Alliance against motorway expansion: "This is our political success"

The clearing of parts of the Fechenheimer forest is to begin as early as November in order to make room for the expansion of the A 66.

On the other hand, hundreds of people took to the streets in Frankfurt on Saturday who want to completely preserve the forest.

At the rally at the Ratsweg fairground, organizers and demonstrators were confident that they could still stop the clearing.

Several initiatives had called for participation in the demonstration.

Viola Rüdele, spokeswoman for the Alliance for Traffic Change in Frankfurt,

that their protest was primarily directed at the Federal Minister of Transport, Volker Wissing (FDP), who is responsible for stopping the expansion of the motorway.

In general, however, Rüdele emphasized that there must be consensus across all party lines to protect the climate and that this must be taken into account when making decisions about expanding the motorway.

The proportion of families with children was quite high at the rally.

The police spoke of a total of 350, the organizers of 600 people who followed their call, which corresponded to the number they had expected in advance.

The gathering was entirely peaceful, although police confirmed that outrage at the political decisions was evident.

An activist from “Ende Gelände” launched a rhetorical sweeping attack when he announced on the podium “Down with Wissing, Beuth, Al-Wazir and capitalism”.

When the name Al-Wazir was mentioned in an earlier speech, boos were already heard.

However, by far the largest part of the verbal contributions referred to the threat of climate change and the preservation of biodiversity, especially the long-horned beetle, which was considered a beacon of hope on the way to the moratorium.

Temporary road closures

After the one-hour rally ended at around 3 p.m., the demonstrators marched to the Fechenheimer forest, for which the police set up short-term road closures.

The confidence of some organizers and demonstrators that the clearing could be prevented was also fed by the letter from the Greens group in the Frankfurt city parliament to Federal Minister Wissing, in which the Greens campaigned for a moratorium for the Fechenheim forest.

"This is our political success," said the spokeswoman for the Frankfurt Transport Alliance.

However, this letter shows, as was repeatedly heard from participants, that action must be taken and not just written.

City councilwoman Mehler-Würzbach (Die Linke) described the letter as "symbolic politics" and called on the Greens in all governments in which they are involved

The spokesman for Attac Frankfurt sees it similarly.

Alexis Passadakis wants to "increase the pressure on politics".

This should also happen apart from demonstrations.

In order to prevent the expansion of the A 66, he announced that he would "exhaust the legal and activist means available to us".

In concrete terms, this means filing a lawsuit against the transport project and continuing the occupation and construction of tree houses in the Fechenheim forest.

His conclusion is: "Climate protection must also be fought against the Greens."