An aerial view of the October 6, 2018 protest © REUTERS / Wolfgang Rattay ANOTHER CHANCE TO LIVE Maurice Frank reports on how the struggle to protect a forest sparked a powerful new climate justice movement On an unseasonably hot October day, in a dusty field about 20 miles west of Cologne, a crowd has gathered to protest against Germany’s continued burning of lignite (also known as brown coal) to generate electricity. Families with children, barefoot Nature lovers, pensioners in hiking boots: all have come to demonstrate – and to celebrate – with live music and free vegan food. Just 24 hours earlier a court ruled that the energy company RWE AG would have to suspend its plans to cut down the Hambach Forest to expand its opencast coal mine. It feels like a festival. By mid-afternoon around 50,000 people have shown up, heeding the call of NGOs Greenpeace, BUND and Campact. “This is the biggest anti-coal demonstration ever!” exclaims a young woman from the stage. The ecstatic crowd erupts, chanting “Hambi bleibt! Hambi bleibt!” (Hambi stays!) The newspaper taz called the event “a political awakening”, the beginning of something comparable to the 1980s anti-nuclear movement. Genghis, a young man from Cologne, is in the crowd: “Brown coal is killer number one. Nature protects us, gives us strength. The court decision gives me a lot of hope that it’s not all pointless. You see results and that motivates you to push on.” Thousands of people, some holding signs calling for climate justice, others in flamboyant costumes or pulling handcarts carrying small children, stroll across the fields into the forest. On the logging roads, people dig ditches and build barricades out of tree trunks to prevent RWE’s vehicles from entering again. Families picnic in glades. A jazz band plays under a towering oak. A short walk away, the forest abruptly gives way to a wasteland of tree stumps and churned earth. Then comes the edge of the Hambach mine. The view is shocking. Words are inadequate to Resurgence & Ecologist 11