 Hello, hello, hello and welcome. I'm Meryl Kilili and this is DMTV and today I'm speaking to Miriam Mayer who's an activist with the environmental group in Germany called Letz der Generation or Last Generation and over this week they've been gluing themselves to roads to block traffic in order to protest drilling in the North Sea and to get their chance for Olaf Scholz to listen on climate action. So welcome Miriam. Good to have you with us. Hi. Let's just set the scene a little bit. Who are you and what do you do? I'm Miriam. I was 30 years old and since the beginning of this year I am part of the Last Generation in Germany. We are a climate group that is blocking roads mostly, German highways and getting arrested a lot so I'm at the moment full time doing that. Gosh, full time getting arrested. That sounds crazy. Okay, can you explain a little bit the climate picture? I mean if I just woke up from a long cryogenic sleep what would you tell me about the current situation that you're responding to now with your activism? Yeah the current situation is pretty bad. Like I remember when I learned it in school in primary school I learned about climate change and the greenhouse effect and I was like oh that sounds like a problem but surely you'll handle that and surely I'll be there long before these consequences will actually happen and now we are seeing oh shit we didn't act. We didn't act accordingly at all and it's not changing and I'm just what is happening around me it feels insane that we are not taking the serious and that we are not acting accordingly so we have one German climate scientist who says it's like we are putting all our children into a global school bus that will crash with a likelihood of 98%. So that's the situation we are in that's where I am completely panicking and weirdly I see people around me and I see politics not panicking even though science is telling us to. I see people dying all over the planet we had people die in Germany last year we had a slash 180 people died here in Germany and I thought that will be the point where we in Germany wake up and see oh we have to act this is actually hitting us now and not just people far away but we're still not doing that we are still looking for new fossil fuel infrastructure we are still considering to drill for new oil in the North Sea this is just crazy there's so many crazy things going on and I yeah I can't sit at home anymore and just watch that it's just yeah it's really it's a really desperate situation. So what do you say to the various agreements climate pledges etc that have been made by governments especially over the last few years on climate change? In Germany we had a one climate package we had the Fridays for Future movement that was very big in Germany so we had like 1.4 million people on the streets and on one single day and after that we had a climate package from the government that was actually against our constitution so we actually had our constitutional court say that's against the German constitution that's not doing enough so that's what we got with peaceful demonstrations we are still peaceful but we have to heighten the pressure somehow because apparently just marching the streets wasn't enough then we have the Paris agreement which said okay we should reach 1.5 degrees or two degrees at most and we just see that we're not doing that I agree at 1.2 degrees now we will reach 1.5 degrees in 2026 or 2030 and our German government is saying we will be carbon neutral in 2045 so it just it does work out our politics do not correspond with physics at the moment so your group lets the generation well the group that you're a part of what are they asking of the German government we have an international network but the campaigns are in each country they're a little different and it always depends on what that country is doing so for us at the moment our demand is that our chancellor who wanted to become a climate chancellor before he got elected should stop even considering getting new oil out of the North Sea because we think that's like crazy this idea ever and instead we have to do things to save oil to not use as much oil and we want them to do like the easiest things to have public transportation free that's like an easy step of course it costs some money but it's an easy step to take and it will save oil and to have a speed limit all over Germany because at the moment we are burning loads of fossil fuels with our cars and a speed limit will just help to make it much less so these are easy steps that we can take instead of drilling for new oil a speed limit I mean presumably that would depend on which roads so I mean have you have you done the the thinking around that proposal I mean are you asking for a reduction in I don't know take take 10 kilometers an hour off all the speed limit signs or what what are you asking for it would it would be more general so it would be a certain speed limit for highways one for like big roads between cities and one for within cities and villages so would be like three different speed limits that we would have all over the country and then of course there would be some areas where you already have to go slower than that so so would actually be a much easier system than at the moment tell me a little bit about the tactics that you're putting into play in order to get these demands met they're a little controversial and a little risky but what we've seen so far is in a relatively short space of time quite effective in terms of getting getting attention our basic idea is we cannot be ignored we just don't have the time we have two to three years to get this climate situation under control so we can't be ignorable we have to disturb ordinary people that's what people really don't like about us because we are blocking highways so we are not blocking politicians we're just blocking random people but what that does is it gives us so much attention because all of these people have to either be angry at us or support us but we don't have like new to buy standards that just doesn't happen when you sit on the highway so um yeah we've been very successful in getting a lot of press getting politics discussing about us of course a lot about how we do it but also about what we ask them to do but it takes high risk from all the people involved so but take me literally what you're doing i mean you sit in front of cars super doing your hands to the asphalt so you can't be removed explain a bit about the playbook around that yeah okay so the playbook is we have small groups of people who get a certain coordinates for a place we kind of try to coordinate all our actions so that we can be most effective and then usually we do it in the morning so when all the people want to go to work and we take highway exits in Berlin we have a highway right through the city so there are a lot of highway exits all throughout Berlin and they're usually just traffic lights at the end of that so we wait for the cars to have red and they have to wait and then we go on we put on our orange breasts and we take out our banners we stand in front of the cars and that it depends on how the rest of the cars are so as soon as people we see that a car is like coming too close or someone is getting out of the car and coming close we will all sit down to de-escalate the situation and then we'll just sit there try to de-escalate as much as we can sometimes you'll sit down in front of the car that's trying to move forward to de-escalate yes it sounds weird but it works so if i if i'm standing in front of a car i've tested this basically so if i'm standing in front of a car the car thinks well she can go out of the way she can move so it will drive slowly towards me and try to get me to move out of the way but as soon as i sit down the car is like yeah she's not gonna move running people over is still not like pulling us off the streets is one thing but running us over is another thing so fortunately that hasn't happened too much we had one one girl pushed by a car she was still standing and couldn't really get out of the way but she's fine so as soon as i sit down i noticed that the cars are like getting really frustrated but they're stopping that's that's just it works and then also if people try to attack you it's really de-escalating if you sit down they they are less likely to like hit you or anything because you're suddenly out of their direct reach and uh they can see that you're not fighting back you're not not aggressive towards them so it really helps but where does the superglue come in because you you just say you you sit down immediately in front of the cars as soon as there's a red light how do you have time to superglue yourself to the asphalt or is that in it is that a different tactic so that's what we do when the police arrives so we have to be really quick with that because the police also of course kind of know when we will do that so they will try to get us before we can glue ourselves yeah we just for safety reasons usually we wait for the police to come because they won't pull us off if we agree well they sometimes do but because because it will rip your skin it won't rip your skin off it's just your hand will really burn for hours so yeah if they rip you off you'll just have a completely red hand and it will just burn yeah so we do that as soon as the police arrive so you will just see it all of us except for some people who are leaving an emergency passage so some people will just sit there and not glue themselves so if there's an emergency those people can get up when the rest will glue themselves just put superglue on their hand put it on the street at the moment the streets are really hot so that's a challenge and then as soon as we are glued we're basically set like that's then the police takes over this tactic of blocking roads it's been a few months explain the timeline a bit yeah yeah so we started blocking roads actually with a different demand at the end of January that was our first campaign where we blocked roads before that we had a hunger strike so we had some people who were in hunger strike before the elections and they that demand was to get a conversation public conversation with the candidates and there are elections in Germany for the for the chancellor and Olaf Schultz ended up winning it go yeah and after his election he had to talk with them for an hour and it's yeah it's a public recording with livestreamed and everything right and those people then went all over Germany and gave talks and that's how I joined the campaign and then in the end of January we started with locking highways so that those two people who were hunger striking he spoke with them for an hour it was a public meeting livestreamed what was the conclusion from that for me personally the conclusion was that Olaf Schultz is not gonna save us like it was so clear that he either he hasn't realized the situation we are in or he just doesn't want to deal with it I don't know it's it's really hard for me to grasp because I feel like also for him as a chancellor just for his personal benefit it would be nice to not have a climate catastrophe happen like I don't really get why he's not ready to deal with it but it was just so clear that he thinks that we are just fanatics and yes and and he certainly doesn't approve of these tactics about a month ago he compared climate activists to Nazis yeah that was a nice moment yeah I think that was another moment where I was like okay he is definitely not the climate chancellor that he promised us he would be like I never had much hope because yeah I know what he did before he became chancellor and it was not very promising but at the same time I feel like it at least showed us that we are really annoying him like we are at least succeeding and getting to him somehow so that was nice and and I guess that kind of energized your group when they heard that explain to me the reactions so far the roadblocks what about the institutions what about decision makers what have they said so far about these protests how they reacted that depends so in the first phase in general we had some people at the beginning from the Green Party approving of it and then they got a lot of hate for that and they took it back but now a few days ago we had the mayor of the district the district of Berlin in which our locate was come by actually and give us her solidarity and now the the mayor of all of Berlin is already against that so we already succeeded in a lot of debates yeah the police and the justice system are just kind of overwhelmed they're just not keeping up anymore I've barely received any letters from what I did back in February so it will it will take ages for them to like catch up with the paperwork and everything I've read some of the coverage there's various narratives and I'd like your reaction to it the first is that these young climate activists think that they know better than a democratically elected government and they should better be doing something else what would you respond to that well first of all we're not that young we are we have an age band from well now since yesterday um yeah 12 year old on the road and all this is 73 so we have quite an age group just something for everyone um I mean the 73 year old does it for his grandkids so um yeah yeah I forgot the rest of the question we should be leaving this to our democratically elected government who is aware of the problems of climate change and and we're giving them the the power to through our democracy to to handle this problem that affects us all yeah and I wish that will work we still want to stay within democracy with all our demands and everything so there's not any point where we are like let's just do what we say but we can just see that even though we have a democracy and we have elected our leaders they're not doing that basic job that basic job is to protect us their basic job is to make sure that we are fine that we don't have a hunger crisis that we don't have people dying from storms or floods that we don't have wars we can see them not doing their basic job and that's where I feel like okay but we have to stand up we can't just watch and we can't wait four years for the next election and hope that that will somehow um make it better it doesn't matter which party is in the government that's their basic job like the green party of course but also the other parties have to protect us that's well the the other criticism that's often leveled the climate activists and it's resurfaced again with in reaction to the protest that you're engaging in now is that these are working people that you're blocking uh from getting to work they could be pregnant women trying to get to the hospital uh and this kind of protest if it hasn't yet you've been lucky but it could really negatively affect people so how would you react to that yeah there's always a risk like we are trying to make this as safe as possible we don't want to endanger anyone so that's why we always have a way for emergencies to get through of course if the cars in the traffic jam also have to make a way for them to get through but that's what they should do anyways and if that's so dangerous then we should have a system that has makes sure that there are no traffic jams in germany because we are not the major cause of traffic jams in germany we're just adding your food so for me it's really hard to sit on the street it's really hard for me to tell people know when they want to get through if they're angry i can deal with it better if they are desperate it's really tough i feel very sorry for every person i'm blocking there i just don't see any other way and the climate crisis is not gonna choose who who it will hit it's it's like it's also going to hit all of us at random so let me just take the devil's advocate position a little bit here it's fair what you say but to the person that's trying to get through to the hospital perhaps in a car not an ambulance further back from the front where you guys are and they're just sitting there beeping the board what would you say to them if that were to happen what would your reaction be just that i'm very sorry that's we're trying everything for that not to happen and i really hope we won't ever hurt anyone with our protest i don't see any other way it's just i don't see any way where i can have the same effect the same impact without having some risk without disturbing random people i wish we had another way okay now i'm looking at a some statistics September 2021 you gov this is in britain but they were asking people their opinion on extinction rebellion the climate action group there and 49 percent were fairly negative or very negative of extinction rebellion do you believe that it's strategic to polarize people against activists like this i mean if it's one thing to say that they are they are talking about us and that's a good thing but if they're talking about you in a way which is like god i these people just just make me insane it's that really going to change hearts and minds with regard to the climate crisis from people the thing is they they are of course a lot of people are against us against our methods against what we do but what we can also see is that not many people are against our demands so what we hear a lot on the streets is yeah that's fine what you're asking for but not in this way like they they hate the way we do it but they don't hate what we want and i don't think anyone well there might be someone who will just say just because they want this and i don't like them now i'm against it but usually what we can see is that there's a lot of support for our demands even though there's not for our methods and in the end that's what matters it doesn't matter if they hate us i mean of course it's horrible like i i don't read comments anywhere but as as long as they agree with the demands as long as they discuss our demands as well well and that is something that in all the coverage i've read so far on this your demands are always there i mean they're forced to explain what it is that these people want so it certainly is a platform to to present your demands you've said that people are willing to go to prison for this that is an enormous burden on any activist an enormous risk that could affect people's futures in a very dramatic way in the short term how would you explain that feeling that you have and and that your fellow activists have that you're willing to just do anything for this i don't have much to lose of course for me personally i could try to like have a good future for now and uh like have a nice life until the climate crisis but i feel like i have the opportunity to do and try something i am in a democratic country where i can so i don't want to like wait until it really hits me personally and yeah i feel like what future am i fighting for like if the thing is if i spend my future in prison but i've tried everything for our entire planet to have a good future i'm willing to take that i'm willing to spend time in prison for that because that's just so much more important than my personal record like of course i'll have a criminal record sure i mean maybe at some time in the future that will be a good thing maybe that will be the thing that gets you the job but um yeah it's not fun like being in custody is not fun i've spent way too much time at custody and i hate that i have to do that but i just feel like yeah what future am i fighting for am i fighting for my personal trying to have as good as a life as possible under the circumstances future or am i fighting for a better future for one of us that might suck for me personally and sometimes it brings you physical harm as well this i mean the pain grips that the police sometimes use they recently carried away a 15 year old in a pain grip after taking them away from their super glue this is painful it's difficult how do you feel about that how does your family feel about that yeah it's difficult it's i really hate pain grips like that's because you usually know that they are coming and it's like it's just yeah but still i don't want to get up i just i just can't i can't just get up because they are sweating to do pain grips yeah so there's there's a lot like this is an emotional rollercoaster it's really exhausting we have been been in action at the learn again now for a week and it seems like three months at least like it's it's really a lot my family is kind of yeah mostly fine with it my parents do support what i do here but no one wants to see their daughter go to prison or their daughter be carried away in pain grips or in handcuffs or yeah it's not explain to me how let's the generation last generation has mobilized a group of such hardcore activists so quickly explain a bit about the training the legal advice the way it's organized because i see a very media savvy group here that understand communications and and i think that they're not making many of the mistakes that other groups have made in this space it's not a very preachy group it's very action oriented there are very specific demands you go onto the website they're immediately okay we've got a zoom called every thursday and every sunday join us it's it's all about getting people onto the streets it's not about here's our analysis and we've got to have this talk that's my take as an outsider but explain how it is from the inside and how they've managed to achieve that yeah i think that's just a lot of inspiration from people who are willing to risk so much so for me that were the people in the hunger strike i saw the people in the hunger strike and was like wow these people are actually risking everything they risk to die for our future and that was something that really inspired me and i also realized we can't do something because they got all the media attention they actually managed to get their demand and have our chancellor talk to them so i felt like okay we can actually do something we can actually achieve something and then uh what we do is we kind of alternate between an action phase and a mobilization phase so of course the mobilization also runs throughout the action phase but not at full speed because most of us are an action so what we do is that the people who go into action glue themselves to the streets get taken into custody they go back to their places so i will go back to norther germany and there they will do the mobilization so then we will and post those uh pass our leaflets try to get as many people as possible to come to our talks we have online talks uh to the beginning mostly because of covid and now we have both online talks and talks in various cities so sometimes you will just see on the website uh for one day there will be like 50 talks in different cities at the same time and we're trying to get as many people as possible there and then what we try to do in the talks is basically to connect emotionally to what the clamped crisis means because that's the factor that will actually get us moving get us into action and then we invite the people to training yes i have a maybe meeting like in between step where you can go to an online meeting and just ask all your questions and maybe meeting yeah that's all the people who maybe want to join the conference i like that so it's a sort of last generation curious yeah okay yeah then we try to get as many people as possible to come to trainings if once a week in every region those trainings they're online and offline right yeah and who's giving them who's involved in this is it people who have just figured it out by themselves or people who have been out there doing this and have got results and and are sharing their stories mostly everyone just learns what needs to be done it's kind of the spirit so if someone needs to give a talk then someone to give the talk and uh we need someone to do a training someone will learn how to do this training so we have a training script that is of course oriented on other non-violent dire action trainings and deflation trainings and everything so we just had some people have a workforce and basically create our training that we want to give to people for this campaign and then we have a training script that everyone who wants to give a training connects us and there's a lot of information on how to do it of course we have done the training ourselves so kind of know what happens in there that's literally the tactical training what to do in order to block the roads how about the legal stuff like how do you understand um so the legal yeah we have we have a basic legal training within the direct action training where you will learn a little bit but we also have an extra online legal training there's also a recording of that you can watch you can't make it lie and then we have four security sessions where you can ask our legal team or someone from our legal team will answer all of your questions because sometimes we have specific cases that are not in the basic training yeah which is only about six months old right it's kind of organized itself very very quickly how many people are involved so far and in the core group and the wider membership oh yeah i'm kind of losing the overview so we had three people who started this campaign like our core team and who's still making like the most basic decisions in terms of strategy and yeah but then of course at the beginning they did mostly everything else as well so like the legal team at the beginning was one person um it was actually different person from those three but yeah they they did a lot and now what we have is like basically we already had the structure of different work groups but they were mostly just one person and now we're just adding more people to all of this group so and how many people are we talking about sorry in terms of like the actual volunteers who are really mobilizing and energizing the wider membership that's difficult question so i think in like the strategy stuff we might have like and all the legal stuff and all of these work groups we might have 30 people and then we have way more we're just like doing the mobilization everywhere and coordinating that there's an article last week about progressive groups in the US in the intercept and it explains how these groups are basically imploding because of too much internal discussion because of demands for horizontality from the wider membership but you just said that three people are making the most basic decisions how has the group managed that problem which affects so many progressive groups that everybody wants to have a say and sometimes in order to actually have a group that has action there needs to be an element of verticality as well how do you negotiate that tension yeah yeah that's that's a tricky part and that's also like probably yeah the most difficult part for some of us we have a lot of ways to give input so it's not like these people are making decisions and then ordering us to do anything like that's not happening we have a feedback process where we can always give back all all the feedback that we have from our group and there are yeah by now there are way more people involved in the strategy than just these three yeah I think we need that to be as efficient as we are because I I've done some stuff with Extinction Rebellion before and when you have a certain amount of people that want to make a decision together it will take ages and what we are doing at the moment is blocking streets every day so we have to like we have to be very efficient so yeah sometimes we will I think we had like nine or ten yeah ten blockades on one day at the same time so coordinating that is just yeah you can only do with that was some centralization and then basically our our strategy is to say okay we have a team that makes the basic decisions and you kind of you have to go along with that if you want to join you can of course quit at any time you don't have to ever do anything there's always if you're not happy with something in action there's always some people who are thinking I can do support instead because I don't want to give my idea or something do you think the fact that you you're such an action oriented group avoids a lot of those problems that plague progressive groups because there's much more action it seems than talk in your group or at least action plus preparing for action yeah yeah maybe yeah I think we are all there's all the people who are here really like they just want to start doing stuff you can really feel that energy so there's so many people are just like okay let's just do something and I feel like all of these people don't want to go into a group where you have to make plans for three weeks to do one action or do where where you feel like you're spending most of your time discussing stuff um yeah they just want to get started and I think for that this group is perfect because you can really just you can you could join in three days you're gonna go to a talk go to training we had we literally had people just just beyond the street the next week so and it's growing right I mean when people see this they get as I understand it the numbers are increasing a lot okay let me ask you some I mean personally you weren't always an activist right you studied Buddhism and you went to Kathmandu and your family have always been into ecological issues I mean explain a bit about your background and what what made you get active yeah so yeah I was I studied Buddhism in Kathmandu and Nepal and yeah I think my idea was always to do something on the lines of activism like I thought about human rights and to badge a lot I thought I would end up there some NGO fighting for that but then at some point I just realized okay if we don't get the climate crisis under control human rights are gonna go downhill globally on a catastrophic level so I just feel like this is the most important thing we have to deal with and this is the one thing where I'm really needed but I never thought that I would have this life like I never thought I would spend time at custody I never thought I would even have any issues with the police and now that's like my my day today it's like just another day on the street another day talking to the police another day being in a cell so that's kind of crazy but I also feel like it's though the one useful thing to do at the moment and I feel like for before that I was very desperate like I had this I think many of us had this failure of just crying about the climate crisis because it feels like no one is doing anything and it's so bad and it's only getting worse so now being active and at least trying everything makes me feel way better it's so much that it comes down to time doesn't it like the ability to dedicate time to those trainings and then to to be there and on blocking the roads how would you respond to someone this is look I want to get involved but I don't have the space all the time and it seems like Miriam's really fortunate to be able to do this but it doesn't work for all of us yeah and it doesn't have to like if all the people who can't do it do it that's great there are so many ways to help our campaign like you can like just donating money of course but also helping in the background like doing media work or all the support system that we have we couldn't do this without our support system like that is just managing accommodations for us or food for everyone like we have a group that cooks and brings food for everyone in the evening and they're just doing all that for free right I mean or this is based on donations that you've crowdfunded from your site it really depends on how much you need we basically have this if you say well I want to work full time for you but I can't because I have to go to work then we can say okay we can basically support you enough to still do it because we need people and we will get the money from somewhere and then we have a lot of people who just do it in every time and also you don't have to be the hardcore I will go to prison person we have we have some of those and those are for us that is basically unstoppable like sure but we also have a lot of people who just come by for two days then you're less likely to have a criminal record it won't be as expensive probably afterwards but you can some again this experience and we also see a lot of people who do something and support and then suddenly end up on the streets so that's once you are involved with the campaign a lot of people end up blocking roads at some point yeah but you can you can help us in so many ways it sounds like you enjoy what you're doing even though it's for a very serious and serious cause tell me a bit about about that about the connections between people and working together yeah I think if there's one good thing about the climate crisis it's probably that I've met these people because it's just it's such an amazing group of people people who are willing to go to jail or at least custody or like sacrifice a lot of their personal well being to help all of us so that's just an amazing group of people that's like a family feeling after now we have a lot of new people and the first time I'm like who are all of these people and the second time we are all hugging and just being in action together and being in those situations really connects you quickly yeah so it's it's very rewarding on that yeah okay if I would like to get involved with let's the generation last generation what are the points of contacts and things that you would recommend I would recommend to just go to one of our talks that's like the first step to get to know us we also have recordings of the talks given that by different people I think you have an entire playlist now yeah so just that's like the entry point of course you can also join in a different way so people just go straight to trainings or something but yeah just come to the talk to get a better idea of what we're doing and then see how you can help and maybe want to be part of it and the last question for you if there are two or three books that you could recommend for people listening like it could be in the area that we're discussing now or something totally different but two or three books that you would suggest okay that's an interesting question so I think my favorite book and then one that motivates me a lot is Buddhist books so it's by Shanti Deva the Bodhichaya Avatara that kind of talks about the Bodhisattva motivation and I don't think I'm anywhere close to that but it's definitely an inspiration to like see how you can give up everything for others yeah so that's one of my strongest motivations okay the title of it I didn't get the title is yeah Bodhichaya Avatara in English it would be introduction to the way of the Bodhisattva or something okay okay anything else that you would like to to add yeah since this is in English just to let everyone know these campaigns are everywhere there are so many countries who are building these campaigns and there is so much help that if you want to start a campaign in your country and there's no campaign already there is international exchange calls where you can hear from other countries what works what doesn't and you really only need a few dedicated people in the beginning to sign this and then you can grow quickly and yeah really have some impact we also have some people visiting here from other countries like we have a group of Czech people in action with us and some from Denmark who also want to do the same thing in their countries so don't hesitate too much like if you feel like you have no idea how to do all of this there's a lot of help like you can you can really get get a good start with this international exchange okay thank you very much Miriam Maya it's been interesting talking to you and best of luck with the protest thank you