A symbolic banner was unveiled this Thursday morning at 9 a.m. on the facade of the citadel of Belfort. “Macron has delivered our region to Amazon” written in orange letters on a black background. It is the work of Gafamazone, the collective of associations opposed to the establishment of the e-commerce giant’s platform at the Fontaine aeropark in the Territoire de Belfort.
Fifteen of them therefore deployed the banner 25 meters long and 5 wide just above the citadel of the city of the Lion with the help of two climbers. The message delivered is clear “With this black background in the form of mourning, on this citadel, an emblematic place of resistance in our region. So it’s symbolic, our region wants to resist an invasion, in quotes, from the multinational Amazon which is coming to destroy everything” advances Karel Trapp, the spokesperson for Gafamazon in the Territory “We realized that during Emmanuel Macron’s mandate, we went from 4 warehouses in 2017 to 44 today, and there are still 14 in the pipeline. The Head of State has done everything to promote its expansion in France with many tax advantages in particular. We consider that our region is threatened and with this little sentence, we are targeting the culprit”.
– Mathilde Regnaud
Jean-Jacques Vernier, member of the Gafamazon collective “There is still a warehouse project at the Fontaine aeropark, and our fight continues, there are appeals. We must continue to explain that e-commerce, this is not the future of our cities, and that the establishment of Amazon will inevitably be to the detriment of local commerce and local life.”
The Gafamazon collective proposed to the authorities to remove the banner at the end of the day. The Prefect of the Territory of Belfort refused and had it removed by the police and city agents around 11:30 am this Thursday morning. Other actions by opponents of Amazon are to take place again this Friday in the rest of France.