Category: Rest of Europe

Last week I went to North-West Ger­many to vis­it a new for­est occu­pa­tion cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in the Ham­bach for­est – the pur­pose of it? To stand direct­ly in the way of the expan­sion of Europe’s largest open-cast coal mine. Through the con­struc­tion of tree-hous­es and defences, by engag­ing with the local com­mu­ni­ty and by bring­ing peo­ple and ener­gy to the area, this new camp in the woods is the lat­est stand against the ener­gy giant RWE (Rheinisch-West­fälis­ches Elek­triz­itätswerk), a com­pa­ny which plans to clear cut the area and gouge out the con­tents of the earth with some of the biggest death machines on the plan­et.

It is beau­ti­ful here. The for­est is very old and peace­ful and, at the moment, the leaf-car­pet­ed floor is dot­ted with blue and green tents. The only nois­es fil­ter­ing through the trees are the chat­ter­ing of birds and the dis­tant thud of an axe cut­ting wood by the fire pit. Up in the trees, plat­forms sway in a breeze car­ry­ing the tell-tale smell of wood smoke. Peo­ple busy them­selves with the day-to-day tasks of life here; chop­ping wood, coax­ing the fire into life, find­ing a clean(ish) pot, boil­ing water, mak­ing tea, toast­ing bread, eat­ing. Peo­ple talk and make plans, some­body jug­gles, and the sun shines warm­ly on.

It’s inter­est­ing to me how sim­i­lar these places are all over the world, how the com­mu­ni­ties of peo­ple you meet are so much like the friends you left at home. So, while I was stay­ing at the camp, I decid­ed to “inter­view” a few peo­ple and explore the par­al­lels between this anti-coal for­est occu­pa­tion in Ger­many, and the anti-coal action camps that I have been involved in in Scot­land [1]. I want­ed to explore what it is that moves peo­ple to live in places like this and invest them­selves so com­plete­ly in this kind of action.

- J -

 

I spoke to J one evening around the camp fire when I could bare­ly see my note­book by the light of my head­torch, let alone keep up with all the inter­est­ing things he had to say! J is involved in the WAA (Work­shops for Action and Alter­na­tives) [3] and has been part of the occu­pa­tion from the begin­ning..

Why do you think this kind of occu­pa­tion is impor­tant?

What makes this type of occu­pa­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant and rel­e­vant to me is how the action to occu­py this area was organ­ised and how we con­tin­ue to organ­ise while we live here – that is, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal and hor­i­zon­tal way. To not have to ask the politi­cians or RWE to change their pol­i­tics or to change to green cap­i­tal­ism but to take mat­ters into our own hands, is empow­er­ing. The way we organ­ise here is an open struc­ture so new peo­ple can join in with this way of liv­ing and organ­is­ing and expe­ri­ence it for them­selves.

I think it is already inspir­ing local peo­ple and lots of oth­er forms of resis­tance. The local peo­ple here have in the past always been told to rely on the legal sys­tem for change. Big envi­ron­men­tal NGO’s in this area have encour­aged them to pur­sue this strat­e­gy, and because peo­ple place their trust in these organ­i­sa­tions this is what they have done. How­ev­er when the legal route fails local peo­ple (as it so often does) these NGO’s leave behind cyn­i­cism and res­ig­na­tion. So we want to show them an alter­na­tive strat­e­gy to this dead end. Peo­ple come here and get inspired when they see that you can take mat­ters into your own hands and do some­thing to change the sit­u­a­tion for your­self.

What brought you here?

I was inspired by the Frank­furt occu­pa­tion [4] which was a for­est occu­pa­tion against air­port expan­sion. At the time I was involved in the young greens which I had been involved with for two years. How­ev­er, after we vis­it­ed the Frank­furt occu­pa­tion 14 of the 17 peo­ple in the young greens left to join the for­est occu­pa­tion and I’ve nev­er looked back. To me, the green par­ty is a great exam­ple of good active peo­ple giv­ing their time and ener­gy to some­thing that ends up co-opt­ing their orig­i­nal aims for change.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

That there would be no peo­ple in this for­est! We need forests just for them­selves. I love liv­ing in the for­est, but it’s a tac­tic. Actu­al­ly just by being here at the moment we have stopped hunt­ing because there is a law that you can’t hunt ani­mals in a for­est occu­pied by humans. Also, a lot of hunt­ing plat­forms in this for­est have mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared…

What would a suc­cess look like to you?

A vis­i­tor from Buir (the clos­est town to the mine) said she had the impres­sion that we don’t have the atti­tude that this is a win or loose sit­u­a­tion. Even if they cut down the trees here, destroy the for­est, dig coal here – we have already won some­thing. We are part of a big envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice move­ment and this action achieves a big change in and of itself. It’s a meet­ing point, an ideas shar­ing hub, new things are tried out here, dif­fer­ent ways to inter­act are exper­i­ment­ed with, and so peo­ple can learn a lot just by being here.

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

If I observe why peo­ple come here I think it’s often because they have per­son­al con­tacts. Or because they feel well here because it’s a nice atmos­phere. They come here because it makes them feel good not just because they want to “save the world.” I real­ly don’t like the per­cep­tion that I’m here because I am an extreme­ly moral per­son above oth­ers, who wants only to be self­less and “save the world.” I love it here and enjoy myself, that’s why I’m here! I would real­ly like that good feel­ing to be passed on to oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly locals and peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have dread­locks or who are already in our “sub­cul­ture.”

Involv­ing oth­er kinds of peo­ple in this kind of action also chal­lenges us to chal­lenge out own prej­u­dice about so-called “nor­mal peo­ple” and to get rid of our activist arro­gance. We need all kinds of inputs, to see things from oth­er per­spec­tives. Often, peo­ple who are already active in the way that you and I are, are all young 20-some­things. A lot of peo­ple here clear­ly went through a process of ques­tion­ing their last 20 years of social con­di­tion­ing and arrived at con­clu­sions that made them want to take direct action. But it’s hard­er to do this for the first time if you are old­er I think. It’s much much hard­er to analyse your assump­tions about soci­ety at a lat­er stage, because you’ve already com­mit­ted to a cer­tain life path for a long time. It’s eas­i­er to ques­tion the last 20 years of your life than the last 50 if you’ve only got a few left!

What’s your favourite thing about the for­est?

I think the best thing about it is that I’m not so much in front of my com­put­er, which is pas­sive, here I am very active. Here the rhythm of the day with the chang­ing light is amaz­ing. It’s hard to say the fresh air (because there is so much dust here from the near­by coal mine) but it’s still fresh­er than some of the rooms where I live (in the WAA) I like the birds! A lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple vis­it, often real­ly inter­est­ing peo­ple with lots of inter­est­ing ideas and ways of doing things and expe­ri­ence. The best is how much ener­gy there is if there is space for peo­ple to be cre­ative and to realise their ideas and if they don’t have to ask per­mis­sion, but can just do it. Like here, so much has been organ­ised in such a short space of time already (the camp has only been going since the 14th of April 2012) and lots has been built. I think peo­ple are more moti­vat­ed when they don’t have a boss.

- Tina -

 

I spoke to Tina dur­ing a week­end gath­er­ing at the camp when a lot of peo­ple were vis­it­ing the occu­pa­tion to par­tic­i­pate in a com­mu­ni­ty walk around the for­est and eat cake that locals from Buir had brought to share with the occu­piers. She had trav­elled from Cologne to vis­it the camp for a cou­ple of days. We sat togeth­er under the kitchen tar­pau­lin to escape the rain and dis­cuss some of her ideas..

What brought you here?

I am involved in a group called “AusgeCo2hlt” [5] which has been organ­is­ing against brown coal for two years now. We organ­ised a cli­mate camp last year and got to know peo­ple from the WAA. Some peo­ple from the WAA came to one of our meet­ings and told us that they were plan­ning to get a house and hadn’t decid­ed where to get it yet and we sug­gest­ed this area (Buir/Duren.) So we were involved in the for­est fes­ti­val here on the 14th of April and some of us keep com­ing back to stay involved.

Do you plan to live here per­ma­nent­ly?

It depends on the sit­u­a­tion. I haven’t decid­ed in my mind yet. I’m not so good at climb­ing, so I’m com­ing and going at the moment.

Do you think it is impor­tant for more peo­ple to live here?

I think it can work if dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ple come and go, like we are doing. For exam­ple a group can come and stay here one week and then go, and then anoth­er group can come and stay for a week etc. To take the deci­sion to quit school or a job to live here is quite a big one. And if you do have these respon­si­bil­i­ties you have to split your time. But there is a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple liv­ing here (in the Ham­bach for­est) and oth­ers else­where in Europe who are spe­cialised in climb­ing and site occu­pa­tion – I hope more of these peo­ple come here! Sol­i­dar­i­ty is impor­tant though and works quite well. Hope­ful­ly between June and Sep­tem­ber this year the core group liv­ing here at the moment will grow because then there are uni­ver­si­ty hol­i­days in Ger­many.

I’m not pes­simistic, but the envi­ron­men­tal scene in Ger­many is not that big. Peo­ple are involved in a lot of oth­er strug­gles. Many of which you need to be in a city or have com­put­ers to do, so if you choose to live here you have to make it your main focus. One of my main focus­es is to work on press releas­es and try to make links between this and oth­er cam­paigns.

What would a suc­cess here look like for you?

That RWE stops killing the for­est for coal min­ing! But we have to mea­sure suc­cess in oth­er ways as well because we might not achieve that. This occu­pa­tion is rais­ing aware­ness of oth­er issues to peo­ple, espe­cial­ly peo­ple in the local area, such as a cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism and the sys­tem. A suc­cess would also be if an evic­tion threat would get a lot of peo­ple to come here and act in sol­i­dar­i­ty. It would be cool if the region­al media would start to talk about the issues here. And not just here but also in Cologne (near­est large city.) The mes­sage not just of the for­est but about RWE, coal min­ing, and fos­sil fuel ener­gy.

When we held the last cli­mate camp in Man­heim in 2011 200 peo­ple came. Last week we mobilised against RWE’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, but for this demo there were only 150 peo­ple. Forty peo­ple attempt­ed to block­ade the entrance but unfor­tu­nate­ly 300 police, pri­vate secu­ri­ty and dogs pre­vent­ed us and sev­er­al peo­ple were arrest­ed. Next week we will dis­cuss in a meet­ing why there were not very many (in our opin­ion) peo­ple com­ing to this demon­stra­tion – as we had expect­ed more because there are not so many days like this organ­ised around envi­ron­men­tal issues in Ger­many. In the end we thought, ok it would have been cool if there had been lots more peo­ple, but actu­al­ly it was also a suc­cess to raise aware­ness through this action.

We have to accept that we (the anti-coal move­ment) can only grow slow­ly. We try to learn from the anti-nuclear move­ment which took 20 – 30 years to become so estab­lished. So we need to be patient. But it’s hard because cli­mate change is so urgent! Dur­ing cas­tor (anti-nuclear protests) they had 2000 peo­ple sit­ting on the rail­way line so the police couldn’t do much about it. We did the same action on a coal rail­way line and there were only 60 of us so in the end we had to leave. We need the peo­ple with us. We are afraid of repres­sion in small num­bers. But at the same time the repres­sion here is noth­ing com­pared to (the strug­gle against coal min­ing) in Colom­bia so we need to remem­ber this. And although we are a small group we have strong bonds between us, we real­ly like each oth­er. We make mis­takes and are crit­i­cal of our actions but we go for­ward!

- Clum­sy -

 

I inter­viewed Clum­sy on the stump of a tree in the area of clear cut, just a stones throw from the mine on one side and the camp site on the oth­er. From our van­tage point we could see the mine and the colos­sal bag­gers (coal dig­gers) churn­ing coal from the earth in the dis­tance. He has been liv­ing here from the begin­ning of the occu­pa­tion..

Why are you here?

Because Jesus told me, only kid­ding, the rea­son is that this region is Europe’s cli­mate killer num­ber 1. I came here last year for the cli­mate camp and saw all the destruc­tion. I was just trav­el­ling around look­ing for some­where where peo­ple are active and I always want­ed to live on a tree protest site. At the cli­mate camp peo­ple were talk­ing about it but at the time there weren’t enough peo­ple, so I moved into the WAA and did research and made prepa­ra­tions to help make it hap­pen.

Why did you always want to live on a tree protest site?

I like liv­ing out­side, the sim­ple life, the for­est, climb­ing. Life free from the con­straints of soci­ety – rent, work, school, pay­ing for food. I think protest sites are real­ly good exam­ples of oth­er ways of liv­ing.

So do you think that this kind of action is always about more than just one kind of oppres­sion or issue?

Yeah def­i­nite­ly. Of course you always have the main focus – in this case open cast coal min­ing. But with stuff like safer spaces we also try to chal­lenge oth­er forms of oppres­sion like racism and sex­ism. Every activ­i­ty is open to peo­ple of all gen­ders – any­one can climb or any­one can cook. Every­one par­tic­i­pates in the dai­ly chores. And it’s an exam­ple for oth­er peo­ple. When I told my gran about places like this she couldn’t believe that men actu­al­ly do the wash­ing up and that women do con­struc­tion work, or that we decide things by con­sen­sus. Where­as in soci­ety we get taught that there are typ­i­cal ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles and men hold a very priv­i­leged posi­tion – it’s con­di­tion­ing. Often peo­ple that come here are sur­prised that we don’t have lead­ers.

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

It’s hard because liv­ing this kind of life – you can’t get a lot of stuff that we’re always told it’s nice to have – T.V, lux­u­ry items. As soon as peo­ple realise that mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions don’t make them hap­py they might want to live like this. I guess by hav­ing this space and show­ing that this life can be sat­is­fy­ing and empow­er­ing peo­ple might want to do the same.

What brings hap­pi­ness?

It’s dif­fer­ent for every­body, but for me it’s hav­ing friends around and hav­ing a lot of time to do what I want. Doing stuff against the destruc­tive RWE makes me hap­py. I always had the feel­ing I want­ed to do some­thing to change soci­ety. This works for me.

What’s your favourite thing about the for­est?

A lot of stuff. It’s qui­et, not the annoy­ing sounds of the city. The air is nice, it’s green, the for­est is full of cute ani­mals – deer, fox­es, mice.. I just like it because it is a big liv­ing thing, where­as cities are just big dead blocks of con­crete and smelly stuff.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

The open­cast flood­ed and only the tops of the dig­gers vis­i­ble! No air planes in the sky. My tree-house built! Do you mean what I real­ly want? That’s a big ques­tion! Er.. I’d like to see all the oppres­sive stuff gone. It’s a hard ques­tion.. I’d like to see indus­tri­al civil­i­sa­tion col­lapse.

Any­thing you’d like to add?

To send an open invi­ta­tion to any­one who would like to come and vis­it us and stay as long as pos­si­ble!

- Erde -

Towards the end of speak­ing with clum­sy, Erde emerged from the for­est and came to sit with us in the clear cut. Erde was vis­it­ing the WAA just before the occu­pa­tion took place and then liked the for­est so much he end­ed up stay­ing. A the moment he either lives in his lor­ry or up on his plat­form defence in the trees..

Why are you here?

Because doing noth­ing is giv­ing up. For me per­son­al­ly, it wasn’t enough to do noth­ing. I heard of this occu­pa­tion when I was vis­it­ing the WAA and I thought I will bring my skills and stay the week­end. But then I real­ly liked the peo­ple and the place and the action and I’ve end­ed up stay­ing.

Why do you think this occu­pa­tion is impor­tant?

The first rea­son is because this for­est is to be chopped next win­ter and I want to stop that. Sec­ond is that it is a very old for­est and there is much more life in an old for­est than a new one.

What were you doing before this?

Liv­ing with­out oppres­sion is the way I have lived for the last 15 years. But the dif­fer­ence now, in a project, is that I’m not on my own. Before this I was a free­lancer in a busi­ness and I was treat­ed in anoth­er way and this is a total­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. When I became unem­ployed I got re-inter­est­ed in social and polit­i­cal issues. The wish to be with nature was first awak­ened in me in Ham­burg squats after which I moved into my lor­ry.

How is it dif­fer­ent to how you lived in the past?

Here I’m com­plete­ly in nature and not in an office. I’m here with peo­ple who have an enhanced con­scious­ness and sense of self-aware­ness and that is very inter­est­ing and chal­leng­ing. I think we are try­ing to make anoth­er world here, in com­bi­na­tion with the polit­i­cal aspect – and that’s a com­bi­na­tion for opti­mum life qual­i­ty!

What are the ingre­di­ents for opti­mum life qual­i­ty?!

I tried work­ing ‘slave jobs’ after uni­ver­si­ty, I worked two and didn’t try a third. In the end I saw that mon­ey and mate­r­i­al things don’t give me the good life that I am dream­ing of. What are the essen­tial ingre­di­ents of a good life? Peace, love, free­dom, good food, music, colours, flavours, nature..

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

I think if we want to build up a bet­ter world we have to reach any­one. We need to get peo­ple here to show them the good life, to expe­ri­ence this way of liv­ing. So they can see and feel it. They get an idea by com­ing here and expe­ri­enc­ing a free, autonomous life. To be the own­er of your time. To get away from wastes of time, like T.V.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

Refer to my recipe for the good life! My desire is that peo­ple respect each oth­er and look after each oth­er, because if they do this then they wouldn’t destroy our basic life sup­port sys­tem. What is cre­at­ing the prob­lems of the world and what needs to be destroyed? I’ve thought for a long time that I would like to make two plac­ards, each with the words “cap­i­tal­ism” and “oppres­sion” on them, so that when peo­ple ask me ques­tions like yours I just have to hold one or the oth­er up in answer!

What I would love to see is this coal mine total­ly sur­round­ed by peo­ple, which since it is so big, would prob­a­bly need at least 3,000 – 4,000 peo­ple! So please come and join us.

- Vis­it, Join In, Take Action -

If you want to vis­it the Ham­bach for­est in Ger­many, it is easy to get to and you will always be wel­come. Go for a day, a week, a month – any time you can give to it will be appre­ci­at­ed and there is lots to do and to get involved in. For direc­tions to the for­est vis­it their blog here: http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

For myself, it was time (reluc­tant­ly) to leave Ham­bach and return to Scot­land to re-join the anti-coal organ­is­ing col­lec­tive (Coal Action Scot­land) I am involved with here. At the moment we are busy plan­ning for an action camp against coal min­ing which is going to take place from the 12th – 18th of July 2012. So, once you have been to vis­it Ham­bach For­est it would be fan­tas­tic to see you here in Scot­land to take action in the sum­mer. For more infor­ma­tion vis­it our web­site here: http://takebacktheland.org.uk/

Links and Sources of Infor­ma­tion

[1] Coal Action Scot­land

http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/

“News, views, and action from com­mu­ni­ties and cam­paigns against new coal in Scot­land”

[2] Ham­bach For­est

http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

News, info and direc­tions to The Ham­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion.

[3] The WAA

http://waa.blogsport.de/

WAA stands for “Work­shops for Action and Alter­na­tives” and is an open activist project in Duren.

[4] For­est Occu­pa­tion Kel­ster­bach

http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/english-information/

Direct Action against the Frank­furt Air­port Expan­sion, the camp was evict­ed in 2009.

[5] Ausgeco2hlt

http://www.ausgeco2hlt.de/

An anti-coal cam­paign­ing group organ­is­ing cli­mate camps in Ger­many.

 

A sum­ma­ry of the lat­est events — Bai­ta Clarea is an area in Val Susa where works for the imple­men­ta­tion of the TAV were due to start soon.

On Mon­day 27th Feb­ru­ary the forces of order pro­ceed­ed to evict and expro­pri­ate the land in Bai­ta Clarea in order to clear the way for the dev­as­tat­ing high speed rail­way works.

On the same day Luca Abba’, a res­i­dent of the Val Susa whose land was also expro­pri­at­ed, climbed a pylon in an attempt to block the ongo­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tion. The cops ordered Luca to come down with­out tak­ing pre­cau­tions for his safe­ty, push­ing him even high­er and fail­ing to cut off the elec­tric­i­ty of the pylon.

As a result, Luca was elec­tro­cut­ed and fell sev­er­al metres below. Res­cue was delayed by cor­dons of antiri­ot cops but final­ly Luca was tak­en to hos­pi­tal by heli­copter. He is now out of dan­ger although his con­di­tions remain very seri­ous.

Bar­ri­cades were set up by NO TAV peo­ple in the area, which has been declared a ‘strate­gic site of nation­al inter­est’.

Protests and block­ages are being orga­nized all over Italy.

The fac­ul­ty of Polit­i­cal Sci­ences of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna has been occu­pied in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the strug­gle in Val Susa. Here is the com­mu­niqué of the occu­piers:

LET’S STOP THEIR PROFITS, LET’S BLOCK THEIR DEVASTATION.
COMMUNIQUE BY OCCUPIED POLITICAL SCIENCES

On 27th Feb­ru­ary 2012 the mil­i­tary machin­ery of the State attacked the peo­ple of Val Susa, by expro­pri­at­ing and destroy­ing lands with bull­doz­ers and trun­cheons, in order to car­ry on the insane project for the con­struc­tion of the TAV.

Among the NO TAV activists who opposed the inva­sion Luca, a com­rade whose land was expro­pri­at­ed by the CMC Com­pa­ny, climbed a pylon to block the advance of the bull­doz­ers.

As cops tried to pull him down, Luca con­tin­ued to climb the pylon until he was elec­tro­cut­ed by a 15,000 volts elec­tric shock and fell down to the ground.

In spite of the fact that res­cue was ham­pered for almost an hour by cor­dons of antiri­ot cops, Luca is now out of dan­ger, even if his con­di­tions remain very seri­ous. 

But this is not enough to pla­cate our anger!!! That pylon should have been insu­lat­ed, police knew this but didn’t do any­thing, on the con­trary they pushed Luca even high­er.

IT WAS ONLY BY PURE CHANCE THAT THE STATE DIDN’T KILL ONE OF OUR COMRADES!

It is there­fore clear how chief police Man­ganel­li declared war to the val­ley and to all the peo­ple who are resist­ing, when a few days ago, plain­ly speak­ing, he said there would be a dead in Val Susa.

The area of the yard has been declared ‘strate­gic site of nation­al inter­est’, which means mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion and legit­imizes uncon­di­tion­al recourse to the vio­lence of the State.

The peo­ple of the val­ley and oth­ers in sol­i­dar­i­ty have imme­di­ate­ly occu­pied the high­way close to the yard in dif­fer­ent spots, so as to block the access of both the forces of order and the TAV work­ers.

Since the first hours a great num­ber of diver­si­fied actions of sol­i­dar­i­ty have been car­ried out in 26 cities [around 80 by now], thus pro­vok­ing dam­ages and dis­rup­tions to the TAV traf­fic all over the coun­try.

More­over the sol­i­dar­i­ty attack went beyond the sec­tor of trans­port, like all the work­ers who went on strike on the same morn­ing.

We are aware of the fact that the high speed rail­way goes across the entire coun­try and that the NO TAV is not con­fined to the Val Susa and to a sin­gle project.

THEREFORE WE HAVE OCCUPIED THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SICENCES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA IN SOLIDARITY WITH LUCA AND THE NO TAV ARRESTED.

WE WANT TO CREATE AN OPEN SPACE WHERE WE CAN DISCUSS IDEAS AND PROPOSALS AGAINST THE ADVANCE OF THIS NTH WORK OF DEVASTATION AND TO ORGANIZE OURSELVES EVEN IN THIS CITY.

NO TAV sol­i­dar­i­ty from Bologna, Tues­day 28th Feb­ru­ary 2012.