Disrupting the business-as-usual

At times, our bodies become the (sometimes) last medium to carry out the potential for political change. When examining the structural layer of the resisting choreography, this potential was enacted by the Ende Gelände activists when they intervened and disrupted the functioning of the lignite mine infrastructures in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lusatia. The activists put their own bodies for instance on the rail tracks to impede the trajectory of a train transporting coal, or they occupied a coal digger to disrupt the working of the whole mining machinery.

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Fixed territorialised entities of the sovereign are vulnerable to moving bodies (Väyrynen et al.

2017, 9). I could experience this in the blockades of coal infrastructure in North Rhine-Westphalia in June 2019. By practicing political disobedience and occupying the infrastructure of the rails, the resisting bodies of Ende Gelände were “disrupting exciting scripts”, and thus creating a new choreography into a space where it was not expected (cf. Väyrynen et al. 2017, 9.). The choreography irritated, shattered and questioned the power relations embedded in the kinaesthetic field of the coal mine that reflected also the power relations of international political economy based on the extraction of fossil fuels (cf. Chandler et al. 2018, 203). Robin elaborated this thought to the wider structures of the political system:

“It is unrealistic that we could stop making the climate change worse in an economy that is based on growth,” Robin claims. “However, if we are not able to work against it and to create new structures from this system, then I think we will not be able to stop the climate crisis either,” she accounts and makes a connection to disobedience by continuing, “I don’t think that we are able to shift the public opinion just by playing by the rules of the system that has caused the problem.”

Robin thinks that Ende Gelände has been able to contribute to a shift in the public talk about climate and to question whether everything that is legal is also legitimate or whether everything that is illegal would also be wrong. “For me civil disobedience means that we want to be involved in deciding about the rules that govern our societies, not that there shouldn’t be any rules at all,”

Robin reflects. (Attachment 1. Portrait of resistance: Robin.)

The excerpt from Robin’s portrait reflects the wish that climate politics should be done in a more participatory manner, listening and truly integrating also actors from the grass-root.

Some might argue that the demands and means of Ende Gelände are contradictory as the movement is simultaneously demanding a coal phase-out from the German government, and parallelly maintaining that it has little trust in the politics. The activists of Ende Gelände have indeed showed doubts whether the German politicians will be able to implement the ambitious decisions on climate, i.e. phasing out coal, in a schedule that would be aligned with the climate science and the 1.5 °C goal. However, when we examine the situation from the framework of political disobedience, the position of Ende Gelände does make sense.

In the notion of political disobedience, the people and citizens are understood as an integral part of the polity, not something outside of it (Moulin-Doos 2015, 33, 100). Therefore, by corporeally disrupting the material infrastructure of the lignite mine the Ende Gelände activists also symbolically intervene in the fossil fuel driven political economy. In other words, they corporeally demand halting of the destructive practices of the lignite mines. By doing that, the

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resisting choreography of Ende Gelände aims at tying up the abyss between the domestic emission reduction pledges of the German state and the actual (unambitious) policies that have been undertaken. In other words, the resisting choreography is bridging the emission gap of Germany. It reminds the German government that much more ambitious policies have to be undertaken in the implementation of the coal phase-out if Germany wishes to attain even the goals of the Paris Agreement.

By disrupting the conventional rhythm of the lignite mines, the protesting bodies become a living and breathing entity representing the emergency of climate crisis at hand. A concrete example of this was the action of Ende Gelände in November 2017 that took place in one of the Europe’s most polluting sites, the open pit coal mine of Garzweiler. The action was organised parallelly to the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Bonn, only approximately 50 kilometres away from the polluting lignite pit. By occupying the mine of Garzweiler during the international climate negotiations, the protesting bodies were not only disrupting the functioning of the mine, but they were also disrupting the image of Germany as a pioneering country in the field of climate politics. Josefine recalled how the action in November 2017 got international attention:

Just 50kms away they are burning the coal and people didn’t know. They were coming to Germany and saying, oh I thought it is a green country. No, it is not. (Attachment 4. Portrait of resistance:

Josefine.)

The motto of the movement in that action was “this is where the climate is negotiated!”⁴⁵, which highlighted the hypocritic elements of the UNFCCC climate negotiations and questioned the image of Germany as an ecologically progressive country. Germany had gained this image through the policy program called Energiewende, that refers to the sustainable energy transition (BMWi 2019). However, Germany is unlikely to attain its emission reduction goals for 2030 with the existing policies (see PIK-Potsdam 2019).

From this perspective, the disruptive function of the resisting choreography becomes also a creative and appellative one − a call for climate justice. According to Parviainen (2010, 319) the protesting bodies are able to question the naturalised social norms and politics by challenging the kinaesthetic rhythm and conventions of a designated space (see also Väyrynen et al. 2017, 2−3). This is exactly what the protesting bodies of Ende Gelände did in 2017. In the Klimacamp

45 in German= “Hier wird Klima gehandelt“

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of 2017, I discussed with Ende Gelände activists who said quite frankly, “we are implementing the Paris Agreement right here by putting our bodies in the coal pits and on the rails”

(Fieldnotes 24.08.2017). Consequently, one of the other guiding mottos of the activists in Ende Gelände has come to be that “we need to take the climate politics into our own hands and do what the politician are failing to deliver”, and that “we are the ones we have been waiting for⁴⁶.”