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.