Skillshare in Hambi from 22.9-30.9.2018

Direct resistance requires:
People with diverse skills and creative ideas to stay one step ahead of the repressive power. Therefore, we invite everyone, from 09/22 to 10/03 at the Skillshare Camp in Hambach Forest, to be there. The forest occupation in the Hambach Forest has been fighting for 6 years against the precipitation of the forest and thus against the expansion of the lignite mine Hambach. The open pit Hambach causes enormous ecological damage, one of the oldest and largest mixed forests in Europe fell to him almost entirely to the victim. The peaceful protest of the forestry occupiers was violently evicted again and again. We believe that political activism can be fulfilling and enjoyable. The offered workshops should help to reconcile the fight for the good life with a good life in the here and now. In our workshops, we want to create a space for your ideas and experiences together with you. We want to discuss with you, learn, share knowledge and spend a nice time.

Continue ReadingSkillshare in Hambi from 22.9-30.9.2018

With Love, Gratitude and Solidarity from Hambi to Zad!!

As the reports of constant repression, violence and destruction in ZAD NDDL reach us in the Occupied Hambach Forest [blockaded against RWE’s Mega toxic lignite Coal Mine] many here also see and remember the constant stream of creativity, refuge, support, inspiration and solidarity that ZAD NDDL has provided and became for so many through out the years and continues to do so despite wave upon wave of State repression and violence that has been and continues to be thrown at it. Zad like countless other struggles, uprisings and revolution is the ultimate reminder of how much is possible with so little and how “so little” can signify so much.
That is why at this difficult time, also here in the Hambi (just reading the reports but also preparing for waves of deforestation and evictions this year beginning in October),a mega dose of Love, Solidarity and Constant Support is being sent to you from this ancient also endangered but also occupied, barricaded and defended for last seven years forest.

Continue ReadingWith Love, Gratitude and Solidarity from Hambi to Zad!!

SAT. 10:00 Garden Planting – Wild Food Walk – Lunch

This Saturday at 10:00 join us for breakfast in the Meadow Occupation following which we will plant this year’s vegetable and herb gardens. After 3-4 hours of which we will go for a Wild Forest Food walk and collect nettles (Brennesseln) for vegan burgers and forest “cooked spinach” with Bear Garlic collection for Pesto, we will also collect an assortment of other spring fresh forest plants for a wild salad. We will then chill out in the forest and have lunch. Here it has to be also pointed out that it is estimated that Earth, in its present state of ecological deterioration, could only sustain about 20 million people if wild foods were being widely harvested. So this mini wild-foods skill-sharing is just to show what forest have been able to offer us and what will disappear when they like Hambi (most of it this Oct-March) will be gone and destroyed. With many plants like Nettles, Bear Garlic, and Dandelion being the first pioneering plants in the previously disturbed and cut by RWE areas.

Every year for last six years there have been planted extensive, vegetable and herb gardens in the meadow. This year do to high intensity and frequency of large police actions and detentions we have fallen a bit behind. Many of us have also been spending more time deeper in the forest resisting RWE’s attempt to destroy it. So any support planting this year would be a great exercise of community coming together, a celebration of spring.

Every planting and every garden in the Hambach Forest Occupation has showed that the RWE clear-cutting and Climate killing CO2 dumping coming from its open cast pits has not just been resisted, with blockades, barricades, locking on and sabotage but also with gardens, kitchens, music, sense of community and art all of which combined were and are so powerful and dangerous that thousands of police with helicopters, tanks, horses, dogs, cranes and bulldozers had to be send on many different occassions to try to destroy it also attempting to convince the population that we and not RWE continuing dumping of 150 millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere is the real risk and real danger to the local community, region and the Planet. Hmmm you could have build a heck of mega large scale gardens for the budget of 100s of millions used against hambi. But such a mega project with the coruption and mutual back scratching involved in government projects would probably be very limited, boring hirarhical with most funds sub-divided internally in between industry and government officials with another large portion left to pay off the press such as Build to write what great job they did and how glad everybody is that they have done it(if they did which of course they have not).

So once again for creative, simple, muscle and veggie powered horizontalist resistance action join us this Saturday 10:00 in the Meadow!

Bring Seeds!

For Hambi and for the Planet!

Continue ReadingSAT. 10:00 Garden Planting – Wild Food Walk – Lunch

Reflection and Call for Action Following Skill-Shares Camp

This weekend on Saturday and Sunday another successful Skill-share Camp concluded with full days of workshops and on a lighter note concerts on Saturday and Sunday. Both of the last 2 days also were full of political discourse, DiY, Media workshops and numerous activities such a piercing and tatoo workshops. The Meadow and the Forest filled with circles of groups sitting on the ground, walking through out the forest occupation, learning climbing and many other skills, all of this to a beautiful background sounds of birds serenading, sharing their happiness of first warm and sunny weather of this spring. Birds and other organisms that in a year or two will be deprived of their habitat like many of those living in the forest after the sure to come evictions. Like birds the forest activists continue to build a new and rebuild after the storms of repression and after the waves RWE Social and Climate Chaos. Continuing to expand and rebuild knowing very well that that all our and our animal comrades’ habitats are shrinking and that after 2018-20 cutting season the whole ancient Hambacher Forest will seize to exist. That’s why a call goes out to all who attended the Skill-shares and to others who are not at Hambi that in case of Forest Evictions if you are not able to come and help rebuild and re-occupy please consider doing a banner action in front of your local coal power station if there is one close by or by RWE offices which there should be one, or a German consulate or embassy if you are outside of KohleAusstieg(Coal Exit) Land. Let’s point out the price of Climate and Ecological destruction is not just destroying the Planet and habitats but also communities and cultural and protest spaces such as Hambacher Forest Occupation. That is the true price of Carbon and Coal, so please help us bring that message home and deal with numerous disconnects on which Climate Disaster Capitalism is based.

Saturday also ended on a more playfull twist: a Quiz Show on Radical People’s history with prizes took place. In case you have not been there here are some of the questions that were asked to test your knowledge of our collective past: (with answers on the bottom of this article):
1.What revolution took place in 1918.
2.What happened during Shah’s visit to Berin?
3.Which revolution was named after a flower. With extra point for the year it took place.
4.List 3 ways of blockading a road. With extra point if anybody in the quiz group was arrested for using that method.
5. What tropical plant was the revolution in Bougaville named after with a documentary of that same time.

On Sunday the final “workshop” was a day long session dealing with the realities of cleaning up the theory and praxis aftermath of the skillshares in the Meadow, aka[d1]: “Meadow Clean Up Workshop”.

Selected quiz answers.
1. German Sailors rebell after the end of WWI and form workers councils inspired by the Bolshevik revolution. The revolution was know as November Revolution, Kiel Revolt, or also by their participant name of Red Sailors.
2. During the Shahs visit to Berlin a West German policeman Karl-Heinz Kurras shot the student Benno Ohnesormore sparking the beginning of student radicalization, resulting also in formation of RAF. Interesting sidenote: once STASI archives were opened it turned out that Kurras was a paid East German spy. It is not possible to say if him shooting Benno was an intentional attempt to radicalize the West German student movement, however without doubt the resulting political polarization benefited the East German State greatly, even though most students in the West were inspired more by Maoist example than by the existing models of Socialism in the Eastern Bloc.
3 . Carnation Revolution took place in Portugal on 25 April 1974. Initiated by a non-violent military coup it overthrew the authoritarian regime of the Estado Novo, and was overtaken by civil resistance and protest to the fallen dictatorship. Also known as Revoluo dos Cravos.
4.This is an open list as there is multiplicity of methods, and anything that is effective counts just as it counts whther it was and it is possible to put this theory into practice
5. Coconut Revolution. Named as the Bougaville rebels utilized the plant for food, fiber, oil and even fuel.

Continue ReadingReflection and Call for Action Following Skill-Shares Camp