On Monday, climate activists of the “last generation” disrupted traffic with actions on 13 different sections of the Autobahn in Berlin. Cars were backed up for miles, and some drivers reacted harshly to the provocations. 48 activists were provisionally arrested – more at once than ever before. However, some demonstrators were intercepted by the police beforehand.
Are there actually environmentally conscious activists taking Föns to an outdoor protest against the continuing warming of the earth’s climate? There they are, in the capital.
On this thundery morning, almost a hundred activists from the “Last Generation” came together from various places in Germany. For months they have been blocking roads across the country in individual actions, and now they want to step up the pace of the freeway blockades.
From around 8 a.m., the activists therefore blocked not one, as was previously the case, but a dozen motorway exits and sections of road in a single city. The declared goal: to achieve a greater disruptive effect. To achieve this, the “Last Generation” organizers sent their comrades to superglue themselves to ten different spots on the A100. On Germany’s busiest autobahn.
Some drivers reacted a little less relaxed – even on the unblocked oncoming lane. Although the vehicles in front of him quickly passed the green traffic light, a truck driver deliberately allowed his heavy truck with a trailer to coast. Shortly before he passed the blockade, the portly man with the mustache took a deep breath and yelled at the top of his lungs: “You stupid assholes”. However, it did not arouse the slightest reaction from its addressees.
Less than a minute later, a young woman rode up on her bike, got off, saw Friedrich Graeber’s sign that said “Saving oil instead of drilling” and called out to him: “Thank you for doing this for us.” With hers She formed a heart in front of her upper body with her hands, which elicited a smile from Friedrich Graeber under his warming life-saving foil.
For some of the activists, the unauthorized protest action this Monday was over before it even began. Whereas in the past few months similar individual actions had usually started around 8 a.m. during peak rush hour traffic at traffic jams and resulted in hectic police operations, this time several patrol and squad cars from the capital city police were ready by 7.30 a.m. At least on the bridge on Beusselstraße, under which the A100 runs and ends a few hundred meters later in the north.
It is not surprising that the A100 would become part of the disruption, given that it is the city’s most important artery. Of course, the police, who had taken up positions here as a precautionary measure to be able to intercept one or the other troop of disruptors, knew that too.
Shortly before 8 a.m., a small group of five officers suddenly set off on the bridge in the direction of the Aldi supermarket. The officers lined up in front of the entrance. When one of them wanted to go in, a colleague called out to him, “Let them go shopping first and come out, then we’ll check them out.”
Just a few minutes later, the police blocked the way for three activists in front of the exit of the Aldi market. From their clothing, such as outdoor rain jackets, good shoes, attached hoods and small daypacks, you could already guess that they could belong to the “last generation”.
And they didn’t always agree with the sometimes harsh officials. “What are these questions about, what am I doing here? I go shopping here, that’s my beer,” said a man in his 50s who had absolutely no desire to be checked.
However, this does not deter the 23-year-old, on the contrary. “Our main concern is that Chancellor Scholz guarantees that there will be no more oil drilling in the North Sea in the future. He must take action after we have already tried several times in vain to persuade Climate Minister Robert Habeck to make such a statement,” said Graeber shortly before his provisional arrest. Instead, Habeck is having planned oil wells checked.
Graeber wants to be part of the upcoming campaigns again. He said he was sorry for the inconveniences caused to drivers by the protests. “But our protests to save the climate are not aimed at them, but at the federal government. And we will continue with the blockades until we get a commitment from Scholz that no more oil will be pumped in the North Sea.
Despite all the protestations of the activists, it is clear that they do not take into account the interests of the motorists, who suffer the blockades through no fault of their own. In the past there had therefore been occasional drastic reactions. Like in May in Munich at the exit of the A95 near Fürstenried. There, a Mercedes driver threatened an activist to “drive over his bones” and then pulled him off the road.
A few months ago in Berlin, an ambulance with blue lights was obstructed because the car was unable to pass through the blockade for a long time, although the activists actually wanted to rule out such a thing. And on this Monday too, some drivers lost their temper and tried to drag activists off the road themselves. In any case, as far as they were glued, only olive oil helped the police to end the blockade in the end.
