Anti-Racism, Climate, and Popular Ecology: a Potent Alliance in France
The synthesis of the climate movement and the anti-racist movement in the theory of popular ecology highlights why these movements can find success working together.
Photo by hannah grace.
The 19th of July 2020 should have been Adama Traoré’s 28th birthday. Instead, the date marked the fourth anniversary of his suspicious death in police custody. The day before the anniversary, a protest attended by 3,000 people occurred in the unassuming banlieue—a French suburb—and Traoré’s home neighborhood, Beaumont Sur Oise. Protesters expressed anger at police violence, demanded justice for the victims of police killings, and showed solidarity with the families of victims.
The recent wave of protests against police violence in France were sparked in part by the killing of George Floyd in the United States. But while they have adopted some of the aesthetics and rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement, they are equally rooted in the local context, despite some claims to the contrary. The protests in June were in response to a report commissioned on behalf of the Traoré family that refuted another report published only a few days earlier, which cleared the police officers who arrested him of responsibility for his death. The case is highly contested and a series of conflicting autopsies and reports, as well as a witness statement from a fireman at the scene that undermined police testimony, have made demands for “truth” central to the movement. The Adama Committee, led by Adama Traoré’s charismatic sister Assa, is one of several groups that campaigns for justice and against police violence in France. Part of their organising strategy has always been to make alliances with groups that share the values of the movement. This is why on the 18th of July, the protest was co-organised by several environmental groups, including the relatively large Paris chapter of the Alternatiba movement, a major climate change organizing framework in Europe. The protesters united under the slogan “Adama Generation, Climate Generation, we want to breathe.”
Since Greta Thunberg’s school strikes and the launch of Extinction Rebellion, much of the Western world has seen a significant uptick in direct action protests against climate breakdown. France is no different. Elodie Nace told The Trouble that, “People all over the world have been talking about the climate generation for over a year now with the Friday school strikes and several marches for the climate and the civil disobedience actions. So, we adhere to the idea of the climate generation—it’s a generation that has accelerated the mobilisation against climate breakdown and has developed international consciousness.” Much of the political discourse around this uptick in climate action has focussed on the idea of a “climate generation” of young people who have been forced out onto the streets by government inaction. Along similar lines, France has an anti-racist generation that have taken to the streets to protest police brutality. Nace, a spokesperson for the Alternatiba movement and an activist in the climate camp movement, occasionally appears in the French media explaining the perspective of the climate movement on events. She is currently helping organise the August climate camp in Paris, which will help decide the strategy of the movement going forward.
Although it is a controversial parallel to draw between the last words of young men killed by police and deaths from air pollution, according to Nace the comparison was made by the Adama Committee themselves. As she told The Trouble, “It’s clearly a reference to the last words of George Floyd and Adama Traoré and to numerous other victims of police violence and it also calls to mind the repression faced by various social movements in Paris: the Gilets Jaunes were repressed in a despicable manner, in France in [2019] there was the biggest climate march that we have ever seen, the biggest feminist mobilisation and the biggest anti-racist mobilisation, truly that year was incredible. All those mobilisations were willingly repressed by the police in Paris.” Police repression of social movements has became a particularly contentious topic in France, after the UN ruled that the Gilets Jaunes’ rights were being restricted and videos of police brutality against the Gilets Jaunes and the tear gassing of peaceful Extinction Rebellion protesters during a heatwave, went viral. Nace added that, “The third reason for ‘we want to breathe’ is that in France, for example, more than sixty thousand death a year are linked to air pollution and that’s particularly pronounced in the urban working-class areas where there is the most pollution.” Nace explained that, “what we saw in Paris was that it was the young generation, a large number of whom had never protested before. Young people came from the banlieues in groups. Even if they are estranged from politics they turned out.”
Creating a sense of solidarity and common struggle between these different groups of young people is integral to Alternatiba’s strategy: “It is important for us to link these generations. The two generations are not necessarily exactly the same young people, but there is a common message that denounces the system [...] of oppression, of domination, it’s capitalist, racist, patriarchal and each movement together is aiming to construct a different society…” A clear link between the two groups is adherence to the idea of popular ecology, which has been a consistent part of the Adama Committee’s strategy. Youcef Brakni, an activist and member of the committee, said, “The committee made alliances with other ecological movements, notably the anti-nuclear movement, Extinction Rebellion, the occupation against a shopping centre etc. We have continued this logic throughout our fight now alongside Alternatiba.” According to Brakni, there can be no environmentalism that does not seek to check the power of the police. He told The Trouble that the Commitee pushes, “for a popular ecology, that is truly anti-racist, which seeks to confront police violence because today police violence is also present in the fact that the police repress movements. [...] The repression stops these movements, these struggles and strips them of energy.”
Popular ecology, developed by theorist Fatima Ouassak in the Paris banlieue of Bagnolet where she argued for the right for children to have access to a vegetarian diet in schools, refers to an environmental politics rooted in the lives of the working class. Brakni argues that, “It is the population of the urban working-class areas [quartiers populaires] who suffer the most from issues surrounding the environment. The issue of air pollution, questions about living conditions in the blocks of flats and in the tower blocks, lack of green space, the fact that we are more likely to die younger, that our lives are considered less important during the coronavirus. All of these issues are questions of everyday life and the police add to all that with the deaths in the banlieues which then prevents young men from moving around in public space.” Popular ecology aims to change the perception that environmentalism is only an issue for middle-class, metropolitan white people. The alliance with the Adama Committee and the orientation towards popular ecology has helped Alternatiba reach beyond their usual base and distinguish themselves from the political establishment who are increasingly adopting the language of environmentalism.
“There isn’t a party that now doesn’t talk about environmentalism,” according to Nace. But the ways in which parties approach the issue vary in vital ways. “The way the climate fight is treated by the far-right, as well as by Emmanuel Macron is completely incompatible with us and our vision.” And the differences aren’t just tactical, but bleed into the philosophical: “When Emmanuel Macron and the French government talk about how he is against degrowth, he says we have got to stop talking about degrowth and that they are in favour of green growth—that’s not possible.” Far-right party leader Marine Le Pen has begun to use an ecological vocabulary to advance her agenda too, which, according to Nace focuses on “demonizing foreigners” in contrast to their approach, which is “rooted in solidarity” with migrants from the Global South and areas hit hardest by climate impacts.
While the environmental movement finds themselves having to distinguish their vision of ecology from the far-right, the Adama Committee and the movements against police violence and racism are also in open conflict with the French right. Recently, Adama Traoré’s former cellmate who had accused him of rape received compensation as part of a system that attempts to judge the veracity of such cases in absence of a trial. This allegation has been reported and commented on by various publications on the right of French politics including in Valeurs Actuelles and Le Point. The Traoré family rejects the allegation. As Youcef Brakni told The Trouble, “the movement is becoming massive [...] and so they feel they have to kill Adama for a second time with the false accusations and with the lawsuit.”
The main story of the recent municipal elections was the green wave that swept much of the nation, but the far-right also made advances, with the National Rally party winning the mayoralty in Perpignan. Le Pen trails Macron by three points in the voting intention polls currently, but as the COVID crisis continues and Macron’s neoliberal policy agenda fails to produce the promised prosperity, she could well overtake him. In the absence of a government of the left, when the most likely choice is between a far-right president and one deeply committed to the status quo, the climate movement, France’s version of Black Lives Matter, and any other movements aiming to radically transform society will need to continue building upon these alliances to succeed in forcing the hands of the powerful.
This alliance provides a useful model for progressive movements in other countries. The synthesis of the climate movement and the anti-racist movement in the theory of popular ecology highlights why these movements can find success working together. The climate movement in particular has a class problem in much of the Western world, with liberal climate organizations pursuing a hectoring approach, moralizing about why people must act for the climate without helping them achieve the means to do so. Alliances like these allow for climate campaigners to reach out to the working class and meet them where they are. An environmental movement with a coherent narrative of how the mechanisms causing climate breakdown affect the working class, and which can help improve people’s immediate material conditions, will be much more likely to succeed.
Olly Haynes is a student of politics and French and a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in Novara Media, New Internationalist, CityMetric and other places. His Twitter is @the42question.
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