Satellite Signals for the Atlanta Forest

““A land [terre] has no limits. That is the reason it is worth defending against every form of alienation.” —Édouard Glissant”

“The forest extends beyond its own boundaries, through voices and metaphors, joy and mourning — while the power to cancel the forest and the forest’s capacity to say no are pitted against each other”

“It is as a satellite that I write this text for the Weelaunee Forest, for those who resist there, live there or just pass by”

“Satellite signals can serve to transmit what happens in every corner of the world, where the life of the spirit finds a tactical use that favors the people”

“The function of the satellite is only temporary: rather than staking out a permanent position, our role is to extend the frequency reach of the ongoing political situation, and to create a communication loop between different positions of existence”

“A good satellite tries to turn as little as possible around themself”

“In his Poetics of Relation (1990), Édouard Glissant explains why he rejects the “sacred” concept of territory, which he finds to be stamped with the seal of conquest, of rapine, of colonial occupation, of anchoring in an identity closed in on itself”

“To this term, he opposes that of “terre,” which we could translate as “land”: a “terre” is open to otherness, to wandering (“errance” in French — note that “erre” can be heard in “terre”), and to the totality of the world that communicates itself from echo to echo, from one opaque zone to another”

“Perhaps we should distinguish between two types of territory: one based on identity, founded on the fantasy of a clear and distinct interiority protected by the forces of death; the other based on the outside and the sharing of forms of life”

“What is happening in Atlanta is happening elsewhere: wherever we find people who are attempting to protect natural places, who care for the future as well as the past, who do not want to live in a world devastated by global warming, who affirm and defend extra-identitarian forms of existence, their thoughts and the acts that follow from them are considered crimes”

“as is the case with the Atlanta activists, they are even charged with domestic terrorism, just as in France, the Minister of the Interior describes those who oppose the construction of agricultural mega-basins as “eco-terrorists.””