This story starts in August, 2020 in Dannenrod, a small village in Hesse, right in the center of Germany. After years of inaction, I more or less accidentally dropped into the Danni forest occupation. Fast forward to Mid January, 2021 (maybe a story for another time), I pretty much left Dannenrod. Throughout the year 2021, I jumped in a couple more times, but never stood it more than a few hours.
This was my first contact to the matter of mobility change. In short: Danni was occupied because it was supposed to be (and eventually was) cleared for the A49 highway. I never thought about the insanity of building new highways for one of the most privileged form of mobility (after planes and yachts) before that, but suddenly it became evidentally clear to me that we really need to change the way we look on mobility – cars can not be the solution of the future, even with clean propulsion. Two years later, just after the 9€ ticket experience, this slowly seems to become common knowledge in Germany. But I don’t want to get lost in the political details of why we need a socio-ecological mobility change.
Phase 2 of this story starts in April, 2021 with the initial occupation of Garni, a small forest in Garnholt, a small village in Lower Saxony’s Ammerland, almost the north-western end of Germany. This was supposed to be the starting point of more than 200km extension of the A20, through 80% swamps. It is also a story for itself, but let’s not get lost in the details – after a few days, the cops kicked us out of the forest and we were fortunate enough to find shelter on a meadow of a farmer who was about to lose his existence for the highway (not that anybody of the decisive actors cared). We spent a whole year there and built the A20 Camp (to be honest, I was more time absent than present, but definitely felt connected to the space throughout the whole time). On May 31, 2022 the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig finally had the court hearing for A20’s first part (of 18 alltogether), and on July 7, 2022 it surprisingly called the plan illegal – because of a nitrogen limit in a protected habitat – essentially preventing the start of the construction, which was expected for pretty much now (fall 2020).
On that day, however, it became clear to us – following the whole process in front of the court – that we can not expect a sudden error in a nitrogen limit or a protected species for each of the 18 parts to prevent the construction at the last chance juristically (and this is A20 only; there are so many more highways to be built), so on July 7, we decided to move to Berlin, next to the Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport.
Fast forward, August 14, 2022, 10 a.m.: A truck arrives at the Invalidenpark, next to said ministry, to drop the necessary infrastructure for a protest camp. And the camp starts.
Editorial note: As Ohne Kerosin nach Berlin, the biggest bicycle protest in Germany, arrived yesterday and took over the camp for 36 hours, I have the time today to reflect on the last 2.5 weeks, before I will take back the responsibility tomorrow and dive back into the adventure.
Let’s start with what didn’t happen: Volker Wissing, the Federal Minister of Digital and Transportation, didn’t talk to us. Not that we expected anything in that regard – Wissing is part of the FDP, the “liberal” party (which in Germany means: as capitalist and lobbyist as possibly imaginable – literally all they care about is money, the free market and its expansion – that’s their whole program). They are known for not engaging in dialogue with anybody who is not bribing them first (cf. C. Lindner & Porsche). So, we actually never pursued a real dialogue, knowing from the start that it just will not happen.
What did happen, though, is that of course everybody working in this ministry knows we are there. And that is pretty much what the whole action is about. Silent, but permanent protest in the form of “Hey, we are watching your steps. We see you fucking it up big time.”
Looking back the last 2.5 weeks, I am extremely happy we made it. More often than not, we actually were struggling with keeping up the lower limit of 2 people in order to not lose the status as a political gathering. The concept of the camp is an autonomous structure. It doesn’t belong to a specific group, which makes it open to all direct action groups with an antifascist consensus, preferably a connection to mobility change or climate justice – or at least climate, and not being a political party.
In this 2.5 weeks I learned a lot about the protest dynamics in Berlin. As Germany’s capitol and its biggest city, everything is happening here. So, there are two factors that made our structure not resonate in the field of climate action the way we wished: First and foremost, there are too many alternatives. Everything is happening in Berlin. And with Covid and Putin’s war, the focus is scattered. The second factor is what I call “Identitetris”: Some organizations within the climate (justice) movement only deal with their own action. Some don’t even bother to state solidarity. Especially for the big organizations, it’s a clear reproduction of capitalist logic of competition. Be the biggest, be the loudest, then you don’t have to care about the rest. I don’t want to give examples, because it would be a call-out. Let’s just say: Extinction Rebellion Berlin, Greenpeace Berlin, and Sand im Getriebe Berlin are extremely helpful supporters – the camp wouldn’t exist without them. Find yourself which (big) names are missing.
Last (for now), let me share a funny story about the Invaliden-Park: 5 days a week (Mon-Fri), every early morning at 3 a.m., an army of lawn sprinklers emerge the ground and start sprinkling – in 10 units of 20 mins each. Yes, the rivers are drying up, civilians are asked to save water, but the two federal ministries around the park don’t bother about pouring thousands of liters of fresh drinking water into the ground (almost) each night – no matter if it rains or not. Here is the funny part: Our camp was properly announced to the police, but obviously the police and the Green Space Office (GSO) don’t have a good connection, because on Mon (after more than 24h) a worker from the GSO came by on his way home and was surprised to find us on the lawn. He promised to ask for the sprinklers to be turned off, but as the responsible Rain Master (yes, the job description is “Beregnungsmeister” in German) was on vacation, he told us it would take a day or two. So we had another night of involuntary shower, before the sprinklers were actually turned off. For one night. Because on the next morning, police woke me up to tell me that the Rain Master will come by over the next day to discuss the time of the sprinkling. After a few hours, I got a phone call from the Rain Master, telling me that he actually doesn’t care at all and he can also just leave it off. I told him that the police announced that he will also check if all tents are off the sprinklers, but he was like “well, you would know by now and if something is broken, you will hear from us”. He really didn’t bother. So we were happy about the sprinklers finally being off. But this is not the end of the story: a couple hours later, somebody from the district office came over to tell us that the supreme dude in charge (whatever) decided that the sprinklers are to be turned on, so he came to inform us that everything is back in place the way it was before – and from that moment on we were back at 10 units of 20 min rain from 3 a.m. on. So, long story short, we made two beautiful and somewhat involuntary turns around the offices of central Berlin to find ourselves just where we started. This is exactly how everybody expects German bureaucracy to look and work like.
And now, I will enjoy the rest of my off day before I’ll head into the second round of our camp tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted about the second part as soon as I’m out there.
