Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

Tree houses need people in Hambacher forest

In the Rhineland in Ger­many, the com­pa­ny RWE is run­ning 3 lig­nite mines where they extract around 100 Mio. t of lig­nite each year. They are extend­ing the mines and the plan of the com­pa­ny is to com­plete­ly clearcut the for­est until 2018. help is need­ed now.

In the Rhineland in Ger­many, the com­pa­ny RWE is run­ning 3 lig­nite mines where they extract around 100 Mio. t of lig­nite each year. They are extend­ing the mines and the plan of the com­pa­ny is to com­plete­ly clearcut the for­est until 2018. help is need­ed now.

This year espe­cial­ly is an impor­tant time for the Defense of the Ham­bach­er For­est as the new wave of defor­esta­tion is about to ensue dur­ing this win­ters cut­ting sea­son. Octo­ber 1st would have been the offi­cial start of this years cut­ting sea­son which has just been post­poned to Octo­ber 25 as RWE is forced to appear in Admin­is­tra­tive Court in Cologne on Octo­ber 17 by a law suit ini­ti­at­ed by Bund fur Natur as a response to the company’s lack of envi­ro­men­tal ass­es­ment stud­ies, its lack of stud­ies of costs of post extrac­tion clean up and last but def­i­niteve­ly not least: two colonies of endan­gered bats being dis­cov­ered in this year’s cut­ting zone.

Cli­mate Jus­tice Strug­gle in Ham­bach­er For­est and in count­less oth­er loca­tions around the world is a response to the Neo-Lib­er­al Extrac­tion­ist Agen­da of Dis­as­ter Cap­i­tal­ism and a call to pre­serve every com­mu­ni­ty every organ­ism being para­mount to pro­tect­ing Plan­et as a whole.

Join US!!
FOR THE EARTH!!!!

http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/info/

Germany: Largest Lignite Mine in Europe Shut Down for 2 Days by Sabotage

In the ear­ly hours of Mon­day Morn­ing April 25, in the dark of the night, pow­er cor­ri­dor with 10 pow­er mains sup­ply­ing cur­rent to the mas­sive dig­gers, con­vey­or belts and all oth­er facil­i­ties  of the Largest Lig­nite Open­cast Mine in Europe have been set ablaze result­ing in the whole mine being shut down for 2 days and con­tin­u­ing to oper­ate to this moment in lim­it­ed capac­i­ty.

Ger­many: Largest Lig­nite Mine in Europe Shut Down by Sab­o­tage for 2 days.

In the ear­ly hours of Mon­day Morn­ing April 25, in the dark of the night, pow­er cor­ri­dor with 10 pow­er mains sup­ply­ing cur­rent to the mas­sive dig­gers, con­vey­or belts and all oth­er facil­i­ties  of the Largest Lig­nite Open­cast Mine in Europe have been set ablaze result­ing in the whole mine being shut down for 2 days and con­tin­u­ing to oper­ate to this moment in lim­it­ed capac­i­ty.  This act of eco­tage fol­lows by a week dam­ag­ing of a pow­er pylon to neigh­bour­ing Indi­en mine.  Both mines exploit lig­nite which with its high mois­ture and con­t­a­m­i­nant con­tent and low ener­gy coe­fi­cient is only used to sup­ply pow­er gen­er­at­ing plants, a series of which sur­rounds the mines with one pow­er plant exclu­sive­ly pow­er­ing the  the Ham­bach mine.
Hambacher Forst Anschlag 250416

This act of eco­tage and destruc­tion of equip­ment with­out the injury or loss of life has tak­en aim at the indus­try which accord­ing to still rather con­ser­v­a­tive 2015 study of World Health Organ­i­sa­tion on the Effects of Air­borne Fos­sil Fuel pol­lu­tants is respon­si­ble for sev­en mil­lion deaths around the world each year, mak­ing it the sin­gle great­est envi­ron­men­tal health risk, con­tribut­ing to one out of every eight glob­al deaths.  Even more dras­tic  and irre­versible effects on cli­mate change(not includ­ed in the above men­tioned study), to which coal is the lead­ing con­tribut­ing fac­tor, esti­mat­ed to reach a run-away effect at 2 degrees centi­grade glob­al change by IPCC com­mit­tee with a new con­sen­sus form­ing plac­ing that point at 1.5 degree annu­al tem­per­a­ture change on which brink we are present­ly.  Hav­ing already caused glob­al bleach­ing and die-off to the rain­forests of the oceans — the coral reefs,  the com­bined tem­per­a­ture change and the increased acid­i­ty from car­bon absorb­tion to worlds ocean is about to make this largest habi­tat on earth unliv­able to the next most sen­si­tive organ­isms: plank­ton.  Plank­ton which con­sti­tutes the very foun­da­tion of the whole ocean eco-sys­tem caus­ing in effect unprece­dent­ed glob­al die-off and dec­i­ma­tion of life, putting one of the largest human-caused plan­e­tary extinc­tions aready tak­ing place into high­er gear still.
As this March became the hottest month on record and as Green­land ice cov­er under­went unprece­dent­ed melt­ing a month ahead of its usu­al time, and as emp­ty non-bind­ing promis­es are made at more and more policed, mil­i­tarised world cli­mate sum­mits all of this as the world slides into the future of chaos and insta­bil­i­ty it is in this case at least that the future gen­er­a­tions will be able to know that not all stood silent and com­pla­cent when faced with a glob­al hege­mo­ny of extreme ener­gy extrac­tion and its not so silent part­ners of dis­in­for­ma­tion, apa­thy and repres­sion.  We are how­ev­er still at a very high risk of these same  future human descen­dants and ecosys­tems fac­ing a dire real­i­ty in which so lit­tle has been done.

That is why Ham­bach For­est Earth-First salutes those respon­si­ble for remind­ing all that it is not a crime to com­mit a less­er “crime” in order to pre­vent a much larg­er one of glob­al destruc­tion, death and eco­cide from tak­ing place as it has for so long in full impuni­ty and in broad day­light……

Ham­bach­er For­est Earth­First!

http://hambachforest.blogsport.de

 

[Ed: More info here & here]

French climate resistance to #StopMCEDD deepwater oil conference

The Oil and Gas com­pa­nies are hold­ing a con­fer­ence on deep­wa­ter oil and gas and how to be more effi­cient to fur­ther exploit deep sea fos­sil fuels. About 500 cli­mate activists have block­ad­ed and dis­rupt­ed the first day of the con­fer­ence.

8th April 2016

The Oil and Gas com­pa­nies are hold­ing a con­fer­ence on deep­wa­ter oil and gas and how to be more effi­cient to fur­ther exploit deep sea fos­sil fuels.

About 500 cli­mate activists have block­ad­ed and dis­rupt­ed the first day of the con­fer­ence.

The largest oil and gas com­pa­nies around the world have decid­ed to meet in Pau from April 5 to 7, less than 4 months after the COP21. There goal is to increase the explo­ration and exploita­tion of hydro­car­bons in the sea. “For­ev­er fur­ther, ever deep­er and in con­di­tions more extreme is a crime against the Oceans”, denounced cli­mate pro­tec­tion orga­ni­za­tions. The coal­is­tion of com­mu­ni­ty, envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate organ­i­sa­tions announced they would block the hold­ing of this strate­gic sum­mit, using non-vio­lent actions and mobi­liza­tions. The protests were pre­ced­ed by a cli­mate action camp, Camp Siren.

Activists say that choos­ing the cli­mate is block­ing the exploita­tion of new hydro­car­bon deposits and pro­tect­ing the ocean. They ask that the French gov­ern­ment: sus­pend any type of financ­ing of the fos­sil fuel sec­tor — nei­ther grants nor invest­ment for coal, gas and oil; and to can­cel ongo­ing hydro­car­bon deposit bore­holes and can­cel all explo­ration and exploita­tion rights by fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies. The mon­ey divert­ed from fos­sil fuels must go to the tran­si­tion to fair and sus­tain­able soci­eties. It must also fund the con­ver­sion indus­tries and tran­si­tion of those present­ly work­ing in fos­sil fuels.

Total’s exec­u­tive Arnaud Breuil­lac artic­u­lat­ed that due to the fall in oil prices since 2014 oil com­pa­ny prof­its have suf­fered and forc­ing com­pa­nies to cut costs and find sav­ings, but that oil and gas was still need­ed despite the growth in renew­ables.

“To ensure the right lev­el of prof­itabil­i­ty, oil com­pa­nies and ser­vices com­pa­nies must work togeth­er to find inno­v­a­tive ways to bring cost down,” Breuil­lac told oth­er oil indus­try exec­u­tives and experts accord­ing to Reuters at the con­fer­ence.
“We need to increase our col­lab­o­ra­tion, to find bet­ter ways to share risks and to col­lec­tive­ly find a new bal­ance,” Breuil­lac said. They are hop­ing to man­age and ride the down­turn, even though the cli­mate imper­a­tive is that oil and gas devel­op­ment needs to stop.

On the first day pro­test­ers suc­cess­ful­ly dis­rupt­ed and block­ad­ed the con­fer­ence venue, both from the inside and out­side. Jour­nal­ist Patrick Piro has put togeth­er this stori­fy.

Back­ground stori­fy.
Multi­na­tion­al oil and gas com­pa­nies are organ­is­ing to drill ever fur­ther, ever deep­er into the abyss of the ocean. A sum­mit is planned for the French city of Pau on 5–7 April 2016, organ­ised by the French oil multi­na­tion­al Total, less than 4 months after the Paris cli­mate talks and Paris Agree­ment.

After 9 hours peo­ple are still blockad­ing the entrance to the Palais Beau­mont where the con­fer­ence is being held. Pau is the head­quar­ters of Total’s research and devel­op­ment divi­sion.

Yes, tear­gas was used indis­crim­i­nate­ly against non-vio­lent pro­test­ers.

Two activists infil­trat­ed the con­fer­ence and locked them­selves to ple­nary chairs, before being cut free and excort­ed out by a large num­ber of riot police.

On Day 2 there were cli­mate emer­gency dis­tur­bances at the hotels of del­e­gates. In the morn­ing oil exec­u­tives they dis­cov­ered that activists had locked on to the hotel gates pre­vent­ing them from leav­ing until the gen­darmes had detached the activists.

In the late after­noon about 600 peo­ple formed a human chain around Palais Bea­mont, with music and street the­atre. This was fol­lowed by a con­cert in Beau­mont Park with light pro­jec­tions on the con­fer­ence venue.
Mean­while at Camp Sirene cli­mate activists dis­cuss strat­e­gy and pre­pare for the day to block­ade Palais Bea­month where the MCE Deep­wa­ter con­fer­ence is being held.
Cli­mate activists lock on to Hotel gates, pre­vent­ing police and oil exec­u­tives leav­ing for the MCE Deep­wa­ter con­fer­ence in Pau…

Police had to dis­man­tle the grill with the activists locked on..

…and at last the oil exec­u­tive del­e­gates can get out of their hotel. Patrick Piro writes that it is a Pro­vi­sion­al end of the dis­tur­bances. Over night there were 3 noisy inter­ven­tions in the hotels of the del­e­gates.
Wak­ing up the con­fer­ence atten­dees in the Hotel Navarre. It is a cli­mate emer­gency after all.…2 groups of @AnvCop21 activists entered in the Beau­mont hotel at 2 and 4 o’clock to wake up #STOPMCEDD del­e­gates. Anne Sophie Tru­jil­lo put it nice­ly: #STOPMCEDD is “I will go after your dreams” or I’m your night­mare.
Mean­while activists lock on round del­e­gate vehi­cles lie in the road, storm the venue site to block­ade entrances includ­ing lock­ing-down the car park, and hand­cuff them­selves to del­e­gates’ bags!

“Four months after the COP21, an inter­na­tion­al sum­mit, named MCE Deep­wa­ter Devel­op­ment (MCEDD) will meet at Pau of 5 to 7 April multi­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies and off­shore oper­a­tors to “suc­ceed a sig­nif­i­cant decrease in costs to the indus­try oper­at­ing in deep sea to remain competitive.“France Nature Envi­ron­n­ment is strong­ly opposed to the hold­ing of the sum­mit of the ener­gies of pol­lut­ing and destruc­tive past that does not also pay their “true price” and denounces the indus­tri­al provo­ca­tion months after the Paris agree­ment on cli­mate.”

Sabotage at Hambach open-cast mine

On Mon­day night, we sab­o­taged some con­struc­tion machin­ery at the open-cast mine Ham­bach, Ger­many.

29.10.15

On Mon­day night, we sab­o­taged some con­struc­tion machin­ery at the open-cast mine Ham­bach, Ger­many. Five dig­gers, two bull­doz­ers, one road roller and one oth­er, expen­sive look­ing machine ahd their hydraulics and elec­tron­ic cables cut. the fuel and oil tanks were filled with sand, some mechan­ic parts dam­aged and all the win­dows were smashed. Despite the mas­sive secu­ri­ty-mea­sures RWE and the police put up against us, it was still real­ly easy to do seri­ous dam­age to these tools of destruc­tion.

This action is tar­get­ed against the mine’s oper­a­tor RWE and its accom­plices, which are destroy­ing the basis of life on this plan­et.

While the big mass of peo­ple in ger­many is sit­ting silent­ly in front of their tele­vi­sion screens, dis­tract­ed from the dai­ly destruc­tion of our lives by smart enter­tain­ers and prophets of con­stant growth, hun­drets of thou­sands of peo­ple are dying on the oth­er side of the world through the effects of cli­mate change.

While most peo­ple should be aware that we can’t go on like this, it is unfor­tu­nate­ly only a small minor­i­ty that is act­ing against this destruc­tion, risk­ing their health and free­dom in the process.

Three of these eco-defend­ers are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Aachen and Cologne, for their attempts to stop the clearcut­ting of the Ham­bach for­est throughthe ener­gy-giant RWE.

All three were heav­i­ly abused dur­ing their arrests, either by police or RWE’s pri­vate secu­ri­ties, with one per­son even get­ting their nose bro­ken and sev­er­al teeth smashed in. There­fore we want to ded­i­cate our action to the impris­oned peo­ple of Ham­bach and send our sol­i­dar­i­ty to them.

Also we want to make it clear that we will not be scared into sub­mis­sion and hope that more peo­ple will be moti­vat­ed by our action, to com­mit sim­i­lar acts of resis­tance against the brown-coal-death-machine.

 

The Chaos Engi­neer­ing Crew

French Monsanto Research Site Damaged in Suspected Arson Attack

A Mon­san­to research cen­ter in west­ern France suf­fered heavy fire dam­age in a sus­pect­ed arson attack ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing, the offi­cial in charge of the site said.

Octo­ber 28th, 2015

A Mon­san­to research cen­ter in west­ern France suf­fered heavy fire dam­age in a sus­pect­ed arson attack ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing, the offi­cial in charge of the site said.

The offi­cial, Jakob Wit­ten, said police inves­ti­ga­tors “strong­ly sus­pect it was a crime as no elec­tri­cal or oth­er sources were found.”

 The fire was ignit­ed from two dif­fer­ent places at the site, where about 10 peo­ple work and which is spe­cial­ized in corn research. The smell of gaso­line lin­gered near the build­ing, which had heavy dam­age in its recep­tion hall and offices.

“No Mon­san­to sites in Europe have so far been the vic­tim of fires of crim­i­nal ori­gin, this is unprece­dent­ed vio­lence,” Wit­ten said.

How­ev­er, forty tons of GM sug­ar beets were torched in Ore­gon, spark­ing an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion, so the sen­ti­ment behind this lat­est arson, if it indeed was an act of vio­lence, is not unprece­dent­ed.

The Creve Coeur-based com­pa­ny is the fre­quent tar­get of crit­i­cism in France over con­cerns about genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops it has devel­oped.

The gov­ern­ment said last month it would use a new Euro­pean opt-out scheme to ensure a ban on the cul­ti­va­tion of GM crops in France remains in place.

 

Hambach Forest, Germany: Ecodefenders blockade several targets in Europe’s largest open-cast mine

The last week­end saw a series of block­ades, that halt­ed work in sev­er­al parts of the Ham­bach open-cast-coal-mine.

8.10.15

The last week­end saw a series of block­ades, that halt­ed work in sev­er­al parts of the Ham­bach open-cast-coal-mine.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, at around 2:30, sev­er­al peo­ple occu­pied on of the huge exca­va­tors and stopped it for sev­er­al hours.

One day lat­er, around the same time, four peo­ple stopped the two main con­vey­or-belts that are used to load the coal onto the trains, with one group climb­ing around on top of one, while the oth­er two peo­ple locked-on to the struc­ture of the oth­er. After being hosed with water for sev­er­al hours by angry mine work­ers, all peo­ple were evict­ed at around 11:00 and tak­en to the police sta­tion in Düren, where they were released about one hour lat­er, with­out giv­ing their iden­ti­ties.

On Mon­day morn­ing, again at around half past two, anoth­er group of peo­ple occu­pied on of the giant exca­va­tors, again being evict­ed a cou­ple hours lat­er and realeased with­out ID-check.

This was fol­lowed by jet anoth­er con­vey­or-belt block­ade, which was evict­ed more bru­tal­ly this time. One of the per­sons is still in police cus­tody.

It seems the police and the ener­gy com­pa­ny RWE are get­ting more and more annoyed by activists con­stant­ly slip­ping through the holes in their secu­ri­ty net.

For more infor­ma­tion check out: hambachforest.blogsport.de

No Gold, No Masters: Press release of the 1st “Beyond Europe” Camp in Halkidiki #skouries

On Sun­day, the August 2015, about 2000 peo­ple attend­ed on a demon­stra­tion in the moun­tains of Skouries.

August 27th, 2015

On Sun­day, the 23rd August 2015, about 2000 peo­ple attend­ed on a demon­stra­tion in the moun­tains of Skouries. Dur­ing this heavy clash­es between demon­stra­tors and the police took place, with police mak­ing mas­sive use of tear­gas and shock grenades. 78 per­sons were detained, of which four are still being held in cus­tody.

The demon­stra­tion was organ­ised by the anti-author­i­tar­i­an plat­form against cap­i­tal­ism, Beyond Europe, togeth­er with activist com­mit­tees of the local vil­lages in the area of Skouries. This protest march was the prac­ti­cal cul­mi­na­tion of the inter­na­tion­al Beyond Europe camp, which has been tak­ing place at the beach of Ieris­sos close to the area of Skouries. At this camp, 400–500 anti-author­i­tar­i­ans from all over Europe came togeth­er in order to exchange ideas with each oth­er and dis­cuss polit­i­cal analy­ses and prac­tices. The loca­tion was cho­sen very con­scious­ly in order to sup­port the ongo­ing eco­log­i­cal-social strug­gles against the extrac­tion of gold and oth­er heavy met­als in Skouries. and of course we are not only active on behalf of but along­side the local activists. For a long time now, Beyond Europe activists have been engaged in prac­ti­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port for this strug­gle. It has a strong impact for social move­ments in Greece and the whole of Europe as an impor­tant front­line in the strug­gle against the recon­fig­u­ra­tion of Euro­pean cap­i­tal­ism through the Troi­ka on the back of the many.

Photo from Stratosphere (Twitter)

For us, the camp and espe­cial­ly the demon­stra­tion is a polit­i­cal suc­cess, by being set in the right place at the right time. In Jan­u­ary 2015 the left par­ty Syriza took over pow­er and evoked hope in many Left­ists. Con­cern­ing the issue of Skouries, Syriza played the role of the par­ty of the move­ment dur­ing oppo­si­tion, but has act­ed very dif­fer­ent since it has been in pow­er. Short­ly before the march the Alex­is Tsipras’ gov­ern­ment resigned, only two days after the start of the Beyond Europe camp and since Syriza had learned about our demon­stra­tion. Mean­while the ener­gy min­is­ter Panos Skourletis ordered to sus­pend the min­ing oper­a­tions in Chalkidi­ki on 19th August, claim­ing the com­pa­ny vio­lat­ed envi­ron­men­tal con­tract terms. We attribute the announce­ment to close the mine as a result of us choos­ing to organ­ise a camp here, but we did not rely on the government’s announce­ment as being the end of the strug­gle– which we have seen to be jus­ti­fied. One day after the announce­ment, dur­ing our walk from the camp to the moun­tain by the vil­lage Mega­li Pana­gia we could see that the works at the mines were con­tin­u­ing. This was just one more expres­sion of the most basic but impor­tant les­son in the ques­tions of rela­tion between par­ties and the move­ments: although they may improve tiny things with­in their lim­it­ed capac­i­ty, the pos­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate real progress and eman­ci­pa­tion lies in our hands. Del­e­gat­ing desires for change towards par­ties will always be a dead end, since par­ties in pow­er will always need to work to enact nation­al inter­est. We agree with Syriza that the mines in Skouries need to be closed, but it is up to us to ful­fill this task. Our action sent this mes­sage to any par­ty which will take pow­er in the Greek re-elec­tions in Sep­tem­ber.

Sunday’s demon­stra­tion put the impor­tant and vital strug­gle of Skouries back on the table. Its impact was felt deeply all over Greece and beyond. We see this as a polit­i­cal suc­cess as now, since the first time after the huge gen­er­al strike of 2012, a new polit­i­cal dynam­ic from below is being cre­at­ed in Greece. After a drought of social move­ments since that year, Syriza’s seizure of pow­er seemed to have par­a­lyzed large parts of it due to a posi­tion of grant­i­ng the Tsipras’ gov­ern­ment time. Our camp and demon­stra­tion was an effort to put an end to this drought and rely on our strongest weapon – self-organ­i­sa­tion and social strug­gles.

As always when social strug­gles are effec­tive, the state’s repres­sion also con­tin­ued yes­ter­day. In the sev­er­al years in the ongo­ing issue of Skouries, police and secret ser­vices have been heav­i­ly try­ing to oppress the local move­ment by harass­ment, arrests and juridi­cal pros­e­cu­tion. Yes­ter­day again, the police vio­lent­ly dis­persed the demon­stra­tion, arrest­ed 78 peo­ple and injured sev­er­al. One per­son suf­fered a bro­ken leg while being arrest­ed by the cops. Our wish­es for a quick recov­ery are with her and with every­one else suf­fer­ing beat­ing or gas injuries. And of course we are in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the four still detained, as well as all the oth­er activists being pros­e­cut­ed in the last years. This might only have been a small step towards an anti-author­i­tar­i­an organ­i­sa­tion beyond bor­ders and against the sad­ness of real exist­ing cap­i­tal­ism, but it was a step nonethe­less. And there is more to come.

from beyondeurope.net

Into the Heart of the Beast: Occupying Germany’s Open Cast Coal Nightmare

Last week­end I along with around one thou­sand oth­er peo­ple took part in mass direct action against one of the largest open cast lig­nite mines in Europe, owned by RWE, which along with sur­round­ing mines and coal pow­ers sta­tions is the largest source of green­house gas­es in Europe.

I took part because fos­sil fuel cap­i­tal­ism is destroy­ing our Earth. Wait­ing for com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments to do the right things is not work­ing and is not going to work so peo­ple must stand up and force them to.

Ear­li­er this year, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment caved in to the lob­by­ing might of RWE, back­track­ing on plans to put a levy on the most pol­lut­ing pow­er plants, which would have led to a phase out of lig­nite. Last week­end, peo­ple stood up in protest to say ‘Ende Gelände’, here and no fur­ther.

 

This is my expe­ri­ence of the day. It was a long, exhaust­ing and con­fused day, and what I expe­ri­enced will not be the same thing that oth­ers in dif­fer­ent parts of the action expe­ri­enced. But I hope this can help any­one read­ing under­stand what hap­pened.

The assault

“Guten Mor­gen, Ende Gelände!” Those were the words I woke up to at 5:45 am in my tent. An ear­ly start for a momen­tous day, I rushed to scram­ble my stuff togeth­er, go to the loo and then hasti­ly join up with my affin­i­ty group.

We were in the ‘Green Fin­ger’ one of the four groups with approx­i­mate­ly 250 peo­ple in them, that would be lay­ing siege to the mine.

When the whole fin­ger was formed up with every­one in their agreed place, my affin­i­ty group was in the mid­dle. The first kilo­me­tre or so passed calm­ly enough. I could even hear some­one play ‘The Dig­gers Song’ on a pipe, as we searched for a way across the motor­way between us and the mine.

In the end, we came upon a tun­nel with only about four lines of cops block­ing it. It was at this point that many peo­ple there had their first expe­ri­ence of police vio­lence, in some ways I was lucky I knew what to expect from pre­vi­ous actions.

So they resort­ed to fill­ing the air with a mist of pep­per spray and beat­ing every­one they could reach with their clubs, in the hope of sep­a­rat­ing them from the group. Every­one around me bunched up like rug­by play­ers in a scrum so the police couldn’t drag any of us away.

After this came a mad dash across the fields going through two more police lines. Even when they weren’t in front of us, the police fol­lowed behind us on foot and in vans try­ing to beat and pick off any strag­glers. One per­son in my affin­i­ty group got pep­per spray in their face, so we had to guide him by hand as we ran through a break in the police line.

I’m hum­bled by the trust he showed in us to make sure he wasn’t beat­en to a pulp. The way every­one ral­lied to help those around them who had been beat­en or pep­per sprayed was one the most beau­ti­ful dis­plays of prac­ti­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty I had ever seen.

Into the mine

After we suc­cess­ful­ly got across the fields, we walked along a dirt track by the edge of the mine that was in line with some water sprin­klers used to stop dust escap­ing. Before this point I hadn’t real­ly grasped the scale of the place. It looked large enough to fit at least two good sized towns in. It went from sand coloured at the top down to pitch black at the bot­tom.

We descend­ed down the mine on a sandy ramp wide enough to dri­ve a van down. At a bend near the bot­tom there was an attempt to block the path, but we evad­ed the police by trav­el­ling out the bank and bypass­ing them instead.

We then moved as fast as we could along the top tier of the mine, shad­owed by a group of riot cops on the cliff top. When we reached one of the cor­ners of the top tier, where con­vey­or belts over a kilo­me­tre long end­ed, we met a small group of secu­ri­ty, which most of us were able to get past with­out much trou­ble. As we moved along the side of the con­vey­or belt towards one of the mas­sive Bag­gers the police raced after us in bor­rowed 4x4s.

The police tried to form a line to block us off, but there were too few of them to do any­thing, so we were able to bust through the line with ease. My legs were burn­ing from run­ning in the sand with a heavy bag full of water. My right arm felt like it was on fire from the pep­per spray.

After this we formed a line in order to stop any more police being able to join those in front of us. They tried again to block our path, but we held our line togeth­er by link­ing arms. We suc­cess­ful­ly stood our ground and they were forced to retreat. See­ing the police retreat was a won­der­ful sight.

Even­tu­al­ly we came to a point that was too wide for us to ful­ly block and even more police man­aged to get past us. They had a much stronger line in front of us, which was thick­est next to the con­vey­or belt where I was walk­ing. On the very far side from me peo­ple man­aged to break through their line next to some small­er dig­gers.

The mem­bers of the affin­i­ty group I was with tried to run over to flow through the police, but by the time we got there they had closed it. I saw one police offi­cer grab some­one by their front and beat them across their back, while oth­ers lashed wild­ly in every direc­tion, and oth­ers pep­per-sprayed around them hop­ing to burn some­one.

Deten­tion

After two hours, rough­ly sev­en kilo­me­tres, and numer­ous police lines, we were ket­tled at 9 am. Even then we were still win­ning, as just by being there we stopped the mine from run­ning and the police guard­ing us couldn’t work to keep oth­ers out.

We could see the Bag­gers lying still while in the dis­tance wind tur­bines moved. A cou­ple of hours in, they start­ed to pull us out one by one, tak­ing our pho­tos and try­ing to get our names. Almost no one told them.

After this, they tied our hands with zip ties behind our backs. Through all this we sup­port­ed each oth­er, and worked to keep our spir­its up by play­ing games and chat­ting (small talk when you can’t say your name, or say too much about your­self is strange).

After five to sev­en hours we were moved onto bus­es and tak­en to a police sta­tion. We sat for sev­er­al more hours chat­ting, singing and shar­ing food (our hands had been freed by then). Even­tu­al­ly, they gave up on try­ing to process sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple that refused to give their names and resist­ed hav­ing their fin­ger­prints tak­en.

Around 11 pm we were dumped out­side a rail­way sta­tion and made our way back to camp, tired but tri­umphant. For the train ride back, some of us brought a cou­ple of crates of beer, we cel­e­brat­ed the day and talked about what we’d been through on the train back. By around 1 am I was back in my tent exhaust­ed, sore, emo­tion­al­ly drained, but also felt great about what we’d done togeth­er and achieved.

We had stopped the dig­gers for a day but it was also about more than just that. In eco­nom­ic terms it will have also dam­aged RWE’s posi­tion on the mar­ket (their share price just hit a new low) and made them seem less trust­wor­thy to investors.

In addi­tion to this many there had nev­er tak­en part in direct action before but now know that by work­ing togeth­er and tak­ing mat­ters into our own hands we can achieve more than wait­ing for sal­va­tion from those above us in soci­ety could ever do.

Many peo­ple both there and watch­ing the events from afar will also have seen the role of the police, not as keep­ing of the peace but as guard dogs of social and eco­nom­ic order which is killing us and our plan­et. Last week­end, we fought and we won.

by Toni Bel­ly / The Ecol­o­gist

Flood the System Organising Booklet is Now Available to Print or Download

Click here to down­load the Flood the Sys­tem organ­is­ing book­let! This 35 page book­let has every­thing you need to know about organ­is­ing an event to #Flood­TheSys­tem.

Click here for the same book­let as above, but set up so when you print it front/back, you can fold it into a book­let.

We envi­sion Flood the Sys­tem as a step towards build­ing the DNA of a robust move­ment that has the col­lec­tive pow­er to chal­lenge glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, racism, patri­archy, and oppres­sion.

This book­let is designed to give you a sense of why we need to esca­late, what Flood the Sys­tem might look like, and what struc­tures we will all use to orga­nize.

The authors drew inspi­ra­tion for this book­let from the 1986 Pledge of Resis­tance Hand­book, the 1999 WTO Direct Action Pack­et and the 2014 Fer­gu­son Action Coun­cil Book­let.

Protesters Storm Open-Pit Coal Mine in Western Germany

Pro­tes­tors look at a huge buck­et-wheel exca­va­tor as they arrive for a demon­stra­tion at the open-pit coal mine near Garzweil­er

Pro­tes­tors look at a huge buck­et-wheel exca­va­tor as they arrive for a demon­stra­tion at the open-pit coal mine near Garzweil­er, west­ern Ger­many Sat­ur­day Aug. 15, 2015. Sev­er­al hun­dred envi­ron­men­tal activists have stormed a lig­nite mine in west­ern Ger­many to protest against the use of coal for elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion. dpa via AP Mar­ius Beck­er

August 15th, 2015

Envi­ron­men­tal activists have stormed a lig­nite mine in west­ern Ger­many to protest the use of coal, a major source of green­house gas­es.

The Ger­man news agency dpa reports that sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple from a group call­ing itself Ende Gelande — which loose­ly trans­lates as “it’s fin­ished now” — broke through a police line in Garzweil­er, west of Cologne.

Police spokesman Anton Hamach­er says offi­cers used pep­per spray to stop the crowd and are remov­ing pro­test­ers from the site.

A spokesman for Ger­man ener­gy com­pa­ny RWE says sev­er­al huge buck­et-wheel exca­va­tors used at the open-pit mine had to be shut down for safe­ty rea­sons. Spokesman Lothar Lam­bertz says RWE has can­celed plans to bring employ­ees onto the site to ral­ly in favor of coal min­ing.

from Asso­ci­at­ed Press