Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

On Sat­ur­day the 14th of April, part of the Ham­bach for­est near Cologne, Ger­many was squat­ted by a group of activists in oppo­si­tion to the planned open cast coal mine by RWE. Peo­ple are more than wel­come to join in the cam­paign and vis­it.

For more infor­ma­tion see: http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

e‑mail: hambacherforst@riseup.net

 

Here‘s a 10min. video (sorry,no eng­lish sub­ti­tles yet)

 

This is the first dec­la­ra­tion by the squat­ters:

First Declaration of the Hambach jungle

 

The Forest is now squatted!

A part of the Ham­bach for­est has been squat­ted in order to save it from the exca­va­tors sent by the giantic ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion RWE to dig up the coal.
Along­side the “Wald­fest”, a cul­tur­al hap­pen­ing in the woods (with the slo­gan “For­est, not coal!”), activists have squat­ted the wood­land, although both activ­i­ties remain inde­pen­dent of each oth­er.
At the „Wald­fest“ peo­ple from dif­fer­ent groups met up form­ing a broad coali­tion to get active in sav­ing the Ham­bach For­est and stop the extrac­tion as well as the pro­duc­tion of ener­gy from coal.
Ham­bach for­est, near Cologne, is set to be com­plete­ly destroyed, mak­ing space for the largest coal mine in Europe „Ham­bach­er Tage­bau“ accord­ing to the plans of RWE.

By squat­ting we are also tak­ing over respon­si­bil­i­ty adopt­ing our trees, pro­tect­ing them our own way.

 

Why squatting?

We have decid­ed to squat know­ing that it is sur­pass­ing the small path of legal protest. Nev­er­the­less two rea­sons lead us to this con­clu­sion:

First­ly: The gap between what is legal­ly allowed and what is regard­ed as jus­ti­fied by us is too big.
RWE is destroy­ing local com­mu­ni­ties, as well as endan­ger­ing peo­ples health  by destroy­ing the for­est in order to mine the brown coal, not to men­tion caus­ing cli­mate change, and they are legal­ly allowed to do so.
Nonethe­less we are not able to see any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in their action.
By squat­ting this for­est we’re not act­ing legal­ly accord­ing to cur­rent Laws, but the action is jus­ti­fied by the aim of try­ing to stop RWEs world destruc­tion course.

Sec­ond­ly: We believe that the gap between what is legal and what is just will always exist. Due to this sim­ple fact, a neu­tral point of view can­not exist. Just and legal remain dif­fer­ent because every­body them­selves has their own opin­ion of what is just and what is not.
There­fore estab­lish­ing free and live­ly forms of inter­ac­tion, defin­ing what is just and sen­si­ble, is a must; As opposed to hav­ing the def­i­n­i­tion derivat­ed from ancient laws which, for the most part, are only pro­tect­ing the inter­ests of the rul­ing elites.
By squat­ting this land we’re try­ing to gen­er­ate a process of vivid nego­ti­at­ing, fur­ther­more bring­ing atten­tion to the top­ic of how cli­mate and envi­ro­men­tal destruc­tion shall be dealt with.
Loud­ly we’re shout­ing „No!“ at any­body whose solu­tion is to go on just like they used to, and who are ‑just like RWE- even speed­ing up the destruc­tion by build­ing a new coal plant!

If we are to be evict­ed by police force then we are fac­ing the answer of a repres­sive state which is try­ing to sub­due any hor­i­zon­tal and vivid process of self-orga­ni­za­tion. That is the ide­ol­gy of the state as well as of the cap­i­tal­ist cor­po­ra­tions who are far too inflex­i­ble, not to men­tion unable to give sen­si­ble answers to the top­ics of our time.
They will even­tu­al­ly per­ish just like the dinosaurs who were also unable to cope with the chang­ing con­di­tions. In fact the solu­tion is not to mod­i­fy the exist­ing sys­tem of exploita­tion and supres­sion into some­thing more flex­i­ble, but to over­come that sys­tem!

 

Against coal energy — Here and Everywhere

This squat is oppos­ing coal ener­gy in gen­er­al as it is the most CO2 inten­sive form of gain­ing ener­gy. The „Rheinis­che BraunkohleRe­vi­er“ (Rhi­nan­ian Brown Coal Area) is Europe’s cli­mate killer no. 1. In contrast,most of the coal burnt here is shipped from oth­er parts of the world e.g.Columbia where the extrac­tion coin­cides with bru­tal human rights vio­la­tions.
World­wide the con­flicts aris­ing along­side coal extrac­tion and burn­ing are get­ting worse. Espe­cial­ly in South­east Asia where in the last few years activists resist­ing coal extrac­tion have been mur­dered.
We want to cre­ate an aware­ness of these strug­gles to help the peo­ple fighting.Therefore we’ll include more infor­ma­tion about the sit­u­a­tion in the­sear­eas in our fur­ther dec­la­ra­tions, let­ting those activists speak.
Fur­ther­more we declare our sol­i­dar­i­ty towards the rad­i­cal anti-coal cam­paigns like the coal-action-net­work in the U.K., ris­ing-tide-groups in Aus­tralia and North-Amer­i­ca, or the „wij stop­pen steenkool“ cam­paign in the Nether­lands. With their direct form of action, these groups gave us inspi­ra­tion, and we hope they will inspire oth­er groups world-wide as well.

 

The woods for all!

Occu­py­ing the for­est shall be an act for re-empow­er­ment by the locals. The „Occu­py­ing Force“ RWE shall loose their „right“ of „direct­ing“ over the region unscru­plous­ly destroy­ing the local and glob­al fun­da­men­tals of life.
Peo­ple should decide what will hap­pen to the for­est in a coop­er­a­tive man­ner instead. This space should be open to all on the basis of equal treat­ment of each oth­er. There­fore it is nec­es­sary that the peo­ple in the for­est ques­tion which role-mod­els and ways of act­ing they repro­duce, what struc­tures of oppres­sion and dom­i­nance exist direct­ly and indi­rect­ly. We think that it is impor­tant that we all act togeth­er to fight, pre­vent and inter­vene in dis­crim­i­na­tion of any kind.

 

Space for preparing the change

Squat­ting the Ham­bach For­est is a direct action direct­ly con­fronting the injus­tice of the coal indus­try. But we want to go on fur­ther: It’ll also be a place for peo­ple of dif­fer­ent back­grounds to meet up and net­work. Peo­ple that used to have only the fight against coal expan­sion in com­mon can now come togeth­er and exchange ideas and expe­ri­ences of the ongo­ing strug­gle.
Through this we hope that peo­ple are enabled to net­work and orga­nize — for fur­ther resis­tance and more.

We do need a place where peo­ple are able plan the cli­mate-just future them­selves.
First­ly: The cur­rent pol­i­tics — they total­ly failed and keep on fail­ing in answer­ing the press­ing mat­ter of cli­mate change!
Sec­ond­ly: Orga­niz­ing our­selves from below is much more fun!
Maybe this squat might become such a place. The off­shoot of a new world amidst the heart of fos­sil-nuclear cap­i­tal­ism.

 

Why „declarations out of the Hambach jungle?

The name of this text came up fol­low­ing the tra­di­tion of the Zap­atis­tas in Mex­i­co and their „Dec­la­ra­tions of the lacan­don jun­gle“. The Zap­atis­tas achieved their aim of liv­ing in dig­ni­ty in the bor­ders of the poor­est Mex­i­can state through a strong direct and deter­mined push back of the repres­sive police and para-mil­i­tary Mex­i­cos.
We are not claim­ing our action to be com­pa­ra­ble to the things that hap­pened in Mex­i­co but nev­er­the­less our aim is the same. Fight­ing for a self-deter­mi­nat­ed life in dig­ni­ty inmidst a sys­tem of destruc­tion and oppres­sion.
We believe that suc­cess­ful stug­gles like in Chaipas are pos­si­ble all over the world and nec­es­sary. We want to make the first steps in this direc­tion.

The form of a dec­la­ra­tion was also cho­sen because we are tired of cor­rupt­ing and short­en­ing the con­tents only to make them fit into a stan­dard press for­mat, after which they’re still total­ly cor­rupt­ed by the press.
Instead we’re opti­mistic that this and the fol­low­ing dec­la­ra­tions will reach ‑hope­ful­ly a lot of- peo­ple direct­ly.

We call the woods the for­est Ham­bach jun­gle know­ing that this ter­mi­nol­o­gy is incor­rect.
But Ham­bach Jun­gle is, in its struc­ture, one of the old­est forests in West­ern Europe. Rare habi­tats are found here. Unlike RWE, who wish to destroy the for­est in total, we pledge anoth­er solu­tion, an exper­i­ment where­by the nat­ur­al for­est will, in a few decades, turn into jun­gle-like wood.
Then, we would leave the Ham­bach Jun­gle delib­er­ate­ly!