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