Activities in Germany on the occasion of the joint international day of struggle to save the natural environment on 4 December 2010

Central Committee – Department for active people's resistance and work in the neighborhoods 10 December 2010

To the ICC of ICOR

Activities in Germany on the occasion of the joint international day of struggle to save the natural environment on 4 December 2010

The implementation of the ICOR resolution in Germany was picked up by the MLPD, its youth league REBELL and the children's organization RED FOXES in all of Germany.

The environmental movement in Germany carried out various actions on the “World Climate Day” in connection with the world climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009. In 2010 it nearly organized nothing at all. Against this background it was not possible to organize broad united actions as a rule. An important start for the cooperation of the workers’ movement and the environmental movement, however, was made. During these activities the comrades of the MLPD introduced the foundation of the ICOR and the decision for a joint day of struggle. The ICOR was also present through MLPD flags with added ICOR letters.

Comrades of the MLPD carried out information stands with intensive discussions with the people in the streets in a number of cities like Munich, Nuremberg, Dresden, Magdeburg. Sometimes this was connected with small rallies. In Goettingen and in the Odenwald there were discussion events of alliances in which the MLPD took part. There were street actions of smaller alliances in further cities like the capital Berlin, the port city of Hamburg and in Stuttgart, where the flyer of the CC of the MLPD was also distributed on a mass demonstration against the profit project of an underground main station – called S 21 – which is very destructive to the environment.

In Duisburg in North Rhine-Westphalia the “Climate Alliance Lower Rhine Valley” carried out a rally with 200 participants. 32 initiatives, organizations and parties are working in this alliance, among them also the MLPD, the party “The Left” and the party “The Greens”. This action had mainly a symbolic character. It has to be discussed and settled in the environmental movement that a real protection of the environment against the profit interests of the monopolies cannot be put through like this. Workers of industrial firms declared themselves in favor of the militant way. They declared that they are willing to take over responsibility in their companies to strengthen the leading role of the working class in the environmental movement. Afterwards about 200 people participated in a militant demonstration through the city of Duisburg. Stefan Engel, the chairperson of the MLPD, stated critically and self-critically that the international Marxist-Leninist, revolutionary and working-class movement has neglected the environmental question until now. He explained that with the reorganization of international production the destruction of the environment has become a law-based appearance and thus a question of the system. It can only be solved with the fall of capitalism. Single successes like the prevention of a plant for fossil-fuel combustion or a nuclear power station are not sufficient, even if the struggle for that is absolutely correct. Symbolic actions play down the dramatic starting situation. The environmental movement must unite on the basis of struggle.

In Hameln/Lower Saxony the “Anti-nuclear Plenary Meeting Weserbergland”, the “Climate Pirates”, the “Citizens’ Movement for Cryogenic Recycling, Closed-loop Economy and Climate Protection”, the MLPD, the party “The Left” and the party “The Greens” carried through a joint action. The necessary cross-border resistance against the planned transport of nuclear waste to Majak/Russia was an important issue. In Eisenach in Thuringia the shortly founded regional group of the “Citizens’ Movement for Cryogenic Recycling, Closed-loop Economy and Climate Protection”, the MLPD, the children organization RED FOXES, the “Citizens’ Initiative against the 380KV Embankment through the Thuringia Forest” and the local election alliance “Eisenach Awakening” appeared jointly. In the speeches the emission trade was attacked among others and new connections between the workers’ movement and the environmental movement were the result.