It is the largest Demonstration of climate activists, in German history – said the organizers. Tens of thousands protest in the border town of Aachen. In particular, they demand a quick exit from the brown coal.
The Swiss Damian came by train from Zurich. The 30-Year-old has decorated his beige shirt with stickers: “Make love, not CO2.” “System change, not climate change.” “Nous sommes la nature qui se défend.” There are the Slogans of the international climate protection movement. “Climate change affects us all,” says Damian DW. “The causes of climate change are globally connected. Therefore, we must stand in solidarity globally.”
That’s why he runs this Friday, with tens of thousands of other demonstrators through the streets of Aachen. With especially young people – pupils and students. You are from Germany, just a few kilometers away in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and 15 other European countries arrived.
35,000 attendees from at least 19 countries, according to organizers in Aachen
Coal? Crazy!
A producer of climate-damaging CO2 have taken the protesters in Aachen, particularly in the eye. The energy supplier RWE, which is only about 30 kilometers from the Aachen lignite mining and electricity, so burns. The brown coal of the Rhine area is considered to be one of the largest sources of CO2 in Europe. “Let the coal down”, chant the protesters in Aachen, Germany.
In the year 2038, the brown coal-final in Germany.A coal has agreed a Commission with representatives from politics, entrepreneurs, environmental associations and scientists. “Absolutely crazy”, the Antonia Pfeiffer. “This is totally unreasonable. The are for almost 20 years. I am 35 years old. It’s sick that it takes so long for us to get out of the coal. Who knows how the earth looks like until then.” Then the 15-year-old schoolgirl further, the train of the protesters, the car with music and thousands of self-painted posters afterwards in the direction of the rally at the Aachen football stadium, Tivoli.
Brown coal phase-out by 2018? “It’s sick that it takes so long,” finds Antonia Pfeiffer
Colorful, cheerful – naive?
“The earth is so broken, like my poster,” reads the slogan on one of the colorful cardboard signs there. This has, in fact, already frayed edges. “If there is no snow men more, then I freak out”, is another. A third, embellished with bees and butterflies: “short-haul flights for insects.”
Creative Slogans, lots of music and joyous chants – this mix has become of the “Fridays for Future” in the meantime, a mass movement, at least among high school students in Germany. The organizers of the Aachen-based strikes to speak of the hitherto largest Demonstration of its kind in Germany. They counted 35,000 participants.
Not all of them can join in their enthusiasm. Hermann raises his eyebrows when he looks to the protesters. “Naive,” the says the white-haired gentleman in the blue-and-white striped shirt. “I think it is good that the young people something to do. But you have not thought to the end.” The Jobs at RWE and other companies have finally ensured that your parents could give you a pleasant Childhood and youth.
Signs with creative Slogans: you will find many on “Fridays for Future”protests
Next Stop Garzweiler
For the Swiss Damian is after the Demo. Together with his tour group from Zurich, he is recovering in front of the main station in Aachen is lying in the sun from March through Aachen. The activists have big backpacks, and sleeping mats, tents. You want to continue in the direction of Garzweiler. There, on one of the brown-coal mining sites of RWE, and tomorrow will continue to be demonstrated. And not only that. “You chanted long, singing a long time,” says Damian. “That sure is a good thing. But it needs to stop, unfortunately, but even more so that something changes. I think civil disobedience is important and now necessary.”
Activists of the Alliance “terrain” have announced that in the premises of RWE penetration and the extraction of coal block. “Illegal”, says the police and warns them to Penetrate the mining means acute danger of life for all people. “Civil disobedience,” say activists like Damian. So you don’t come up to the open-pit mining, have locked out the officials on Friday already the railway station of Viersen. “We want to prevent, that with the railway to the mine is arrived, in order to commit there crimes,” said a police spokeswoman. As the battle over the mining around the hambach forest, it is likely to come at the open pit mine Garzweiler on Saturday to heated scenes.