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