Selçuk Balamir

I was asked to contribute to the If I Can’t Dance reader on Social Movement: Through the Lens of Performance and Performativity, for the section of Gathering.

I introduce a first hand account of Ende Gelände in 2015 written by Ben Wilson. Abridged version of the text is published on 350.org, and the full version is available on his blog (part 1, part 2, part 3).

Welcome to Ende Gelande — the mass disobedient action that brings together thousands of people, year after year, to disrupt Europe’s largest open cast coal mines. Each year we double our numbers and each your half of the participants are doing this for the first time. In short: we are winning.

To take action, you need a few things. First you need a white boiler suit, a dust mask and a visor (called “democracy glasses”) —they protect you from coal dust, pepper spray and identification. Then you need a buddy (a trusted friend who will never let you go) and an affinity group. And finally you need an “action consensus”, which is a text that describes what we are going to do and how. You join a ‘finger’ of hundreds, which has scouts, comms, flags and megaphones to move together, avoid police lines and reach the destination as a collective body.

Our goal is twofold. First, to normalise disobedience so that the frontlines around the world has more ‘breathing space’. This is the reason why the actions are announced and predictable; it says “come and criminalise us if you dare”. At the same time, we are trying to create a political crisis about climate breakdown, one that you can’t ignore and look away from. And this requires a level of ‘surprise element’ to have an impact. So the challenge is: how can we simultaneously be both?

In 2017, we organised the first queer-feminist finger, lead by the amazing Climate Collective from Denmark. We adopted radically different values, methods and tactics than the testosterone-driven, alpha-male, white-saviours. We were the only finger that made it to the train tracks that carry the coal from the pit to the plant. We had a fantastic disco party, practiced tactical kissing, threw lots of glitter and confetti to the cops.

So we don’t only aim to shut down our targets; we also aim to change social movements themselves. It is so much easier to talk go back to my queer community and inspire and motivate them to join us next time. At our debrief, we joked that there will be no longer a queer-feminist finger next year. Because all fingers should be queer-feminist by default, except one alpha-male finger, because we want to be inclusive to everyone.

The following excerpt from 2015 provides a glimpse of the first Ende Gelande. In a breathless chain of thoughts, Ben Winston shares his experience of stepping out of his comfort zone and making one’s body vulnerable, but also finding hope and strength in bodies acting in unison. To me acts of disobedience are the greatest form of performance art, and when carried out in such extreme locations, they are the greatest form of land art.

“When normal people get together and do extraordinary things”

I’m running and I’m running and I’m just one, just one amongst hundreds of people running to escape the batons and the pepper spray, running to break through the police line and run on and on across the field to the mine. But as we’re running and my legs are pumping and the adrenaline’s thumping I turn and see something that makes my blood turn cold and time stand still. I see a man made massive with body armour and a helmet and a baton, and I see him throw his shoulder back and form a fist and smash the full brutal weight of his aggression into the face of an oncoming woman. She crumples but I don’t even see her hit the floor because I’m running and oh fuck me am I running and I’m thinking that this isn’t what I signed up for and I don’t want to be here and christ I’m just so scared.

Because I am not an activist. This isn’t what I do. I’m a relatively normal, middle aged chap who does clicktivism when he can find the time. Direct action is not my thing. I’m not cut out to be here, running with hundreds of people across the fields of the Rhineland to try and close for one day a sodding great lignite mine.

And yet, oddly, here I am.

I am running because I don’t know what else to do. I am running because I know too much to stand still. I am running because climate change has already begun and because I’m scared of heatwaves and droughts and mass extinctions and flooding. I’m running because I need to act – we all need to act – and we need to act right now.

And so I’m acting as fast as I can, running from the police, running from my disempowerment, running from my apathy and fatalism. I’m running and dodging batons and pepper spray and I’m more primevally, viscerally terrified than I have ever, ever been.

Ben Winston passed away soon after writing these words. May his memory live on, carried by disobedient bodies he inspired.