which basically means
Postponed Planning Zone,

which was transformed one day
into Zone to be Defended.

So there was a big resistance
with lots of different forms of action,

including sabotage, black bloc
demonstrations, quite offensive defense.

Occupying land is quite
similar to a political squat,

but with a strong dimension
regarding the environment

and the territory we live in.

During all those years,

we did not simply organize
politically against the airport,

but we also made connections locally.

We took care of the land.

Some of us settled for good.

And we thought out
the future of the ZAD together.

So it’s been ten years now that
structures have been created on the ZAD

to figure out how to live
as autonomously as possible.

It necessarily means that we have
to be able to answer our basic needs.

Like be fed, sleep under a roof,
have access to medicine.

It’s a place that has become
a place where you can live for free.

You can build your house, your cabin...

The occupation movement was created
at a time when some of the peasants

had called for illegal
occupation themselves.

When squatters came in 2007
they were close to anarchist

and/or antiauthoritarian ideas.

Trying to work together
and allowing for a diversity of tactics,

and knowing that that is our strength.

We’re fighting against
this state and this project.

Also we come here....

we fight against things, but we
also try to create things together.

And making things available
and trying to share.

That everybody has possibilities
and access to a place to live

... to water and food.

So there’s a kind of hegemonic ideology.

Diversity of tactics has been much more
of a theory for the past few months.

Certain ideas that become
ways of judging people,

of excluding people from discussions.

So yeah there’s some kind
of really well-organized,

sort of communist ideas that have taken
a lot of place in the past few years

that will have a kind of discourse about

“you have to go to our meetings, and if
you don’t agree you might have to leave,

or shut up... or maybe later on we’ll
come beat you up with baseball bats.”

Some people who used sabotage
as a tactic have been pressured

and even attacked for
having dug holes in the concrete

of one of the roads which crosses the ZAD.

And someone especially was
put in the trunk and taken out of there,

molested and left almost naked
in front of a psychiatric hospital.

And it’s been some years that
contesting this hegemonic power

of the dominant group
has been much more difficult.

They tend to concentrate wealth.

To concentrate strategic discussions
regarding the movement.

Bonds with local farmers

and people governing other
institutions of the movement.

And they of course, deny it
when it comes to critique.

We provoked a number of discussions
on the place that their reading group,

called the CMDO,
has been held among us.

But they never recognized, publicly,
their group as a group of power.

And thus, never wanted to share that
power with other groups or individuals.

It was mainly this group of
persons which pushed towards

the negotiations during the evictions.

Well as you can see
all around us it’s pitch black.

People were not expecting the expulsions
to happen until 6am this morning,

local time here in France.

Tiny groups of people
chose their means of actions.

When the police attack,
making barricades,

going to harass the police
in any form, or any way

... to throwing back their own grenades
or other forms of explosives,

or molotov cocktails.

From sabotage attempts
... especially on the tanks.

We really wanted to see one burn.

Digging holes to prevent
the tanks from going further.

And of course, erecting barricades
and defending them.

Deep in the central interior forests
of so-called British Columbia

lies the unceded territory
of the Wet’suwet’en nation.

Never surrendered to the
settler-colonial Canadian state,

the gateway to these remote territories
is the headwaters of the Wedzinkwah River,

which lies under the stewardship
and protection of the Unist’ot’en clan,

one of the five house groups
that make up the Wet’suwet’en nation.

For the past decade, the Unist’ot’en
have been physically blocking

the construction of three major
oil and fracked gas pipelines

slated to pass through their
territories en route to refineries

and tankers on the Pacific coast.

Ground zero in this stand
has been the Unis’to’ten Camp,

constructed in 2010 as a
permanent resistance community,

located smack dab in the path
of the originally proposed route

of the Northern Gateway, Pacific Trails,
and Coastal Gaslink pipelines.

The Unist’ot’en have also established
a checkpoint system,

with access to the territories
conditional on completing

a Free Prior and
Informed Consent Protocol.

This system grants
the Unis’tot’en authority

over who gains access to their territory,

which has allowed them to keep
representatives of the extractive industry

and Canadian state at bay.

This territory is unceded
Unist’ot’en territory,

which is part of
the Wet’suwet’en territory.

Knedebease is the hereditary chief
that manages this territory,

and I am a member of that house group,
so we manage these territories.

And in my view, it is not Canada.
It’s not BC.

This has always been
Wet’suwet’en territory

because we’ve never ceded
or surrendered it to anybody.

Doesn’t belong to the crown.

Doesn’t belong to the federal government.

Doesn’t belong to
the provincial government.

It belongs to Unist’ot’en.
To my people.

We started travelling
through the territories

back here a lot more frequently.

And the reason why we started
spending a lot of time back here

is because there were some
proposed pipelines that were

being proposed
by industry and by government,

to begin doing some preliminary
work back here to stop them.

You guys can’t be doing any work in here,
because we’ve already told them no.

That they can’t access our territory.

Once we found out that industry
was trying to force their way in,

we put our cabin directly in the path
of the initial proposal for Enbridge,

for the bitumen pipeline that
was proposed to come through here.

So the log cabin sits right
en route of their GPS points

of where Enbridge initially had planned
to put their pipelines through here.

At the same time, there was Coastal
Gaslink and Pacific Trails Pipeline

that wanted also to put
pipelines through our territory.

To me that’s not self-sustaining.

When it’s really quick,
it’s boom and bust.

And they’ll come, and then they’ll be gone
and they’ll leave their mess behind.

As you see on the sign behind
it says checkpoint.

So whenever industry,
or just anybody comes through here

you go through protocol,
which you ask a series of six questions:

Who are you?
Where are you from?

How long do you plan to stay
if we let you in?

And do you work for industry or government
that’s destroying our lands?

And how will your visit
benefit Unist’ot’en?

And one of the key questions
that they could not answer,

truthfully and honestly,
was the question where we ask

“how will your visit benefit
the people of this land?”.

Uhh.. I really don’t think
there is any benefit.

And the reason why we turn them back

is because they could not pass
simple protocol questions.

The RCMP was created by the government
to keep our people off our land.

So, they are part of the government,
so they too don’t pass protocol.

We don’t trust police,
because we’re suspicious that your forces

would in to scope out our layout
so that if there is an injunction,

you guys would be better prepared
about how you’re gonna deal with us.

The camp serves as a beacon for other
people who are struggling with these ideas.

That they might not
be able to stop a project

from coming through their territories.

And you know,

for anybody to stand up to something
like that is quite a daunting task.

But a lot of people who
have studied us over the years,

and learned from the
resistance that we’ve taken

... they’ve taken those lessons
and have started their own actions.

And there’s an incredible amount
of economic and logistical disruption

that arise from that type of activity.

We are here today in solidarity
with the Unist’ot’en camp.

We wish to share the Unist’ot’en
hereditary chief’s clear statement

that they do not consent
to having pipelines built

on their unceded traditional territory.

This colonization has always been
about the taking of Indigenous lands.

We always said if we heal our people,
then we’ll heal our land.

The healing center idea
came when we realized that

“why aren’t our own people
coming out here to visit us?”

And even though some do come, there’s
not a high number of our own people.

And we realized that a lot of our people
are still struggling

because of colonization.

From the Residential School era.

From the public school system
... lotta racism.

We realized that a lot of our people
are struggling because of trauma.

And we realized that
we needed a healing facility

that incorporated all the whole
wellness thing that we were talking about.

And we wanna put our
culture back into our people.

So that they will be strong
and they will stand up.

When people come out
to a space like this,

what they experience is land
that's actually beginning to go

through the healing process.

This land back here that
we’re walking through and passing through,

is land that was devastated
from logging already.

And it’s in a process of healing.

It actually has berry bushes,
so we’re surrounded by berry bushes here.

There are grizzly bear tracks
a half a kilometer from here.

So when people come up
to spend time here,

they begin to learn about the
importance of connecting themselves

to the planet that is in need of healing.

While defending territory from
state incursions is hard enough

in rural, or remote natural terrains,

those seeking to establish autonomous
spaces in urban environments

face an additional set of challenges.

Cities are sites of concentrated
state power.

Not only are they strongholds of
surveillance and repression,

but they are also areas where
the logic of state control

is thoroughly integrated
into everyday social relations.

This opens the door to recuperation,
a process whereby state power

constantly shifts and adapts itself
in order to preemptively cut off

and assimilate potential threats
to its authority and legitimacy.

This is the balancing act faced by
urban squatter movements

in cities around the world, whose
participants must constantly navigate

the twin minefields of eviction
and legalization.

This means simultaneously
avoiding the social isolation

that would make full-scale repression
possible, while also combating

state and real estate developers’
attempts to transform these spaces

into nothing more than
edgy tourist destinations.

One of the really important
functions of the urban occupation

is that it becomes
a source of inspiration.

Despite being surrounded by hostile forces
- in the form of state, police, capital -

that it is possible to have a
space in which you can experiment

with different forms of existing.

With different forms of living.

With different forms of
relating to one another.

We could speak about three distinct phases
of squatting experiments in Ljubljana.

First one is early 90s.

This is the time of the
destruction of Yugoslavia.

It’s a time of massive changes
in Slovenian society.

This movement had a clear continuity with

alternative cultural movements of the 80s
that was heavily influenced

by progressive currents such as
feminism, LGBT movement,

anti-militarist tendencies,
ecological movements.

This movement found its highest
expression in the squatting

of Metelkova military barracks
in 1993.

The second wave of squatting
can be traced to the late 90s.

In around 98 and 99, several different
initiatives and individuals

were squatting different
spaces in the city of Ljubljana

and were all evicted from those squats.

And in the middle of this wave
of repression over the movement,

the community of Metelkova decided
to give one empty space

in the Autonomous Cultural Center
to the anarchist infoshop.

The third wave of squatting
in Ljubljana is symbolized

by the squatting of ROG Factory, which is
maybe the biggest squat in Ljubljana.

It was squatted in 2006
by a new precarious generation

of younger people that
later came to be identified

as the generation without future.

It has always been understood by us
that the front

between the two different squats
is the same front.

Because if one of us is attacked,
or evicted for instance,

that will mean a huge attack
on the ability of the other

to actually be part of any kind
of political process in the city.

The relationship of the state has been
slightly different in its expression.

So for instance, when it comes to ROG
they have had constant attempts

of the city to either evict them
or attack them in different ways.

And just two years ago
there was the most serious attempt

to tear down several
buildings in that area.

That attempt was stopped
by a broader political mobilization.

The nature of an urban occupation
is that it is faced

with different kinds of factors that
perhaps escape rural occupations.

Our squats are part of
the neoliberal capitalist society

that is progressing further and further
towards social devastation.

Every time we are faced with the
processes that are destroying our cities,

we always have to question our position

and our changing position
within those processes.

Metelkova and ROG both
generate quite wide public support.

So this forced the public authorities
to be cautious.

And even though there are several
softer attempts to push Metelkova

into the state of legalization,
we haven’t in the last decade

really been faced with
an attempt of eviction.

That of course brings a different
set of questions for all of us

who are part of Metelkova squat.

And that is, in such moments, where
the city is actually trying to sell you

as one of its premium tourist destinations
... how do you maintain yourself

as a space that can still produce
radical social movements

and interventions in the city?

That of course comes with
every question of recuperation.

How do we still manage to
keep our practices DIY?

How do we still manage to stay
ungovernable,

which is basically the only way
not to become a squatting museum,

or a sort of caricature
of what a squat should be?

Many people and many activities
that are cleaned from the city center

because of the demands of the tourist
industry... we all end up in squats

with different trajectories
and different positions that we occupy

in the current social-economic order.

This naturally leads to tensions.
Some more serious than others.

And the consequence also can be seen in
what recently happened to club Jalla Jalla

- it was destroyed in a fire.

As a community this was
immediately recognized as an effect

of the general state in which
the whole city is being pushed.

And our focus is not only
to rebuild Jalla Jalla the club,

but also to rebuild and reclaim
our collective capacity to resist

the processes of devastation
that are everywhere destroying

the conditions of living
for so many people in this town.

Establishing and effectively securing
an autonomous space isn’t something

that happens overnight.

States cannot afford to let challenges
to their legitimacy go unanswered,

lest they serve as examples
for others to follow.

For this reason, any political attempt
to reject state authority over a territory

is likely to provoke a serious reaction.

It is therefore crucially important
that those involved

anticipate the state’s response,
and are in a strong enough position

to weather the inevitable storm.

Autonomous territories allow
for the building of dual power.

They are alternative focal
points of legitimacy that can

effectively challenge the
state’s monopoly on authority.

Indigenous Nations draw this legitimacy
from spiritual and cultural practices

rooted in generations of deep connection
to the lands claimed by their colonizers.

For those of us more alienated
from the lands and spaces we occupy,

the process of asserting autonomy
must begin with navigating the tensions

and contradictions that
exist in dominant society,

cultivating strong bonds of solidarity,

and fuelling antagonism towards the state.

We’d rather not pass lessons to anyone.

If people get inspired from what they’ve
done here, it will always be a pleasure

to share experiences and knowledge
of those years spent here.

I think it has been proven several times
that building the infrastructure

for the movement and of the movement
really becomes crucial in moments

of high and demanding political
mobilization in the society.

To have the kind of spaces
that enable you to maintain

the historical memory of movements,

that enable us to find different
kinds of accomplices

in our struggles for
a different kind of world.

With the help of allies
all around the world

... we’ve garnered lots of support through
Indigenous, non-Indigenous, professionals,

... everyday citizens.

A lot of people do support what we’re
doing and have vocalized it to us.

We have come here to be with you,

to make sure you understand
you’re doing the right thing.

There’s always people who come here
also who have connections,

or who have been to other
places where people are struggling

and bring us information.

And so that creates solidarity
between different struggles.

You need to ensure that
the Indigenous people

who have always lived on those lands,

since millennia,
are involved in that struggle.

They have long stories.

Ancient, ancient stories that talk about
how and why they have responsibilities.

The mere fact that a squat
exists as a potential

of development of autonomous ideas,
of politically radical ideas,

is of course already a threat to the
state, a threat to capital’s interests.

And therefore we will never be safe,

no matter how many
selfies tourists make here.

If it is possible that in a city that
is so increasingly gentrified,

so penetrated with
different capitalist forces

– if it is able to have a space
where experimentation with our freedom

is possible,
then it kind of gives us hope

that other kinds of political
projects are also possible.

And what we would really love to see
is more of these kinds of inspirations

around the world, around different cities,
around different communities.

As for our inspiration,
we take as much inspiration as possible

from as many struggles as possible.

The Zapatistas movement, even though
we’re far far from what they achieved.

The Landless Peasant Movement,
especially in South America,

or Reclaim the Field network
all over Europe.

Or occupied neighbourhoods,
like in Exarchia in Greece.

Or people protecting seeds like in India.

Rojava is, of course, an insight

– especially regarding
feminist self-defence.

Some of us are also really
close to the Italian struggle

against the train line
crossing the Val di Susa.

The most important thing is that we have
to ask ourselves “what are our needs?”

And then find ways through
which we can express them.

We’re absolutely going to win this fight.

Y’know, this is a fight that belongs
to not only us, but all of our unborn.

This is a fight that belongs
to all of our ancestors

who died fighting for these spaces,
and protecting them.

So this is a fight that
doesn’t belong to us.

We’re not selfish people.

This fight belongs to all of
our Wet’suwet’en people

– past, present and future.

Some of us went to fight
the world of the airport.

And the airport was a pretext
to fight the system behind it.

I’d say for me, the ZAD,

it helps me burn the social
and structural boundaries in my head

... and then almost everything
became possible.

We live in a historical moment
in which the global neoliberal order,

wracked by overlapping social,
economic and ecological crises,

is rapidly unraveling
before our very eyes.

Yet far from being a
cause for celebration,

the dark new reality rising to take
its place promises to be even worse.

New and resurgent forms of
state power are being constructed

on foundations of
hyper-nationalist reaction,

armed with sophisticated new tools
of surveillance and repression.

A proliferation of civil wars,
surging levels of inequality

and climate change-fuelled catastrophes
are provoking historical levels

of forced human migration.

But while things look undoubtedly bleak,

the rapid transformations
currently underway have the potential

to uncover new cracks
in the facade of state power.

Revolutionaries must be ready to take
advantage of any and all opportunities

that these shifting
new dynamics may produce,

establishing a decentralized
network of autonomous zones

that can sustain projects of mutual aid,
respond to emergent threats,

and coordinate solidarity across borders.

So at this point,

we’d like to remind you that Trouble
is intended to be watched in groups,

and to be used as a resource to promote
discussion and collective organizing.

Are you interested in offering
sustained material support

for existing autonomous spaces,

or figuring out what steps would
be involved in launching your own?

Consider getting together
with some comrades,

organizing a screening of this film,
and discussing where to get started.

Interested in running regular
screenings of Trouble at your campus,

infoshop, community center,
or even just at home with friends?

Become a Trouble-Maker!

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with an advanced copy of the show,

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additional resources

and some questions you can
use to get a discussion going.

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topics, or just want to get in touch,

drop us a line at:

This episode would not have been possible

without the generous support of
Komunal, Group Groix and Michael.

Now get out there
…. and make some trouble!