Action Confédération Paysanne - 8 Nov 2021 "La prise de la Bassine" - Les soulèvements de la Terre

THE CATCH OF THE BASIN! 💥😁 3000 anti-basins meet in Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon and dismantle a "basin of shame" and its pump 🌊✊ Press release from the Earth Uprising, the Confédération Paysanne and Bassines Non Merci! This Saturday 6 November, more than 3000 people and 20 tractors gathered in Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon to put an immediate stop to the mega-basin construction sites in the Marais Poitevin. The rally was called by Bassines Non Merci, the LPO, the Confédération Paysanne and Soulèvements de la Terre, and succeeded despite intimidation from the prefecture, which wanted to ban the event, and from the FNSEA, which was organising a counter-demonstration to prevent us from acting. Farmers who protect their land, lovers of fauna and flora, and inhabitants of territories that are drying up took over the town hall square and then marched together in the streets of Mauzé, with more than 3000 people. The demonstrators and environmental protection organisations were able to see the drying up of the river Mignon, a situation that would become permanent if the basin projects were implemented. The demonstrators then collectively took over the site of an illegal 5-hectare mega-pool (180,000 m3), despite a strong police presence. The anti-pools had to cut through fields, escape tear gas and baton charges, cross a river on foot and pass through several police roadblocks, but were finally able to enter the site of the "pool of shame", a pool that had already been the subject of five court convictions. https://www.facebook.com/confederationpaysanne/videos/3115182438760172/?extid=WA-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&ref=sharing The pump that feeds the basin and draws directly from the water table was dismantled by farmers and taken away. Once the crowd had climbed up the embankment of the basin, the pump was dismantled to put it out of action. The basin was emptied and the water returned to the water table! On their side, only a few hundred people gathered at the call of the FNSEA, the JA and the Coordination rurale to... protect an empty basin elsewhere, dry and dead like their vision of agriculture which destroys the territories and our farmers. For Nicolas Girod, spokesperson for the Confédération paysanne, this is "a full and resounding victory, a demonstration of strength that we are a popular movement, many of us fighting for a dynamic territory and a socially and ecologically just society project". We warn the holders of these basin projects: our determination to fight for a fair sharing of water resources remains unwavering, and it is time for you to abandon your projects, otherwise we will be back! In Mauzé, as elsewhere, we will continue to argue that water is a common good and that the soil must not be poisoned. NO BASSARAN!