
From Vallées en Lutte
Fellow peasant and anarchist Jacques Lefort left us this week, at the age of 81, following the spread of cancer.
Jacques Lefort (May 26, 1941, Paris – February 22, 2023, Saint-Pierre-d'Argençon)
Fellow peasant and anarchist Jacques Lefort left us this week, at the age of 81, following the spread of cancer. Warmly surrounded by his loved ones and his precious books. It was peaceful, serene, which he fought this last battle.
Among the many other battles fought in his life. His ears were open, his eyes attentive, and he kept an eye on the progress of our society. His head still charged with his reflections on the world he leaves behind. On our movement too. Memory keeper. Fiercely opposed to the post-modern tendencies that attempt to deny our history. Fiercely attached to putting our theories into practice which, misunderstood, are labeled as utopian.
Jacques was an early radical ecologist, naturopath, GMO reaper, anti-nuclear activist, anti-militarist, anti-industrialist, propagator of the newspaper La Gueule Ouverte... when ecology and anarchy went hand in hand. A wild nature defending itself. Also, activist of the action committees within the Leprince-Ringuet laboratory, where he was hired as an assistant-physicist, during the combative spring of 1968. Bakunin was his guiding light, and Jacques argued that anarchism could only be insurrectionary and federalist. But he also wanted to remind us that the links with the workers of the land were essential to workers' action and therefore to social revolution.
An arborist attentive to weeds, he practiced the Fukuoka method of wild farming, which is based on respecting the rhythm of nature. A holistic and self-sufficient approach. As a Q-Gong instructor, he also worked to share his knowledge of naturopathy with the intention of spreading a kind of self-management for health. Popular re-appropriation of lost, stolen, privatized knowledge... On an individual level, Jacques was engaged in the search for a holistic, transversal life.
During the last twenty-eight years spent in the Hautes-Alpes, he was at the forefront of several anarcho-syndicalist initiatives such as the CNT-AIT 05, the Collectif Anarchiste de LUtte et de Résistance Haut-Alpin as well as the Union des Travailleuses et des Travailleurs Anti-Autoritaires. As for inner nourishment, he had embraced Buddhism, which contrasted strangely – or sensibly – with his iconoclastic commitment. You are your own torch. A torch that has just been extinguished, but only after having set our chests on fire with a powerful and eternal revolutionary fire.
May the Earth be kind to you, compañero.
On February 24, 2023 in Saint-Pierre-d'Argençon,
Kaya and Guillermo Zunzunegui
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