Update from France, July 5

A little more than a week after Nahel’s passing, following five nights of revolt, the French state is using the full weight of the judiciary system to crush the uprising.

More than 300 people were sentenced to prison last night. Yesterday, at Créteil, in the southern part of the Paris region, almost all the youth who were being judged were sent to prison. It didn’t matter whether they had good lawyers or bad lawyers, whether there was evidence or not, whether they had good personality references, whether they had snitched. At the end of the day, everyone went back to Fresnes with sentences from 6 to 30 months.

The news from other courthouses across the Paris region is just as bad. The judges are following a directive of June 30 from Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, in which he calls for a “firm and fast response” with strict “safety measures”—in other words, imprisonment. The prosecutors and judges are eagerly complying.

Across France, people as young as 12 years old are being systematically sentenced to months or more in prison. In the streets, the affect is more and more nihilistic: “they can’t catch us all.” Still, for the past few days, things have been calmer at night. It could be that the repression is working to intimidate people; or that mothers are keeping their kids at home; or that the looting has slowed down because the stores need to be filled up with goods again; or that people are waiting for the weekend of July 14, the French national holiday, to set things ablaze once more.

You can read more about *comparution immédiates* ("immediate judgement"), which has been used in almost all the cases this week, here:

https://paris-luttes.info/la-justice-enferme-les-revolte-es-17244?lang=fr

Background:

https://crimethinc.com/Nahel

"Nous ne sommes pas des martyrs"

https://crimethinc.com/2023/06/21/nous-ne-sommes-pas-des-martyrs-un-message-de-serge-qui-a-survecu-a-une-tentative-de-meurtre-par-les-forces-de-lordre-francaises

Communiqué de Serge, survivant d'une tentative de meurtre de la part de la police française.

#Français

"It’s not the barricade but the rifle that you have to hold onto."

-Buenaventura Durruti, born on this day in 1896

If you lose the barricade (for example, a social center, a forest occupation, a particular engagement with the state) but retain the rifle (the collective ability to fight, immunity to narratives that legitimize state violence, a commitment to solidarity over opportunism), you can still move from one engagement to the next, building capacity, even if you fail to hold a particular position in the fight.

If you lose the rifle but retain the barricade, it may appear that you have won, but thirty years later you will look around and find that you are inhabiting a museum surrounded by wine bars, like the once formidable squatting movements that retained a few properties in retain for ceasing to fight.

In a new filing in federal court, the government of Atlanta aims to shut down even the possibility of a referendum on the police militarization facility known as Cop City, arguing that the citizens of the city have no right to break off the city government's contract with the Atlanta Police Foundation.

Ordinarily, democracy functions as a sort of theater in which the authorities manage people's perceptions of what the general public desires. In this case, however, the authorities in Atlanta are so determined to channel millions of dollars to the police that they are prepared to do without any illusions about democracy or anything like it.

Background on the movement to #StopCopCity:

https://crimethinc.com/LivinginanEarthquake

Justice for Nahel

Grundlagene for oprøret i Frankrig

Følgende tekst blev sendt til os af franske kammerater på tredjedagen af det nuværende oprør, der antændtes af mordet på teenageren Nahel Merzouk begået af det franske politi i byen Nanterre, en forstad til Paris. Teksten forsøger at bringe en analyse af situationen samt et overblik over kampen mod politivold i Frankrig siden 1970’erne.

https://crimethinc.com/2023/07/02/justice-for-nahel-grundlagene-for-oproret-i-frankrig

#Dansk

Regarding the Eviction of the Self-Organized Refugee Camp in Lavrio, Greece

https://crimethinc.com/Lavrio

On July 5, 2023, the Greek government evicted a Kurdish refugee camp in Lavrio, Greece. The camp had existed for many decades, serving as an important center of organizing in southeastern Europe. Turkeys’ war on Kurdish people, the Greek government’s war on autonomous spaces, and the European Union’s war on migrants all intersect in this operation.

In this analysis, Beja Protner shows the connections between the different forms of systematic oppression involved.

Tomorrow will mark three years since the outbreak of the 2020 uprising in Belarus, when tens of thousands of people took the streets demanding the fall of Alexander Lukashenko's regime. Anarchists played an essential role in these events, being one of the only organized networks still active under his totalitarian rule.

The eventual crushing of the revolt helped pave the way for Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Here, you can read an analysis of the uprising from anarchist participants:

https://crimethinc.com/2021/06/30/belarus-when-we-rise-a-critical-analysis-of-the-2020-revolt-against-the-dictatorship