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Successful blockades in the Rhineland; ASEED report from Ende Gelände, June 2019

Last weekend around 6,000 activists gathered in Viersen for another Action Camp organized by Ende Gelande in order to “SHUT SHIT DOWN” and celebrate mass civil disobedience actions aiming to disrupt the coal mining activity of Rhineland. Some of the ASEED comrades took part of the action!!

Contrary of what most of the international media said, the activists occupied and blocked not only the Garzweiler open-cast lignite mine but also several other locations such as another location in the mine, and two different train track locations. We would like to give a general overview on how the different finger structures were organized and how they started their action-journey having different time departures, diverse strategies, reaching different targets.

Friday morning started with the silver and pink fingers who left the camp around 8:00 am aiming to blockade the train tracks next to the Neurath power station. After both fingers being kettled by the police several times throughout the day, and passed through lots of endless delegates meetings, both fingers ended up sleeping in different locations. The day after they joined the blockade at the train tracks that other fingers previously occupied.

The green and red finger left the camp Friday at 11:00 am. The green one, without many complications, reached the train tracks in the evening and stayed in the blocked for almost 48 hours; amazing!!! Along these two days of bloackade, other activists from different finger structures (like the silver and pink that we mentioned before) joined the blockade, little by little, arriving in smaller groups. By occupying the train tracks the activists were directly cutting off the coal supply from the coal mine to the Neurath power plant, forcing the coal-fired power station to drastically reduce their activity.

Regarding the red finger, they got kettled several times after leaving the camp and they slept in the fields on Friday night. It wasn’t until Saturday morning when they managed to get into the open lignite coal mine and blockade it. Some of them even managed to get into the digger!!Digger machine from Garzweiler coal mine

On Saturday was the turn of the golden finger, with more than 1800 activists, most of whom ended up reaching the Garzweiler mine (48 square kilometers) and blockaded it for almost an entire day.
The same day, the colorful finger, which was wheel chair friendly, start a demonstration through the streets and thanks to them blocking the way of the police, the red finger had a “free way” to get into the mine!!!

Simultaneously to all these actions, occupying train tracks and coal mines, there were 8,000 people that Saturday celebrating a legal demo in the town of Keyenberg, which is threatened by plans to expand the mine. Many of the people joining this demonstration were students who are part of the Fridays for Future movement and managed to mobilize an incredible 40,000 students on Friday!!

It’s obvious that 2038 is too late to abandon coal-powered energy in Germany. It’s obvious that we should keep coal and fossil fuels in the ground and fight for climate justice. It’s obvious that nowadays, more and more, radical action is a rational and necessary response!!

Do you want to continue disrupting and be part of more cool disobedience actions?
Join the Free the Soil Agriculture&Climate-Justice Camp happening between the 19th-25th September! Stayed tuned to get more information about FtS and the mobilization from the Netherlands!!