About me

I am an activist for social justice and an ecologist by profession. I am committed to climate, environmental and social justice, as all ecological problems are made possible by social injustices and unequal power structures. In 2023, I decided to run for the European Parliament after agreeing with people from the climate justice and migrant movements in Germany that it is important to strengthen Die Linke against the backdrop of the shift to the right, as we need a strong intertwining of trade unions, movements and left-wing politics.

How did you get into activism?

I was born in Preetz in 1988 and studied seafaring at the University of Applied Sciences after school. After graduating, I worked on the research icebreaker Polarstern and had my first encounter with the rapidly warming Arctic in 2011 when the ship reached the North Pole. A little later, I decided to change careers and took part in a European Voluntary Service in the Bystrynsky Nature Park in Russia in 2014. In 2017, I said goodbye to professional shipping for good and finished my Master’s degree in Conservation Management (Ecology) in the UK. Like many other people, I joined the resistance against the eviction of the Hambach Forest in the fall of 2018. Since then, I have been consistently involved in activism, in forest occupations and climate protests, but also in sea rescue and later with #AbolishFrontex. To earn money, I have sometimes worked for NGOs or helped with ecological field studies.

Saving people is not a crime

From 2016 to 2019, I was occasionally active as a volunteer for sea rescue NGOs in the Central Mediterranean. In 2019, as captain of the “Sea-Watch 3”, I was arrested (and released 3 days later) because I had to dock in an Italian port to fulfill my obligation under international maritime law to bring rescued people to a safe port. The Italian Supreme Court ruled in January 2020 that my decision was justified and that I should never have been arrested. The huge civil society protests immediately after my arrest blew up the Italian government coalition. Hats off to everyone who was there!

Languages: German, English, Spanish

“We need to organize in order to fight the climate crisis as well as fascism worldwide!”

Carola Rackete