The Ham­bach is a for­est in Ger­many pro­posed for lig­nite (brown coal) strip min­ing. There is cur­rent­ly a for­est occu­pa­tion under­way, as well as an action camp, and action days at the end of every month.

Sep­tem­ber 16th, 2014

from Ham­bach For­est

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deutsch

Today, the new part of the Au­to­bahn, which they built to help fur­ther the ex­pan­si­on of the mine, will be opened with an of­fi­ci­al ce­le­bra­ti­on. Ap­pa­r­ent­ly, the po­li­ce chose the same day to dis­turb our re­sis­tan­ce in the fo­rest and on the mea­dow. They ap­peared as ear­ly as 8:00h this morn­ing and are gi­ving us trou­b­le since then. Fol­low us here today, we will re­gu­lar­ly pu­blish new up­dates, ti­ck­er-​style.

8:00 First ap­pearan­ce of cops in the fo­rest and on the mea­dow, buil­ding up to around 100 cops at 8:30
8:20 Per­son at­ta­cked by po­li­ce for now re­a­son, ex­cept as­king what they want
8:30 Re­mo­val of bar­ri­ca­des on the fo­rest paths, takes them about 2 hours
10:20 Po­li­ce are try­ing to evict beech town (tree oc­cupa­ti­on) de­s­troy­ing ever­y­thing on the ground – clim­bing units are pre­sent
10:30 Po­li­ce are amas­sing at plane han­gar close to mea­dow – we‘re no lon­ger re­acha­ble by car
11.​20 Po­li­ce van by the mea­dow oc­cupa­ti­on
11.​40 Po­li­ce and RWE on way to de­s­troy kit­chen near mea­dow
11.​50 Food packs for the po­li­ce (it locks that they want to work lon­ger)
12.​00 The ope­ning of the high­way A4 starts – 400 peop­le on of­fi­ci­al ope­ning (ho­no­red guests) The de­mons­tra­ti­on against it with 50 peop­le works, but not di­rect­ly by the ope­ning par­ty, 50 po­li­ce are there – traf­fic mi­nis­ter tal­king shit
12.​10 the bar­ri­ca­des to düren are evic­ted and the po­li­ce are blo­cka­ding the way to beech town
12.​28 the po­li­ce start to come on the mea­dow oc­cupa­ti­on, hid­ing duty num­bers. Po­li­ce­block from Aa­chen: (Li­cen­se Plate NRW-​4-​4623, pic­tu­re of po­li­ce stan­ding on the mea­dow )
12.​50 the of­fi­ci­al ope­ning at the high­way is over.
13.​10 po­li­ce „re­tre­ats“ a bit, lea­ving oa­k­town, a tre­e­hou­se oc­cupa­ti­on, for now.
13:20 Po­li­ce no lon­ger vi­si­ble on the mea­dow
13:25 News from the fo­rest – one har­vester (ma­chi­ne for cut­ting trees) is da­ma­ged (flu­ids lea­king out)
13:30 Peop­le are doing a sit­ting blo­cka­de in the Fo­rest, on the way to beech town oc­cupa­ti­on
13:40 A small group of peop­le got con­trol­led by Po­li­ce, one per­son ar­rested for lack of I.D.
13:40 Har­vester is dri­ve­able again, but is lea­ving the Fo­rest, pro­tec­ted by RWE and Po­li­ce
15:00 No more po­li­ce or oth­er en­emies in the Fo­rest – one se­cu­ri­ty car was pas­sing through the re­mo­ved bar­ri­ca­des, but left again quite quick­ly. The ti­cker will go on break for now, if there’s any more ac­tion we‘ll be up­dating again.

some pic­tu­res of today: 16.​09.​14

Greet­ings and Salu­ta­tions from the Ham­bach­er For­est Occu­pa­tion!

We are present­ly block­ing the expan­sion of the largest open­cast lig­nite mine in West­ern Europe with tree sits and bar­ri­cades through out the Ham­bach­er For­est. After the last evic­tion on March 27th 2014 we re-occu­pied the for­est, this time, build­ing up two tree sits with mul­ti­ple plat­forms, tree-hous­es, walk ways in between and bar­ri­cades .

At present we are fac­ing reg­u­lar intru­sion of repres­sive law enforce­ment destroy­ing our struc­tures on the ground and have already faced two largescale evic­tions using tac­ti­cal teams cost­ing mil­lions of euros while at the same time, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, is cut­ting sus­tain­able ener­gy sub­si­dies. Instead choos­ing to com­pen­sate for the shut down of nuclear pow­er plants with sup­port to the extreme­ly pol­lut­ing and eco­log­i­cal­ly cat­a­stroph­ic coal indus­try (in our case RWE pow­er com­pa­ny which is engag­ing in mas­sive green wash­ing PR cam­paigns).

We would like to send you updates and inform you of the upcom­ing Cli­mate Camp and Skill-shares Gath­er­ing (July 26th to August 3rd 2014) hap­pen­ing in our vicin­i­ty which we are also help­ing to orga­nize. We also have a sup­port camp with legal sta­tus at the edge of the for­est func­tion­ing as a de fac­to activist eco vil­lage with a veg­an kitchen, guest
car­a­vans, straw bail struc­tures, gar­dens and many oth­er on-going sus­tain­able projects, to which we would like to invite all of you who may find your­selves in our neck of the woods.

As of recent­ly, we have also built an info-shop/li­brary for which we would like to appeal for any extra lit­er­a­ture that you would be will­ing to share with us. We could cov­er the costs of ship­ment and if pos­si­ble dis­count rates of lit­er­a­ture itself not to men­tion we would be extreme­ly inter­est­ed and grate­full if you would be will­ing to share any back issues or extra lit­er­a­ture. If this is a pos­si­bil­i­ty please also respond with your prefer­able snail-mail address, as we would like to share some of our mate­r­i­al with you as well.

We have a sup­port cen­tre in Duren, which is unfor­tu­nate­ly under­go­ing a bit of tran­si­tion at the moment. For the time being the lit­er­a­ture for our Mead­ow Base Camp info-shop and the Cli­mate Camp could be sent, care of one of our sup­port­ers:

Frau Anni­ka Lind­berg
Rohrbach­str. 37
60389 Frank­furt am Main
Ger­many

If you would be inter­est­ed in updates from the for­est please include your PGP key in the cor­re­spon­dence.

There is a sense of urgency as even though the for­est has been occu­pied for two years now there is a new auto­bahn ready for open­ing in Sep­tem­ber bypass­ing the one sep­a­rat­ing the last rem­nant of the for­est from the mine allow­ing the mine to expand and log­ging and strip min­ing to com­mence on the last rem­nant of the for­est. We expect that to be the time of mass police actions. For that rea­son it is mega impor­tant to both get the word out and keep peo­ple involved, inspired and on track of the impor­tance and the con­text of the strug­gle.