The “Teslastoppen” forest occupation and the future of the German ecological movement
One morning towards the end of February, in a forest near Berlin, a few tree houses can be spotted. The small structures sway high up in the trees with the wind. Between them, through the air, long ropes have been put up. Several activists are walking on the ropes. Many more people are working down on the ground, just like a colony of ants. Everybody knows what needs to be done. Whether they are working in the trees, on the ground, or in the surrounding forest: the collective aim is to build more tree houses and to pull them into the treetops. On one side, there are lots of wooden planks and large logs on the ground. If you look in the other direction, you will see twenty people pulling a house up into the treetops together, piece by piece, using only two ropes. Meanwhile a few journalists are out and about, documenting everything energetically.
A short time later, the forest occupation is made public. The first patrols arrive and confirm to police headquarters by radio that the occupation really exists. In the following days, dozens more reporters come by. All media, whether it is local or global, reports on the new forest occupation “Teslastoppen,” which opposes the expansion of Tesla's Gigafactory.
With their action, the activists are drawing attention to the fact that the factory is to be expanded despite its enormous water consumption – which is comparable to the consumption of 40,000 local residents - and against the will of the local population. The locals have been campaigning against the factory for five years now as the Grünheide Citizens' Initiative (BI). The protest started at the beginning of 2020 with several demonstrations and actions. The BI was mainly supported locally by a few very committed residents. Initially, only a few people came from Berlin, which is about 20 minutes away, to support the cause. The BI then collected information locally, organized demonstrations and started a legal procedure against the large-scale project. It was not until 2023 that a large alliance of several Berlin radical left-wing groups was formed to protect the forest and promote a shift in transportation policy. They held door-to-door talks and organized a water festival in the nearest small town and regular walks through the forest that was soon to be cleared.
At the same time, public opinion was negatively charged against the factory by headlines in Stern about the factory’s miserable working conditions and environmental destruction. Although the factory was built in a drinking water protection area from which 170,000 local residents draw their water, there were more than 26 accidents involving toxic substances in the first two years. One illegal filling station alone leaked hundreds of litres of diesel, while environmental experts state that just 30 litres of diesel or oil would be enough to contaminate the drinking water in the next village. However, politicians are not committed to groundwater protection and remain silent about these incidents.
The occupation
So from the very beginning, the occupiers of the forest in Grünheide have been able to build on a network of supportive people from the region. Every day, people from the BI come by and exchange ideas and every day people come with donations - whether they be tools, tents, sleeping bags, food - as soon as the forest occupation calls for them through its channels. And if people don't come to donate, it is often grandmothers who bring their grandchildren to understand the situation and show them how it is still possible to resist today. Visitors arrive from 3 to 70 km away, but almost all of them come from the countryside around Berlin. One visiting family tells a squatter who guides them through the forest that in their home village a large new housing estate is to be built. They told him how they wished that young people like those in Grünheide would come and occupy the forest at stake. It is clear that a spark of hope has been brought to their lives. But unfortunately, the squatter doesn't have time to respond as he is already hurrying off to his next job. He has to help build the next tree house.
Every day more people come and bring donations. Some of them bring black boxes - apparently batteries for at least a bit of electricity. Members of the citizens' initiative keep emphasising the importance of the role the occupation plays in the fight against Tesla. It was difficult to mobilize people, even during door-to-door talks there was little enthusiasm for the BI. But since the forest was occupied by the squatters, local residents have been very excited and full of hope that their home will not be further destroyed.
It seems that two groups of people have found each other here, both with a similar attachment to the forest in Grünheide. Many residents who pass by tell us how much they appreciate this forest. Some come here every Sunday for a walk or cycle through the woods on their way to work every day. While Tesla repeatedly portrays the forest as a pure pine monoculture, the residents, who actually know the forest, appreciate it in all its diversity. “There is a thick undergrowth everywhere and you can already see the first and second generation of new trees, mostly oaks.” The Tesla project managers appear to have never set foot in this forest. Yet the local residents value it highly.
This, in turn, connects them with the activists, because they always talk about this forest being alive. They describe how everywhere here plants and animals are alive and how painful it is to see an entire forest simply being cut down. For some, the forest here in Grünheide is so important that they arrive from far away in Germany, others have come to the forest from Berlin. However, now, they all stand up for the forest and are building a new community from it and in it. Repeatedly, the activists collect dead trees from the forest. They use them to build more tree houses. For hours, they saw and carry the large logs in groups of four or fifteen. They then peel the trunks. It all seems like an anthill, everyone has a task and if they don't have one, they quickly find another one. There is no peace and quiet and no one except the visitors take time for conversations. It is quieter at night when everyone sleeps in the tree houses, which are being pulled up to dizzying heights day after day. One activist says: “We really have lost a sense of Community everywhere else. Here it’s different. Here, we spend the day together from dawn to dusk and take care of the nature we live in.” Many activists clearly state that they are defending this forest and preventing it from being turned into a sandy desert for a gigafactory. One slim activist states in a discussion that “everyone is a part of this nature, so it is also an attack on us if this forest is destroyed.” These words make it clear: the young activists see this as a long-term struggle that will not end with this forest. One reason for this understanding is the various attacks the activists are exposed to repeatedly. For example, they have to stand up to small police squads or a group of young right-wing people. This makes constant self-defence an ever-present topic. There are always discussions about possible attacks and many are prepared to defend the forest militantly. But for tactical reasons the decision is made to remain defensive for the time being.
What next?
Cooperation in the forest occupation is based on a strong understanding of the importance of nature, though there are also reports of difficulties. “Some people just want to build more and more tree houses, but forget that we have to address the local residents first and foremost,” says one of the squatters, concluding that ”all they care about is building more and more, but what's the point of protesting if nobody notices?” Another group keeps trying to approach the Tesla workers and keep the area near the kitchen pavilion clean so that it looks nice when the workers pass by. This group believes that the employees must be persuaded to work against the expansion. They try to inform the workers with flyers about their own possibilities in the labor dispute and the occupation. Unfortunately these attempts are isolated and mostly not yet successful. There does not seem to be a common strategic direction in the forest and many are working in their own direction but without a common plan.
An activist from the forest says: “History repeats itself every time with these forest occupations. First there is a planned megaproject, activists occupy the site, the residents support it and then after a few months there is the eviction with a spectacular mass mobilization with the big organizations against the eviction of the occupation.” She describes the almost identical repetition of the events of the climate movement, which occupied the Hambi and Danni forests and the village of Lützerath in Germany and then tried to prevent the eviction with publicity, but it never really worked. For several years, these places were central points of reference for the climate movement, where hundreds of activists went and learned about life without the state. The focus was on self-empowerment, with societal work always taking a back seat. The evictions were major events where tens of thousands of people came and resisted peacefully or militantly. They were led by a few organizations that routinely plan and carry out mass actions. Some say this is about to change, as the protest alliance Disrupt has been formed.
Disrupt
Disrupt unites large parts of the post-autonomous left who want to break out of the previous way of working. They find that long-term societal work is needed, as well as an organization or network that criticizes capitalism as a whole. They use examples such as how protests aroud transportation policies by a broad base can start breaking out of the vacuum in which they have often existed so far. Experience has shown that large mobilizations of tens of thousands of people simply fizzle out as soon as a campaign has reached its peak. In Grünheide, things were supposed to be different. The activists worked with the local citizens' initiative for many months beforehand and paid attention to their ideas on the form of the protest. Long-term work was carried out with the local actors and the protest was escalated step by step in order to involve the residents.
The action days came and more than a thousand people were there to take part in actions. And in the end there were actions in which 800 people were able to get onto the railings of the Tesla factory. Others managed to block access roads to a Tesla loading center for several hours. What was impressive was that all of the actions were precisely planned and fit together very seamlessly in terms of their timing. This professionalism, with different actions supporting each other, is based on many years of experience in the implementation of such actions, the preparation of which is secret and in which hundreds and thousands of people can nevertheless participate.
But while the actions are being planned more and more precisely, the climate movement remains stuck in old patterns. The focus is primarily on how to bring their own topic into the public discourse through the most spectacular images possible of the actions or how to shift the social discussion space through actions. In the past, this has repeatedly led to impressive campaigns that have broadened the public's view of an issue and sometimes even shifted it to the left. However, with this goal, you lose the view for the society that actually exists around you and in Grünheide, too, only a few residents were included in the protest.
This does not show a failure of strategy, but a lack of coordination of strategy. As before, the focus of the majority of organizations was on the actions and not on working with the people on the ground. Individual organizations focused on societal work, but did not have enough people to implement it broadly enough. They built up individual relationships on the ground and created long-term connections, but as long as only a few people are involved, there is no opportunity to broaden the experience and bring about overall change in the movement. The unanimous opinion is that things cannot continue as before. To this end, new strategies are being tried out and the campaign around transportation policy with a focus on the Tesla plant in Grünheide with BI, grassroots work, occupation and action days is being evaluated. Hopefully the right conclusions will be drawn for the next campaign. The climate movement in Germany is in a state of transition and it will take a few years to see what progress is being made. But with a broad interest in grassroots organizing and revolutionary aspirations, it looks promising for a change. The activists know that there are movements in the world that they can learn from. Some are enthusiastic about the French Soulevements de la Terre, a broad network that reaches from left-wing radical to peasant groups that organizes massive protests against ecological destruction and has formed hundreds of local committees to date. Others look to Chiapas and long for the broad organization of the population. It is clear to everyone that new solutions are needed and that the world is full of movements that already put other new approaches into practice.
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