“The Sweetness of Place”: Kristin Ross on the Zad and NoTAV struggles VersoBooks.com
▻http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3262-the-sweetness-of-place-kristin-ross-on-the-zad-and-notav-struggles
Two struggles have come to define the ground of activism in mainland Europe: the zad (Zone À Défendre - or the zone to defend), and NoTAV (the No to Treno ad Alta Velocità rail line). Despite these struggles being little known in the English-speaking world, each offers a continuation of the kinds of localised, spatial conflict whose genealogy can be traced from the Paris Commune, through Sanrizuka in Japan, the Zapatistas in Mexico and Standing Rock in America, a form of struggle which has been analysed most forcefully in the work of David Harvey.
In this extract from the introduction to the new ebook The Zad and NoTAV by the French collective Mauvaise Troupe, which offers English readers the first and most comprehensive narrative of the interlinked stories of the two movements, Kristin Ross offers an introduction to this “never-ending process of soldering together black bloc anarchists and nuns, retired farmers and vegan lesbian separatists, lawyers and autonomistas into a tenacious and effective community”.