On the night of December 3 to 4, as part of the days of action against Lafarge and the concrete industry, we decided to take action to stop production at the Vicat cement plant in Saint-Egrève.
If, through this action, we are attacking the entire concrete industry, the choice of Vicat is no accident. Far from the image of a small local company that it tries to promote, Vicat is a concrete giant that produces almost 23 million tonnes of materials every year, with sales of over 3 billion euros. The company has a dozen subsidiaries worldwide, including some in West Africa where, in a dramatic neo-colonial logic, it massively pollutes the water and air.
The company tries to pretend that its intentions are ecologically-minded, for example by highlighting the fact that raw materials are transported by cable car from the Saint-Egrève site – manufactured by POMA, the nuclear gravedigger at Bure. Yet its activities remain among the world’s most emissive, releasing 20 mega tonnes of CO2 per year into the atmosphere, and it has not reduced its emissions in recent years, despite its promises to do so. Beyond these emissions, the company contributes to the destruction of life in many other ways. After selling concrete for the construction of the EPR, and taking part in the artificialization of the soil as part of the Grand Paris project, the company recently acquired the transport company SATM in order to participate directly in the absurd Lyon-Turin construction site.
In 2022 on France Bleu Isère, Guy Sidos, the company’s CEO, had the opportunity to promote his greenwashing operations. He declared, in a stylistic exercise as acrobatic as it was dishonest: “You know, you don’t reproach a painter for the production of his paint. We don’t blame the manufacturers of materials for the way they are used.” It would appear that Vicat is both a paint producer and a painter, and the painting is morbid.
If more needed to be said, we would add that the history of the Vicat and Sidos families, at the head of the company, is that of the dishonor of collaboration and fascism. Like Joseph Merceron-Vicat, sentenced to prison and national indignity after helping to build bunkers for the Third Reich, or more recently Pierre Sidos, anti-Semite, notorious Pétainist and founder of Oeuvre Française.
In the face of capitalist enterprises that exploit human beings and ecocidal industries, in the face of the bourgeois state and its justice system that criminalizes our comrades, we will continue to fight in word and deed.
Unconditional support for our comrades in Bouc-bel-air!
Commando pomme-pote
Translated by Act for freedom now! [we edited the title; NdAtt.]
