She’s the New Face of Climate Activism—and She’s Carrying a Pickax
https://www.wired.com/story/climate-activism-radical-new-face-lena-lazare/
by wiredmagazine
She’s the New Face of Climate Activism—and She’s Carrying a Pickax
https://www.wired.com/story/climate-activism-radical-new-face-lena-lazare/
by wiredmagazine
4 comments
Léna Lazare is one of the founding members of Les Soulèvements de la Terre, or Earth Uprisings, a French organization that is the most extreme of a new wave of radical European climate groups.
In the past few years, activists have smashed bank windows, attacked gas stations, broken into oil-pipeline control stations, deflated hundreds of SUV tires, and, just this summer, doused Stonehenge with temporary orange paint. They do this for different aims—to attract media coverage, to argue their case in front of a jury, or to make business untenable for companies they see as responsible for loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, driving calamitous weather events, and courting mass extinction.
Lazare claims her actions are causing real disruption. In March 2023, she helped organize a protest at the mega-basin under construction near Sainte-Soline in western France. At least 6,000 protesters were met by some 3,000 French gendarmes in full riot gear, creating a barrier between the crowd and the half-built reservoir. The ensuing violence shocked France. Police fired 5,000 tear gas canisters in just under two hours. Soon protesters were covered in blood; according to Les Soulèvements de la Terre, more than 200 people were injured. Two people were left in a coma. Organizers claim someone lost an eye. Police say 47 officers were hurt and four vehicles burned.
Now part of Lazare’s job is to soften Les Soulèvements de la Terre’s image. For years she appeared in French magazines as the new face of radical eco-activism, but she became official spokesperson for the group only when they faced the prospect of being shut down. After French interior minister Gérald Darmanin compared some members of Les Soulèvements de la Terre to ecoterrorists and the government outlawed the organization in June 2023, it was Lazare who went on TV to defend the group’s activities. “We refuse to be labeled as criminals,” she says.
Read the full story: [https://www.wired.com/story/climate-activism-radical-new-face-lena-lazare/](https://www.wired.com/story/climate-activism-radical-new-face-lena-lazare/)
The Pratchettification of Climate Protests continues – and I, for one, welcome it!
We need her to go to Bp and Shell HQ.
Never saw anything about her on r/France