During the last weeks, at two different locations in Europe, trees have been squatted that would fall prey to the construction of motorways. On December 22nd, activists in Bexhill, England occupied trees against the construction of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road and have erected an entire camp now. In Berlin, free-spaces-activists, together with environmental-activists occupied trees against the A100 that is to be built through the middle of Berlin. We, the squatters from the Hambach Forest stand in solidarity with these struggles and call for a practical support and for the creation of a network of these emerging spaces of resistance with each other and the creation of many new spaces like these.

The anti-road movement in the UK in the 90s, which followed in response to the neoliberal infrastructure policies of Margaret Thatcher („there is no alternative“), was one of the strongest social and environmental movements of recent decades in Europe. Out of it many new forms of action developed: The tree house villages, with specialized blockading techniques at the sites where the roads should be built, the „critical masses“ and „reclaim the streets“ parties as reclaiming the cities against the car craze, and a general political understanding of „direct action“ as a self-empowering, dynamic form of politics from below. Even the radical environmental movement in Britain, that spread after the turn of the millennium and inspired climate movements all over Europe, had its roots in the anti-road movement.