Taking action instead of just getting excited – that was Lucie Hammecke’s drive to go into politics. Today she sits for the Greens in the Saxon state parliament and, as the youngest member of the parliament, is fighting for animal protection as well as for recognition.
Lucie Hammecke is the youngest. At the age of 23, the Greens MP is an exception in the Saxon state parliament, in which 72 percent are men and the average age is 48 years. That she decided to join a party at all was a big step. “As a woman with feminist aspirations, I was skeptical and didn’t feel like doing party work. I thought there were just old men explaining the world to me. ”But it was clear that she wanted to do something, get active and not just share her anger with friends on Facebook. “I grew up in Saxony-Anhalt and then lived in Saxony. That shaped me a lot politically, ”she says. “I was enormously frustrated by the many bruises on the map.” That is, by all the areas in which the AfD was able to win over more and more people. “I want to fight for a different society,” says Lucie Hammecke firmly.
The topics behind saving the world
In order to get out of the way of the possibly deterrent old men, Lucie turned to the youth organizations of the parties. It wasn’t entirely clear where she wanted to get involved, but in the end she chose the Greens. “I liked the idea of saving the world and the commitment to animal welfare. I am a vegetarian for a reason. And I had the impression that no other party had such sustainable principles and was able to represent them as convincingly as the Greens. ”All of this happened in 2017. Lucie started the election campaign for the Saxon state election in 2019, two days after doing her bachelor’s thesis in Political Science had submitted. Five weeks later she was a member of the state parliament. As such, she is responsible for a whole range of issues, from the penal system to gender issues and petitions. One topic that is particularly important to her is animal welfare. Why? “Well, as a child I thought animals were just cute and I really wanted a dog. But today there are pictures in this area that leave me speechless. Pictures from the slaughterhouses or animal transports. It’s still a very emotional topic for me, ”she says. She has just visited an animal shelter in Hoyerswerda in the Bautzen district to listen to the concerns of the animal welfare association that runs the shelter. It is about the distribution of funds and bureaucratic regulations. “A lot is more complicated than you think,” says Lucie, describing the club’s “precarious situation”. “You are currently looking after 145 cats with eight employees who are completely financed by donations”, reports the MP and integrates the Binnen-I so elegantly into their spoken language that it sounds completely natural.
As a woman in a male domain
The abundance of topics is a challenge, not least because Lucie will still have the same experience in 2020 as millions of women before her. “When you’re like me – 23, green and a woman – then you have to be taken seriously first. I have the feeling that I have to work a lot harder and be extremely good in terms of content in order not to be vulnerable. ”Your goal, no, your claim for this year:“ I want to get really familiar with all my topics, so that I can myself Can’t blame anything. ”Meanwhile, the bustling politician is on the move in the country, travels from her place of residence in Leipzig to Dresden, where her office is, and again and again to the Bautzen district, which she looks after together with a colleague and which is as big as that Saarland. Sometimes with a borrowed “partial car”, but mostly by train, because there she can work or read and finally switch off. “I love traveling by train!” She says and sounds so enthusiastic that you can believe her.
The article comes from the 8/2020 edition of natur, die Sie here can order. In the future, in every issue of nature and on our website, we will introduce young people who are actively committed to nature, the environment and the climate. Please send suggestions to Redaktion-natur@konradin.de.