Newsletter April 2025
This Easter, Climate Liberation Aotearoa along with 350 Aotearoa organised an encampment on the Denniston Plateau, where Bathurst Resources have plans to expand what is already Aotearoa’s largest mine. Tens of protesters, both young and old, persisted through days of torrential rain to show that they will not allow Bathurst to destroy the pristine 40-million year old environment for the sake of profit. During the 4-day encampment people shared food, song and spent time in awe at their surroundings, while grieving for what has and could be lost.
On the third day a group of six protesters occupied cable cars carrying coal from the existing Stockton mine. Some of them spent 60 hours in the air, enduring the elements, as well as the security guards’ harassment, and ended up shutting down the coal transports for three days. Eleven people, including the climbers and on-the-ground supporters, are facing charges of wilful trespass, awaiting court dates in mid-May.
The last weeks have been turbulent for Återställ Våtmarker. After two summers of protest and disruption their goals – public education on peat being a fossil fuel, and a national ban on peat mining – are closer than ever. Just days before the start of their next action wave, however, the far right held a parliamentary debate on whether climate activists, as the number one security threat in Sweden, should be preventatively and indefinitely imprisoned.
The action wave started in spite of these warnings. Two people were sent into custody and held for 20 days for spraying paint on private jets. They are being prosecuted with a possible sentence of 50,000 SEK cleaning costs and prison time. The phase picked up heat three days later, when protesters entered the national treasure, Vasaskeppet – a 17th century ship and one of Sweden’s national symbols – and dropped a banner from the railing. Over the Easter holiday airplanes were stopped every single day; people walked onto the runway, locked themselves up with chains, flew in drones, and even made a picnic on the asphalt. All of this sparked a discussion on the climate crisis and appropriate action, keeping it on the front pages for weeks.
After the phase ended the far right, hand in hand with the liberals, moved to create new oppressive laws against climate protesters, and began trying to dismantle the Institute for Human Rights in Sweden. This is what radical, disruptive actions do: politicians show their true faces and hidden conflicts are brought into daylight.
April has been a time of action for Nødbremsen, who have introduced simultaneous blockades to their action plan, thereby ramping up the scale of their structural pressure, in turn amplifying the coverage and debate which the protests spark. These have been motivating more citizens to join in, as they too draw the conclusion that peaceful protest is the necessary response to the government’s continued complicity in the escalation of the climate collapse. These persistent protests have brought them to the front page of Denmark’s largest newspaper.
A personal story from Denmark:
My name is Petra, I am 24 years old, and I have been a part of Nødbremsen for about a month. I have spent a lot of my life on the sideline, seeing people I knew taking part in climate action. I can sit and wonder why I never really considered joining them before now, why I didn’t help them in blocking roads when the opportunity arose. Why I only ever went as far as attempting to reduce my own carbon footprint, as well as civilly and obediently walk in a few climate-marches with my friends while maybe mostly using it as an opportunity to hang out.
Maybe I just lacked the courage before and have now managed to gain it, but I don’t see myself as courageous right now, I’m maybe more anxious than ever. I get terrified from being home alone, being in the dark and when driving in a car.
When I was in my very first blockade, police used a pain grip on my left hand to a point where I lost sense of touch in it for a couple of hours, and I felt the pain lingering for over a week, but that didn’t really make me scared. Why?
The biggest change to me has been the realisation that the current world cannot really support me. It cannot really support my dream to be a musician and artist, as it’s not able to give me a stable living, it cannot really support my gender, as I’m not cis, it cannot really support my love, as I’m not straight, it cannot really support empathy, as it prioritises individuality, it cannot really support well-being, as it prioritises profit, and most importantly it cannot even really support life anymore, as we are headed towards a climate collapse.
However, what I have realised even more is that I also have an extremely strong belief that all of this can be changed for the better, and that is why I have decided to take part in the resistance now. Because as infinitely sad as it is to realise that the world doesn’t really support your existence and well-being, as you may have been led to believe, and that you, personally, have to fight for it to change, that is also where I find the courage to stand and block the road, meet angry drivers, and most horrifyingly face the violence from the police, because I know that I’m doing it because there is an opportunity for a better world that we absolutely need to make happen.
After taking successful action against the fossil fuel sponsoring of the Ski World Championships, Folk mot fossilmakta have chosen their next target: the fossil fuel lobby in the arts and culture. The Festspillene music festival in Bergen taking place at the end of May is one of the biggest cultural events in Norway and, to no one’s surprise, they are heavily sponsored by fossil fuel companies. But how can the arts be a platform for free expression when they are backed by the companies that are wrecking the world around us?The campaign is currently in an integration phase, and the next actions will focus on bringing in and upskilling new people into the process, while giving the current members more experience in action. A workshop was hosted and concluded with a plan for the months ahead, as well as gaining motivation and skills for mobilization and integration. The aim is to build up capacity for sustained disruptive actions in the future, for which more heads and hands are needed. Get ready for a ruckus!
In Switzerland, 12 billion euros a year in subsidies is spent to keep the country in a fossil economy for decades to come. DROP! launched last year, blocking roads in German-speaking Switzerland and disrupting major events such as Art Basel and the WEF. This year, they are focusing entirely on cooperation and networking between the numerous Swiss climate and anti-capitalist activist groups.
In April the group has been organising a Summit of Movements, taking place this summer, which will bring together a wide variety of groups and individuals to coordinate their range of tactics, strategies and narratives, developing an ecology of movements to create an impact greater than the sum of the individual actions. A key part of this is building central resources that can be shared among the individual movements. They have identified establishing a shared legal team as a first step towards this goal and therefore held an inaugural meeting with the legal teams of the other campaigns.
April made it clear: in Canada, nonviolent climate defenders are punished while the billionaires destroying our planet are protected. Jacob Pirro and five others received criminal records for peacefully blocking the Valero oil terminal in 2022, while Olivier Huard was sentenced to 90 days of house arrest for the same nonviolent action. Eulalie, who spray painted a Tesla dealership, remains under a gag order and cannot speak or work with Last Generation Canada. This is political repression, and further proves how urgently the system needs change. While our governments, liberal or conservative, protect corporate interests, the Last Generation will keep on demanding that the rich be taxed and the people protected. The spring wave of action is coming, and nobody is backing down.
Poland is now a thousand years old – but it may not survive the next fifty years. By disrupting the dominant narratives of the ruling party, and exponentially increasing their mobilising efforts, Ostatnie Pokolenie is fighting for their future.
On the anniversary of the Smoleńsk catastrophe – a national tragedy, which has been used as political fuel by the far right – a protester climbed the monument to the victims and threw fake blood on it. They spoke in honor of the victims; the ones in the catastrophe, who were important figures of modern Poland, but also the billions of innocent people that will die fighting for water and food because of the ruling regime’s incompetence. This sparked a national conversation on what’s an appropriate response to the coming climate catastrophe, and whether the transformative power of symbols and tragedies should be harnessed for good.
They’ve also set a bold goal – to have 150 people committed to blocking Warsaw’s bridges in the peak of the presidential election campaign. The aim? To pressure the government’s candidate to organise a meeting with the Prime Minister. These brave people have now been gathered, and in the coming weeks, the capital will grind to a halt if their demands are not met.
Act Now! has been carrying out in-depth work and an internal consultation on the movement’s 2025–2028 Vision. After three years of an adventure that began with the Renovate Switzerland campaign—filled with trials, errors, successes, and experimentation—the movement now feels ready to look further ahead.Rooted in the DNA of the group, the 2025–2028 Vision aims to inspire and bring fresh momentum, while setting out key strategic directions for the next three years. A major nonviolent campaign, a school, and a media platform: six projects organized around three strategic pillars form the core of this plan. There will be space for everyone to contribute! They are inviting all interested people for a 90-minute online session to share their thoughts, meet others and get to know the pathways to action.
In Germany, the New Generation has set itself the task of bringing justice to democracy. The German parliament is heavily influenced by financially backed lobbyists. In some cases laws are proposed directly by lobby associations; more lobbyists have access to the German Bundestag than there are members of parliament. All of this is extremely non-transparent and serves a small, extremely wealthy group of people.That is why the New Generation has randomly chosen sixty people from the three hundred that have volunteered, and will form a “Parliament of the People”. Setting up shop on the lawn directly in front of the Bundestag building, where the “Parliament of Money” sits, these sixty will meet at the end of May to discuss how German society can push back on financial influences in government, so that policies are made for the good of the people. The demands drawn up will then be presented to the parliament and society in a major action phase.
Taking advantage of the parliamentary deadlock and blatantly disregarding the concerns raised by Italian president Sergio Mattarella, the government bypassed parliamentary discussion in order to impose a repressive bill criminalising among other things passive resistance in jail and introducing the possibility for pregnant women to be incarcerated.Michele, a history teacher at a high school in Rome and member of Ultima Generazione, began a hunger strike to protest the authoritarian move by the Italian government. He said: “Today, I have begun a hunger strike. Every morning, I will sit in front of the Quirinale Palace—except on days when I’m teaching. I am doing this to urge President Mattarella not to enact the security decree. His brother died for this democracy, murdered by the mafia. Mattarella must simply reject this decree. Will he rise to the level of his brother and the country he represents? I cannot teach my students the history of the Resistance and then stay silent in the face of a decree that criminalizes dissent. For me, striking is an act of responsibility and integrity—the only response I find worthy of the gravity of what is happening.” The president buckled under the government’s pressure and signed the bill on the very same day, but Michele’s act had gained the cause massive visibility and has now inspired other progressive personalities to join in the hunger strike.