A few days ago as I was riding my bicycle along the Esplanade,

the well know public garden in downtown Montpellier, when a

young guy hailed me. Christophe introduces himself: “I’m one of

the tree dwellers”. I look up at the tree beside us and I see 3

bamboo platforms in the branches on one tree and another

platform constructed in the one next to it. I discover that a

group of young people have been living there since May 12th!

 

Because of my traditional upbringing my first thoughts are of

toilets and hygiene facilities. How do they manage? Well,

they’re not stuck on to the tree; they climb down and visit their

many friends who live in the city and access their bathrooms

and toilets. 

 

Generally they are not locals. They come from other parts of

France where they have housing. Most of them are students on

holiday or workers on leave, eager to join the “tree movement”.

There are no more than a dozen in the tree, with a considerable

turn-over among them. There are a group of homeless people

who have joined them at the bottom of the tree. 

Why settle up in a tree, a strange idea isn’t it? “It’s for the sake

of freedom and ecology, for the future. Life without money, just

with bamboo, is lighter, less restricting”. 

 

Christophe tells me about “them”, the system, and the local

authorities which sees them as a nuisance: “They want to forbid

us to live this way despite it bringing us happiness. Why is

happiness repressed? If they think we are causing a disturbance

it means they fear what we’re doing here. Money is not the point

and it really scares them.”

 

  They call their movement Réelle démocratie* - an offshoot of

the Indignant movement or Les Indignés which was inspired by

the book Indignons Nous by Stéphane Hessel and to some extent

by the revolution in Tunisia. It started in Spain and has spread throughout many countries, including France and the USA (under the name Occupy Wall Street).

 

  Nevertheless a number of the tree dwellers say that they only represent themselves; they are like “free electrons”. Everything appears quite informal. Christophe explains: “We like organization, and we like so much disorganization too”. 

 

  You could call them utopists, they are romantic and futurist, they hope to spread a non-violent social movement. They say they are starting ‘creative resistance’ against the ‘system’, and for sure this rings a bell for many people. In the middle of the worst economic crisis since WWII they are trying to build a different perspective when they say, “Time is not money” and “Smile, you are loved”.

 

Troublemakers?

The  ‘tree dwellers’ frequently climb down and stand at the bottom of the trunk to talk to passers-by, and passers-by talk to each other – for them a positive result of their actions.  “They open the door to dream,” says a lady in an interview by montpellier-journal.fr. 

 

  Officials think another way: that their presence will create insecurity, especially during the Estivales (the wine and food festival on the Esplanade every Friday night). It would seem that an artificial gulf has been created between them and the wine growers who sell their products there. At the opening ceremony for the Estivales the officials called them “troublemakers”. The “troublemakers” asked for a right of reply, which has been denied. The mayor Madame Mandroux told me “They disturb the wine growers, ask them”. So I did. “Those young bastards prevent us from working”, one of their spokesman tells me. But it’s not the opinion of a young employee working at a wine-stall just by the tree. “They don’t bother us; we are bothered because the city police have asked us to move to another place”. Right, they could throw bottles and debris from their platform down to the ground and hurt somebody! Nevertheless, since they have set up above the ground no incident has been recorded. A young female student I met at the conversation exchange organized by the English bookshop has a different point of view: “Coming back from my work late at night every day I walk along the Esplanade. Since they have been there I feel much safer. I know nice people are around”. 

 

  Insecurity may have been but a pretext to chase them away; sadly the days of the tree-dwellers were numbered. On a few occasions the municipal police harassed them using excessive violence. 

  For instance in the early morning of June 29th, police dropped the food and the bags of the homeless people who mix with them in a garbage truck. Then came the last day. On July 6th a special police unit (GIPN, Groupe d’intervention de la police nationale) came from Marseille to expel them. More than 50 policemen equipped with fireman’s ladders; a huge deployment of force against 8 non-violent tree-dwellers. The final outcome is that the tree dwellers have been fined 11 euros each for infringing a municipal by-law. 

 

They say they will go back to the trees, here or elsewhere….

 

 

 

 

Words and Images: Patrice Victor

Journalistes sans Frontières