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Elevate Festival Videos 2024

Elevate Festival Media Archive

We are Nature Defending Itself

Frontline Activism for a Liveable Future

In the face of climate and ecological breakdown, all around the world millions of people are fighting for their very lives and for the ecosystems that support them. In Europe, too, they have been defending themselves against the corporations and governments that are destroying our future in more and more places in recent years. They are trying to prevent the expansion of coal, gas and oil extraction by the fossil fuel industry. They fight against new airports and highways. They fight industrial animal agriculture and other destructive industries.

We will speak with artist/activist John Jordan, who lives in the ZAD (zone a défendre) near Nantes where people have been successfully preventing the building of a big new airport and with Ende Gelände spokesperson Kathrin Henneberger, whose movement blocks monstrous German coal infrastructure with thousands of activists in the course of spectacular actions. Also included is the well-known Hambi activist and long-time tree house resident Clumsy, who successfully fought with his fellows for the preservation of the Hambach forest and is traveling all over Europe to support the development of resistance structures against nature-destroying projects.

What can we learn from these struggles? How can we win the fight for a livable future for all? What can we all do in 2020? Join our conversation with these three inspiring activists.

Presented in cooperation with We Are Europe.

We Are Europe