Saturday, 13 September, a rainy day in Nantes. The police patrolled the entire city centre; the hundreds of law enforcement officers dispatched to Nantes by Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau to crush the blockades on 10 September had clearly decided to keep the city under siege. Three days earlier, unbridled state violence had attacked the popular movement, causing dozens of injuries and arrests. That day, a large Popular Assembly, bringing together more than 1,500 people, had decided to maintain the pressure and call for a demonstration this Saturday to continue the “Block Everything” movement without delay. At the meeting point for the demonstration, facing the deterrent system, there were only a few hundred people. Then thousands more joined, and the procession continued to grow.

France Info spoke of the “record for the largest mobilisation”, which should not be a source of pride but rather of concern about the collective ability to sustain the groundswell that began on 10 September. The Nantes procession, completely surrounded, was unable to escape the police stranglehold that confined it to a handful of major arteries and tear-gassed it several times, without reason. Back at the starting point, the police fired grenades again to end the demonstration, after dictating the route and pace.

The turnout at this demonstration demonstrates that the momentum has not waned, that the desire to organise and make the movement sustainable is present: this is a warm-up lap for another major day of strikes and blockades planned for Thursday, 18 September. However, we’ll need to be more inventive and responsive: repeating the same old recipes won’t be enough this time around.

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Edited machine translation. Photos: Estelle Ruiz, Théo Prn, CA