Newsletter #43 – Failure of the government requires civil disobedience ++ Blockades planned in the Lusatian coal district
Following the publication of the federal government’s „climate package“, the action alliance Ende Gelände announces a mass action of civil disobedience in the Lusatian coal mining area. Thousands of people will block coal infrastructure with their bodies on the weekend of 29 November to 1 December 2019. Ende Gelände thus protests against the total failure of the Federal Government in climate policy. The alliance demands an immediate exit from coal and a fundamental system change.
“While 1.4 million people have been on the streets with Fridays for Future, the government is daring to publish this climate destruction package. We have already lost too much time. At the end of November we go to the place of destruction and end the age of fossil capitalism. Out of the coal and out of an economic system based on constant growth and exploitation,” says Nike Mahlhaus, spokeswoman for Ende Gelände. The protests take place the weekend before the start of the World Climate Conference in Santiago de Chile. At the end of the year, the legislative process on the coal exit law is also expected. Besides the
Rhineland, Lusatia is the second largest brown coal mining area in Germany.
“To postpone the coal exit to 2038 is madness in climate policy. We need the coal phase-out now in order to stop the climate crisis,” Mahlhaus continued.
Since 2015, Ende Gelände has been blocking the coal infrastructure in the Rhineland and Lusatia with mass actions of civil disobedience. Most recently, on a joint action weekend with Fridays for Future and environmental associations, thousands of activists from Ende Gelände shut down the Rhenish coal mining area in June 2019.
