After blocking four bridges in London on Friday, disrupting traffic in the British capital, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion took over part of the Grands Boulevards, in the center of Paris, on Saturday morning, in order to make it “a large agora” during the Easter weekend, to discuss the climate emergency.
On approximately 300 meters of the boulevards of Bonne-Nouvelle and Saint-Denis, activists blocked traffic around 9:45 a.m., quickly installing a barricade of haystacks, and organizing sit-ins at the ends as well as at the outlet of the adjacent streets.
Many of them had attached themselves to heavy containers filled with cement, to hinder a possible evacuation, explained one of them. In the front line facing a few CRS, about fifteen were facing, seated in a meditation position. A large banner blocked the road, like a theater curtain: “This world is dying, let’s build the next one”, while the activists, waving colorful flags, repeated slogans such as “We are hot, hot, hot, hotter than the climate.
1000 activists on site
The police remained discreet at the beginning of the afternoon controlling access and checking the contents of certain bags. A flea market continued on a sidewalk, a guide described the Porte Saint-Denis to a small group of tourists, the metro remained open, car traffic was only slightly disturbed on this very calm Saturday morning. Some 1,000 activists were on site, police said Saturday morning. A figure taken up by the organizers.
“We planned to stay three days”, until Monday evening, said a spokesperson. “The electoral process no longer meets the needs of the population” in ecological matters, she explained, considering in particular that the citizens’ convention on the climate had turned into a “masquerade”. “We call on citizens to join us,” she said, promising conferences and talks.
An action decided at the end of January
This action between the two rounds of the presidential election was decided at the end of January, said the spokeswoman, who denounces that the ecological debate has been “invisibilized”. And Extinction Rebellion to castigate “our leaders, our aspirants to power, those who for more than 30 years have not ceased to shine by their inaction, by their contempt and by their lack of courage in the fight against climate change. “. Its goal being, according to a press release, “another democracy that is not built around profit and infinite growth, but around ecological and social justice”.
“We reject far-right ideas, of course,” she said. “The blocking and occupation of public space will intensify,” she warned, emphasizing the non-violent nature of the movement.
Several days of occupation in Châtelet in 2019
This is not the first time that Extinction Rébellion has also taken action of this kind in Paris. In the fall of 2019, the environmental group had in particular blocked the Châtelet district for several days. Already denouncing the inaction of politicians to fight against global warming, several hundred activists then settled in the heart of the capital. A few days earlier, they had also occupied the Italy 2 shopping center.
VIDEO. In 2019, Extinction Rebellion blocks the Place du Châtelet
In the process, the movement, also called XR and born in the United Kingdom in 2018, had again deployed a banner on the Eiffel Tower, attempted a new occupation but this time on the boulevard Saint-Germain or even sabotaged more than 3000 self-service scooters in Paris.