Aubervilliers: defenders of allotment gardens disrupt (again) the construction of the Olympic swimming pool

While the day had not yet dawned on Wednesday, around twenty activists from the allotments of Aubervilliers took over the site of the future Olympic swimming pool, built for the Paris 2024 Games. They deployed explicit signs and banners there. ― “The Solarium of Shame”, “No to Concrete” ― and some have literally chained themselves to the machines, enclosing one of their thighs or one of their ankles with a lock or handcuffing one of their handles to the structure .

The police evacuated the small group. “Some were dragged through the mud,” says a resident of Aubervilliers, member of the collective Save the workers’ gardens of the Virtues. Eight people were taken into custody. “The police intervened and the demonstrators broke away,” said the police. The demonstrators dispersed peacefully. The organizer of this undeclared demonstration was arrested. »

“We want to play the card of legality but it is no longer possible, we are taken for fools”

The Bobigny public prosecutor’s office confirmed the placement in police custody of eight participants in the blocking of the site. This punch operation was carried out to denounce the concreting of the site, while all the legal remedies have not yet been cleared.

“Since last week, construction structures and cargo of sand have been arriving to concrete the gardens, explains the activist of the collective. The concrete will sink, the earth will be definitively destroyed and the living will no longer be able to live there. This project remains aberrant in the face of the ecological emergency. I don’t want my daughter to go see hedgehogs in a natural history museum. »

The activists wanted to send “a strong message” so that this question is essential “in the presidential campaign”. “Two procedures are still in progress. We expect within three weeks the decision to modify the PLUi (local inter-municipal urban plan). The judges have twice rejected the decision. And we are still waiting for a date for the judgment on the merits of the building permit. »

These procedures are not suspensive. “We want to play the card of legality but it is no longer possible. We are taken for fools. »

At the beginning of September, about twenty activists who occupied the gardens had been expelled by the police. Several mobilizations followed. In December, they had already blocked the site for several tens of minutes, positioning themselves in front of the entrance, before the arrival of the trucks.

Implicitly, the demonstrators also alerted and denounced the working conditions of the workers on the various construction sites of the Grand Paris Express and the Olympics, which were the scene of several accidents, including two fatal ones.