Activists tried to block a huge coal mine in Germany

Brut America

Thousands of activists tried to block Europe's most polluting coal mine in Hambach, Germany. This is what Brut saw.

Transcript

00:00It's the third time that I come to Ende Gelände, it's the blockage of the most polluting coal mine in Europe.

00:30The first time that I came to Ende Gelände, I was in a mine.

00:35I was in a mine.

00:37I was in a mine.

00:39I was in a mine.

00:41I was in a mine.

00:43I was in a mine.

00:45I was in a mine.

00:47I was in a mine.

00:48Obviously, something like this doesn't happen in one day.

00:51We come here and we are trained in civil disobedience.

00:54Let's go, let's go, Ende Gelände!

00:57We're training so that we know how to blockade and how to act when we are meeting with the police.

01:10Here we have several fingers, several groups of about 300 to 900 people

01:15who will advance together to the mine before separating to occupy different strategic points.

01:21The silver finger is the one in which there is a good bunch of French,

01:24there are also Belgians, Dutch.

01:32I come from Lyon and I arrived Thursday evening.

01:36We must continue to gather, always and again, for the climate struggle.

01:41It doesn't stop, we don't give up.

01:43If we continue like this, we will reach 3 degrees more in 100 years.

01:48Basically, the earth will no longer be livable.

01:54What RWE offers us, the company that owns the mine, is to enlarge this mine again.

02:00And we are here to say it.

02:02We will not allow that.

02:14There are fingers that have separated.

02:16The police failed to prevent them from doing so.

02:20There are fingers that have separated.

02:22The police failed to prevent them from doing so.

02:24You see, there is a small battalion of police there,

02:27who are trying to take the lead.

02:29Now it's the race, one after the other.

02:32So, the People Power, they are our silver finger.

02:49We are on the railway line.

02:51It is hyper-strategic.

02:52It is the one that allows the coal to be transported to the power plant.

02:55And if there is no more transportation, the power plant must close.

02:58We want to create a better future for our children.

03:01That's why we need to prevent coal from being burned.

03:03And we are taking matters into our own hands.

03:06People got the power.

03:08People got the power.

03:10The GIEC report came out.

03:11They tell us that we don't have time.

03:13And yet, we still have a lot of work to do.

03:16The GIEC report came out.

03:17They tell us that we don't have time.

03:18And yet, we see that our leaders are making arbitrations.

03:22They are trying to see whether growth is more important,

03:24or the protection of the environment.

03:26And in the meantime, we are destroying the climate,

03:27when we can't afford it anymore.

03:28So, yes, we have to do civil disobedience.

03:30The consensus of action here is non-violence.

03:33We are never going to hit the police.

03:36On the other hand, we are actually in a confrontation.

03:38There is a stake in power, and we have to go beyond the police lines.

03:41But we do it without violence.

03:43The images prove it.

03:44We bypass them as much as we can.

04:02It's true that when we close a power plant,

04:04jobs are lost.

04:05But when we move towards the ecological transition,

04:07jobs are created.

04:08And in this case, it's funny because already in Germany,

04:11there are many, many, many more jobs

04:13in renewable energies than in coal.

04:28After several deliberations,

04:30there are groups here who have decided

04:32to stay and sleep on the rails.

04:34It's the determination of 5,500 people

04:36to take legal risks

04:38and say, yes, I am ready to put my body on the line.

04:40I am ready to go beyond myself.

04:42I am ready to refuse certain rules

04:44in order to defend something that is above all of this,

04:47which is the right to a just and sustainable future for all.

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