A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #361 - Politics - Repression of the Free Party Movement: Nothing Will Stop a Dancing People (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

For several years, the Free Party movement has been subjected to 
repeated police repression. This escalation, the latest step of which is 
a bill aimed at criminalizing these free parties. Submitted on March 
18th to the National Assembly, a new, profoundly repressive bill, Bill 
1133, sponsored by the members of the Renaissance, Horizon, and Les 
Républicains parties, targets free parties. It aims to criminalize all 
rave parties under the guise of fallacious arguments unsupported by any 
studies or investigations. It cites money laundering, drug use, sexist 
and sexual violence, and chemical subjugation.

While for decades, ravers have been self-organizing to bring risk 
prevention, community health, and gender-based violence (GBV) prevention 
to parties, this bill seeks, among other things, to criminalize these 
harm reduction initiatives, contrary to what a consistent public health 
and anti-GBV policy should entail.

For the first time, a bill proposes even harsher penalties for party 
organizers: prison sentences and fines of up to €5,000, as well as the 
systematic confiscation of equipment, and the criminalization of 
transporting sound equipment. Simply participating in these parties 
would be punishable by a €1,500 fine.

The bill accuses free parties of being the cause of "countless rapes, 
injuries, and deaths." She forgets that, in truth, it's repression that 
kills and maims. We recall the death of Steve Maia Caniço in Nantes in 
2019, drowned in the Loire following the crackdown on a rave on the 
evening of the Fête de la Musique. In June 2021, the militarized 
repression of a free party resulted in several serious injuries, 
including a young man whose hand was amputated after a grenade was thrown.

Techno music, however, is a genre that, through its freedom and its 
queer and African-American origins, encourages cohesion and gatherings 
between communities. The commitment of artists has never ceased, 
including in the 1980s when many DJs died of HIV. From its beginnings, 
the free party movement had an anarchist component in the implementation 
of temporary autonomy zones, so dear to Hakim Bey. And this is what 
bothers the authorities today: people coming together to share a party 
outside of commercial channels, outside of private clubs for whom techno 
music is nothing more than a marketing ploy.

To counter the repression, demonstrations were organized across France 
on April 12. They led to the creation of an anti-repression coordination 
effort that brought together numerous collectives and sound systems at 
the national level. Except in one city, Strasbourg, where the 
prefecture, not daring to ban the demonstration, simply issued a decree 
prohibiting "devices playing music" and their movement on the day of the 
demonstration. This measure did not prevent the rally from taking place, 
but without sound systems, in order to protect the entire procession 
from repression.

DJ Puppy Meinhof (UCL Alsace)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Repression-du-mouvement-Free-party-Rien-n-arretera-un-peuple-qui-danse
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