Action group ‘Avon Against the Badger Cull’ (AABC)‘ fights against the annual badger cull by blocking the hunters during their hunt through legal action. They do this by actively searching for badgers and badger hunters on public property at night. By staying close to wild badgers, their setts, and the hunters that hunt them, they are legally blocking the shooting of the animals by causing a possible safety issue. The volunteers of AABC monitor the badger population, map their setts, document any illicit activities such as tampering or destroying setts, and bring awareness to local farmers, landowners, and the government about the resistance against badger culling and their animal-friendly alternatives.

Het Actiefonds supports the AABC with the purchase of a new thermal imaging camera. With this camera, it becomes easier for them to search for badgers and the hunters that hunt them. The hunters themselves also have thermal imaging cameras, so it is of great importance for the group to have similar equipment in order to have a fair fight.

If you travel by car through the German Rhineland, you can marvel at the enormous craters that dominate the landscape. The holes are so deep and large that for a moment you imagine you are on another planet. You see only dust and stone as far as the eye can see. The Garzweiler mine, for example, has an area of 48 square kilometers, twice the size of the city of Leiden. And that’s not even the largest. Right next door is the Hambach mine, with its 85 square kilometers one of the largest lignite mines in Europe.

Together these two mines are already responsible for 75 million tons of CO2 emissions per year. By comparison, that’s about half of the annual emissions of the Netherlands. Half. And if it’s up to the energy company RWE, that number won’t be going down anytime soon.

The last inhabitant of Lützerath

When Eckardt Heukamp walked out of his house this September, he was greeted by a ghost town. All the houses in his village of Lützerath are empty, bought up by RWE to wipe the village off the map in its quest for obsolete fossil fuels. The huge excavator gets closer every day. Six other villages preceded Lützerath. Where these villages once stood, the Garzweiler II mine is now to be built. Heukamp knows he won’t be able to stay in Lützerath for long. “They won’t dig around me” Heukamp tells the German magazine Taz: “the state has the power”.

In total, between 2015 and 2028, as many as 7618 residents of neighboring villages must make way for Garzweiler II. This is incompatible with Germany’s plans to permanently close its coal mines by 2045. Non-profit research firm DIW has already calculated that RWE can mine a maximum of 200 million tons of lignite in Hambach and Garzweiler II to stay within the Paris climate agreement, even though RWE plans to mine 780 million tons.

The emissions cannot be accounted for, let alone the eviction of residents. “It took me a lot of effort emotionally to leave Borschemich, fifteen years is quite something,” Heukamp says. Borschemich was one of the villages that had to make way for RWE. A video on Youtube shows how an excavator scraped the 400-year-old village church from the landscape. Heukamp moved to his native village, where the same fate now awaits him. “It’s even more intense here, because I grew up here too.”

One and a half degrees means: Lützerath stays!

As quiet as Lützerath was two months ago, that’s how booming it is now. Heukamp’s eviction was scheduled for this September, but he’s still there. With the help of activists from all over the world and people from the neighborhood, he is resisting the brutal expropriation policy of RWE and the German government. The activists have declared a ZAD (zone à défendre) on his land, an occupied area against development projects, from where they organize actions to occupy the mine, and create spaces for networking between activists and local residents.

For now, the authorities are not succeeding in clearing Lützerath. Het Actiefonds is proud to support the campaign to preserve Lützerath. With our help, the occupiers are building huts in the trees and on the ground so that the occupation can continue for as long as possible. Lützerath stays!

Vestia Rats!

This text appeared on the front of two houses on the De La Reystraat in the Tweebosbuurt on the 15th of April. The same building was squatted three times (and violently evicted) within a short period of time in 2020 as a protest against the demolition of the neighborhood. Vestia made sure that within 24 hours a cleaning crew appeared to clean off the message, but it has been all but forgotten.

Squatter collective Wielewaal will make sure that the message Vestia Rats will remain unforgotten and is starting a t-shirt action with the national housing demonstration Woonopstand coming up. The group will print 50 shirts with the picture of Joke Schot and by this will keep the message Vestia Rats and the important buildings on the De La Reystraat visible during the protest on Sunday the 17th of October. Another group has already started a sticker action as well with the message Vestia Ratten.

Last residents evicted

At the start of this month, after a long fight, the curtain fell for the last residents of the Tweebosbuurt. Residents who didn’t want to move out of their homes fought their eviction in court, which ruled in their favor. Vestia started an appeal against the ruling and both parties had to wait until later this year on a final ruling before eviction and demolition of the Tweebosbuurt could continue. But Vestia didn’t want to wait and started a new eviction process. On the 1st of October, this new case appeared in court and the judge ruled that the last residents have to leave their homes within 4 weeks so Vestia can continue its destructive mission.

Het Actiefonds shows solidarity with the residents of the Tweebosbuurt, supports squatter collective Wielewaal with their t-shirt action, and supports the organization of de Woonopstand on the 17th of October.

Follow @vestiaratten and @woonopstand on Instagram and sign-up for the #Woonopstand on the 17th of October!

Picture by Joke Schot

Just like with any other crucial problem the world faces at the moment, the demissionary cabinet has struggled too long with the logistics and political situation around the evacuations of the Afghani people and has ‘hugely underestimated’ the uprising of the Taliban. This political tug-of-war about who does and who doesn’t have the right to be evacuated, in combination with the monstrous underestimation of the situation has cost human lives. Especially as it turns out that the British and the French have been preparing evacuations for months already. Not to speak about the giant stream of refugees that will start up in the following weeks and months to Fortress Europe and the human lives that the European border policy is costing and will continue to cost.

After the recent events in Afghanistan, an action committee of Dutch Afghans and 7 organizations, including Comite 21 Maart, Fite Qlub en Stichting Kaihan, will organize a demonstration on the Dam square in Amsterdam, on Saturday the 28th of August. The protest is part of an international network through which protests are organized in different European countries in solidarity with Afghanistan. Their demands are clear:

1. Stop deportations of all undocumented Afghans in the Netherlands for an indefinite period of time.
2. Acknowledge Afghanistan as an unsafe country and reconsider the safety declaration.
3. Start taking in stranded Afghans from Camp Moria and increase the number of refugees to be rescued from the camp.
4. Evacuate all Afghan civilians and their family members who are in danger because of their cooperation with the Dutch government, NGO’s or media organizations.

The action committee has started a petition together with De Goede Zaak. Sign the petition through this link. Het Actiefonds supports the organization of the demonstration and shows solidarity with the Afghan population.

Endless waiting lists, old-fashioned and degenerating diagnosing procedures, inability, misuse of power, and lack of participation. The problems within transgender healthcare are big. While patients with a problem in the regular healthcare system will get an explanation of the pros, cons, and side effects of a certain medical procedure, patients in transgender healthcare face all kinds of selection procedures and psychological assessments before they are able to get the help to need or want. This limits patients to speak freely about their situation or they might not get the necessary help, recourses, or diagnosis they need for their transition process. There is a lack of participation in their own transition or the policy that is formed around the healthcare they need.

This is why Trans Zorg Nu! organizes a demonstration in Eindhoven on the 29th of August and communicates the following demands:

1. Trans healthcare now; away with the waiting lists!
2. Self-determination; no diagnosis, no gatekeeping!
3. Despecialize, decentralize; break the monopoly!
4. Trans care in trans hands; no decisions about us without us!
5. Assurance of insurance; stop playing with our lives!

Het Actiefonds supported and wrote the following article about the demonstration in Amsterdam on the 26th of June. The demonstration in Eindhoven on the 29th of August can also count on our support. Show your support and share the Facebook event.

On the 17th of October, we together make a fist for a radically different housing policy. Everybody should have access to affordable and secure housing: it’s a human right! The current housing policy of the state and the municipalities is failing for years to secure this human right. A broad coalition of organizations demand:

• Housing policy that guarantees availability, affordability, and housing security.
• No homelessness, no evictions, no forced relocations.
• Investment in widely accessible public housing: stop the marginalization of the social sector, abolish the landlord levy.
• No discriminatory housing policy. Get rid of the Rotterdamwet and more homes for people with disabilities.
• Policy that includes and supports residents to participate in the development of their homes, neighborhoods, and cities.
• Containing the financialization of housing: houses are not commodities. Freeze rents for 5 years.
• Fewer market forces, lower rents: extract the WOZ value from the rent, regulate rents also in the free sector, and make the point system generally binding. Penalize excessive rents.
• Treat buying and renting as equal. Support housing cooperatives and provide access to land.
• Reverse flexibility and guarantee housing security: fixed rental contracts and permanent housing.

Het Actiefonds supports the organization of de Woonopstand. Come to Rotterdam on the 17th of October and make a fist for a radically different housing policy! Sign the call to action as an organization? Go to www.woonopstand.nl!

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GrowSPACE wants to collect information about as many schools as possible and collect the most shocking statutes and articles. Following that, the group will hold a press conference, in which they will present the statutes and call for them to be removed, and urge other schools to do the same. In the next school year, the activists want to monitor the situation again.

The group is committed to making education in Poland more inclusive, both on a social and institutional level. According to surveys, as many as 70 percent of young LGBTQIA+ people in Poland have had suicidal thoughts at least once.

With the press conference, the GrowSPACE Foundation hopes to get a lot of media attention, so that they can address this persistent problem and create awareness. Because everyone has the right to a safe education.

Mesarvot is a network of anti-occupation activists that aims to support political military service objectors and promote public discourse on the subject. Mesarvot sees the political objection as a tool to help end the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. The organization was founded at the end of 2015 by activists from what they call the “Objection Community”. Over the last couple of years they supported a great deal of imprisoned refusers. These campaigns usually include personal support before imprisonment by previous imprisoned refusers who know the military prison from the inside, legal assistance, media coverage work, assistance in writing a declaration, solidarity demonstrations and international solidarity.

Their activities touch the nerves of the Israeli society, as serving in the army is still seen as a big part of the Israeli identity. Hence, objecting it and refusing military service, is frowned upon and criminalized. While refusal is a great challenge, it is also an opportunity —through the extreme way in which refusal is preserved— to politicize and raise issues of resisting the occupation.

Their recent action, funded by Het Actiefonds, was the facilitation of a public refusal letter. Such public refusal letters, when published by youth before conscription age, are traditionally called in Israel “Shministim” letters (Shminitim means 12th graders). The activists formed a group of young people interested in refusing publicly, and assisted them in formulating their message and created a campaign around it, thus maximizing the outreach of the letter. The letter was signed by more than a hundred teenagers, a considerable achievement given the current extreme nationalist discourse in the Israeli public.

This new generation of anti-occupation activists criticizes the importance that the Israeli society asserts to the military. They emphasize that the huge respect it has to military officials has bad effects on all areas of living. Het Actiefonds supports Mesarvot’s anti-military activism to oppose the illegitimate Israeli occupation.

The group Matilha Paganas de la Percusión has been active for a couple of years and has fought for the legalization of abortion in South America, called out femicide and gender-based violence and stood up against the stigmatization of social protests in general. To provoke, and quite literally, create more noise during their protests, they are starting a South American percussion group, or, batucada. They see their percussion group as a form of artivism and, when played by a militant group of women, as a strong sign of resistance against the colonial and patriarchal system of repression.

With the help of Het Actiefonds, Matilha Paganas de la Percusión wants to buy professional instruments and organize protests, to contribute to the wave of social unrest that rages through the country since April this year. Through sit-ins, protest marches, and flashmobs, they contribute to this social fight from a feminist perspective.

On June 20, there were about 7,000 wooden memorials on the beach of Scheveningen, as a pop-up monument to all the deceased. Commemoration events were also held in Greece (Lesbos and Ioannina), Romania (Timisoara), Poland (Katowice), Germany (Berlin), Portugal (Lisbon and Porto), England (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cambridge, Newcastle) and Ireland (Dublin).

This campaign, supported by Het Actiefonds, was a huge success: at least ten thousand people came into contact with the campaign somewhere in the Netherlands. A very difficult and heavy subject, but at the same time a perfect momentum to inform people about the terrible European border policy. MiGreat received a lot of media attention and will continue their actions against violent pushbacks and other human rights violations of refugees and migrants.

No borders, no nations!