News from France

This first part of 2003 was the occasion for Chiche ! eco-alternative youth to participate in two actions that we like. First the European car-free day in September and then the Buy nothing day, with actions on consumption in commercial areas. As editors our activity is very slow, but we now have several issues of papers about one issue each time. The last “brochure” is on fascism and the Front national. This is the usual for us. But what might interest you more is that people from Chiche ! Paris participate in some anti-ad actions. Two actions took place end of October-beginning of November, with 150 to 350 people gathering at a metro station and covering all the big ads of all the stations of the whole metro line. Several metro lines were touched, and legal action took place to forbid the web site to be on line. Ouvaton, the host of this site, was not touched, a chance because it’s Chiche ! host as well. Despite of that, the info made its way on the Internet. Now the problem is that the police come to the gatherings and forbid the groups of activist to get in the metro and arrest some of them. But the action bore fruit, because mainstream people did see the action, you simply could not miss it if you take the metro. And maybe some people realised that their everyday transport is saturated with advertising. Now our next big action will be on nuclear energy. Our nuclear plants are now 30 years old and a new cycle of plants construction is planned. So we’ll participate to a national demo, hoping that it will raise awareness on the dangers of this energy. Just as a couple of old people met in the ESF said : “We’re not ecologists, we’re in favor of nuclear energy. The wastes ? We’ll find a solution !” Keep your eyes wide open!