Grüner Salon Düsseldorf / Heinrich Böll Stiftung NRW

CLIMATE PROTESTS AND DEMOCRACY

do we need to become more democratic?

Audience Talk & Discussion Talks & Workshops Social/Urban Movements

January 24th, 2023, marked the first anniversary of the Letzte Generation (Last Generation) resistance. In the face of the climate crisis and the Federal Constitutional Court decision of 2021, they regard themselves as supported by the German constitution. Since then, a controversy on climate protest action forms, as carried out by Fridays for Future, Ende Gelände and Letzte Generation, among others, has ensued. In a contested field ranging from legitimate action towards the penally relevant or even the criminal, civic actors, politics, and governments position themselves. With the events surrounding Lützerath as well as in the context of current court judgments, the discussion of democratic leeway for “appropriate” climate movement protest forms as well as for ways of reacting by governments and the judicial system attains a new poignancy.

Considering this development, we ask: How much civil disobedience belongs in a democracy? Seeing that the point of the climate protests concerns nothing less than the basis of our livelihoods itself, it is important to conduct a dialogue between all climate movement activists.

Discuss with: Lothar Kittstein (Activist Letzte Generation, Author, Dramaturge) and Kathrin Henneberger (Member of the Bundestag, BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN).

credits

Photo: Markus Spiske on Unsplash