Extinction Rebellion Protests

NDPP wrote:

Rebellion Extinction: A Capitalist Scam to Hijack Our Resistance

https://winteroak.org.uk/2019/04/23/rebellion-extinction-a-capitalist-sc...

"...The integrity of XR as an organisation was dealt a fatal blow on Easter Monday when its Twitter account  started plugging invites to a new website called XR Business. What we find is a list of 'business leaders' who have identified environmental catastrophe as yet another get rich opportunity..."

'There  is no such thing as green capitalism.' Judi Bari

There are many who do not agree with this assessment of Extinction Rebellion, although some questions are being raised about it. The following Rabble article sure doesn't make it sound like a capitalist plot. 

Roger Hallam, a leading figure in the Extinction Rebellion movement in the United Kingdom, ... highlights the five key elements to the Extinction Rebellion strategy:

highlights the five key elements to the Extinction Rebellion strategy:

1. You needs lots of people.
2. You've got to go to the capital city -- because that's where all the bad guys are, the elites.
3. You've got to break the law, there's no point in sending in letters and banners and all that stuff.
4. You've got to be non-violent -- as soon as it gets tricky it's game over, you've got lots of angry white men, it's not good.
5. It has to go on day after day. ...

These comments echo previous statements by Extinction Rebellion organizers Tiana Jacout and Gail Bradbrook. "We have tried marching and lobbying and signing petitions," Jacout said, arguing that these haven't been effective strategies. According to Bradbrook, "only large-scale economic disruption can rapidly bring the government to the table" to address climate breakdown.

In Jones' interview with Hallam, he asks, "Doesn't there need to be more of a full-frontal assault on capitalism?" to which Hallam replies, "Absolutely."

On anti-capitalism needing to be a core tenet of climate justice organizing, Extinction Rebellion supporter George Monbiot recently wrote, "Our choice comes down to this. Do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?"

Furthermore, Extinction Rebellion co-founder Stuart Basden has argued "the climate's breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system" of colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, Eurocentrism, hetero-sexism/heteronormativity, class hierarchy, and other oppressions.

In a sympathetic critique of Extinction Rebellion mobilizing strategizing, Extinction Rebellion activists Cameron Joshi and Boden Franklin have commented, "Anti-capitalism, decolonization, and anti-oppression work cannot be an afterthought -- shoved into a five-minute window between speeches or tucked away at the end of an action."

Joshi and Franklin also note, "The use of arrests to crowd out police stations and gain media coverage is innovative. However, the narrow focus on this form of protest inevitably elevates white middle-class British voices, for whom arrest isn't as big of a deal."

They are concerned that the approach of focusing on arrests "excludes people of colour, trans folk, anyone with a precarious visa status, and working-class people, for whom arrest is a potentially lethal and life-ruining prospect." Ellen Rafiqi, who took part in the occupation of Oxford Circus, tweeted, "Stop writing people of colour out of history." The hashtag she used with that tweet was "#notjustawhiteprotest."

In another tweet, Rafiqi said "there's been trend in historical writing where minority groups (women, people of colour etc.) have had to be written back into the narrative. Let's do our future academics a favour and not ignore/ deny that people of colour are part of this week's protests."

Still, this is an issue that needs to be addressed, particularly in Canada, given the critical need for Extinction Rebellion to be fully supporting frontline Indigenous struggles and understanding Indigenous nations as sovereign nations within the colonial construct of Canada. This cannot be an afterthought.

We should also be exploring how Extinction Rebellion intersects with the approaches taken by environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) and others calling for a Canadian Green New Deal.

Can we use the grassroots strategies theorized and implemented by Extinction Rebellion in the UK to exert pressure for a Green New Deal that is anti-capitalist and that has decolonization, migrant justice, racial justice, and reparations at its core? How do we avoid our demand for a truly radical Green New Deal getting bogged down in legislative processes, electoral politics and compromise? Can ENGOs move past the traditional approaches that have been critiqued by Extinction Rebellion and embrace the strategy of economic disruption?

These questions remain unanswered for now, but they could be the subject of lively movement debates in the weeks to come.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/brent-patterson/2019/04/five-elements-ex...

Extinction Rebellions are going on this week around the world including in Canada.

The activist group kicked off two weeks of peaceful protests, with thousands of demonstrators blocking roads in London, New York, Sydney, Amsterdam and other cities, calling for their governments to take urgent action to curb carbon emissions.

Climate change activists blockade London's Oxford Circus on Wednesday.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/17/uk/extinction-rebellion-london-train-...

In Vancouver Extinction Rebellion blocked the Burrard Street Bridge.

https://www.straight.com/news/1311006/extinction-rebellion-vancouver-suc...

• 

• Climate rebels occupied the Burrard Bridge in Vancouver this morning.

There have been widespread Extinction Rebellion protests across Canada.

Members of Extinction Rebellion, protesting issues related to climate change, gather at the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge in Dartmouth, N.S. on Monday, Oct. 7, 2019. The bridge was closed to all traffic in early morning rush hour.Andrew Vaughan / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Protesters shut down traffic on major bridges across Canada on Monday as they joined in an international day of action meant to galvanize governments into taking more urgent action on climate change.

Activists with the environmental group Extinction Rebellion blocked traffic on spans in Halifax, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, with similar demonstrations planned for Montreal, Calgary and Victoria later in the day.

The Canadian protests did not attract the same numbers seen in some European cities where hundreds of activists turned out in force, but nonetheless sparked anger among people caught up in major traffic delays.

Extinction Rebellion’s Toronto chapter said disrupting traffic was a necessary, if inconvenient, tactic.

“In a car-dependent city, interfering with traffic is one of the best ways of interfering with business as usual,” the group wrote in a Facebook post.

“We are not attempting to shame or blame drivers — we all live in a toxic system and have few good options in our daily lives without system change.”

The Toronto group was scheduled to clear off the bridge by 10 a.m., but were still gathered by mid-day. Toronto police Const. Caroline De Kloet said officers began making arrests after noon but did not say how many.

In Edmonton, a handful of protesters linked arms to block traffic on the Walterdale Bridge connecting the city’s south side with the downtown core.

Police kept the peace between activists and angry drivers, some of whom got out of their cars to yell obscenities.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney criticized the protesters on Twitter, saying they were preventing workers from reaching their jobs and barring parents from taking kids to school. “Somehow this is all supposed to be in the name of environment, but hundreds of cars are now idling unnecessarily as they wait,” he wrote.

The scene was more peaceful at Halifax’s Angus L. Macdonald Bridge, even when police moved in about four hours after the demonstration got underway.

Officers arrested 18 people positioned on the artery linking the city to nearby Dartmouth. Early in the day, police said less than a hundred protesters, many of them waving flags and signs, had gathered near the toll plaza on the Dartmouth side. The Macdonald bridge was reopened to traffic by mid-day.

“I think this is a huge success,” protest organizer Patrick Yancey said just moments before he was arrested. “I think it’s going to be great for the whole world to see all of the people who are willing to make this sacrifice in order to get some action on this climate crisis.”

Lorna McLagen of Annapolis Royal, N.S., was also among the group arrested. She said she felt compelled to act. “I’ve been part of the problem for so long and now, before I die, I’d like to try to do something,” said McLagen. “As uncomfortable as it makes me feel, I have to do it.”

Extinction Rebellion members usually sit or lie down in front of traffic until they are arrested and taken away by police officers. Such a scene played out in cities around the world throughout Monday, although some saw more dramatic efforts.

https://torontosun.com/news/national/extinction-rebellion-group-blocks-a...

The Vancouver Extinction Rebellion chapter plans to keep escalating protests and until its demands are met as part of the global movement in 50 countries, arguing there is no time left to do one-off protests because of the rate at which global warming is accelerating. 

The group in Vancouver started about six months ago, and is part of the global Extinction Rebellion that started in the United Kingdom last year. It made headlines Monday as chapters in major cities across the world blockaded bridges stopping only after police arrested some of the activists. In Canada, chapters in Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax and Victoria also set up blockades.

“Escalation is definitely the name of the game, this is not a one-time thing,” said Maayan Kreitzman, a member who helped co-ordinate the occupation of Vancouver’s Burrard Street Bridge. ... We can’t afford to lose time anymore with just oneoff marches, and going home and everybody forgets about it. Extinction Rebellion is about sustained organizing as well as mass mobilization and that’s what’s going to bring us success,” said Kreitzman.

In Vancouver, the occupation of the Burrard Street Bridge lasted about 15 hours, and shut down traffic on the bridge connecting the downtown core to Vancouver’s west-side and its beaches. In what Kreitzman called a “rebellious celebration of life.” ... 

XR Vancouver’s main demands are that governments tell the truth about the climate crisis, that they act immediately to prevent extinctions and the loss of biodiversity, that they reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and that they take direction from and help establish citizen’s assemblies.

Extinction Rebellion’s founding philosophy is based on specific theories of social change, heavily inspired by a book called “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-violent Conflict.” The willingness to get arrested is one of the movement’s principals of social change. One of its founders, Roger Hallam, wrote in a May 2019 Guardian Op-ed that “only through sacrifice — the willingness to be arrested and go to prison — do people take seriously what you are saying.”

Before blocking the bridge, protest organizers called for roughly 20 volunteers who were “willing to be arrested.” Organizers found they had more volunteers than necessary and it appeared some were turned away. Those selected as willing to be arrested were taken aside and given special instructions about how to safely be arrested. Aside from the willingness to be arrested, there are two other key components of XR’S theory of change. One is that it’s necessary to disrupt the More than 100 protesters from the Extinction Rebellion movement closed Vancouver's Burrard Bridge Monday morning, demanding action on the climate crisis. day-to-day operations of society, the other is that the actions are respectful to fellow activists, the police and the public, in order to win over anyone who opposes the movement.

In May, a collective of people of colour penned a letter to the global XR movement, criticizing the movement’s failure to adequately acknowledge and include people who experience racism, classism, ableism and other structural oppression. A group called The Wretched of the Earth — which describes itself as “a grassroots collective for Indigenous, Black, brown and diaspora groups and individuals demanding climate justice and acting in solidarity with our communities, both here in the U.K. and in Global South” — wrote the letter, and about 50 grassroots and civil society groups, many based in the UK, signed on. It was first published in “Red Pepper,” a leftwing political magazine.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/starmetro-vancouver/20191009/28151793...

BAME,which stands for black, Asian and minority ethnic groups, have criticized Extinction Rebellion and other activists groups for not adequately representing them. 

The mother of Ella Kissi-Debrah - the nine-year-old girl whose fatal asthma attack may have been linked to illegal levels of pollution - has said there is a lack of representation in climate activism. ...

 

Echoing Ms Kissi-Debrah's comment is Professor Akwugo Emejulu - a sociology lecturer at the University of Warwick specialising in women of colour's activism in Europe.

She says the main reason for what she sees as their lack of representation in activism lies in some of the tactics used by action groups, such as Extinction Rebellion.

One of the strategies adopted by Extinction Rebellion during their 10-day demonstration in April was to get as many activists as possible arrested.

Prof Emejulu says some black campaigners are put off this approach because they fear violence and hostility from the police.

Samantha Moyo is the coordinator for Extinction Rebellion Together - a section within the group that provides training on diversity. 

She says it took a lot of effort to overcome her fear of police when joining protest campaigns. ...

Ms Moyo says she only felt safe from police at the latest protests because she was "holding hands with a fellow protester, who was white". She says police could help to reduce the fear sometimes felt by people of colour if they behaved in a more approachable way. ...

Kids of Colour - a platform for young ethnic minority people to explore identity and "challenge institutional racism" - says climate protests do not always allow for the realities they face. 

School students around the world recently went on strike to demand action on climate change, but some at Kids of Colour question how inclusive the protests were.  "The school strikes have been fantastic to witness, but it is also a privilege to be able to skip school," says one representative.  Many young people of colour feel a pressure to succeed in education because society does not work in their favour." ...

Economic inequality can be another barrier for people of ethnic and minority backgrounds who are affected by climate change, says Ms Kissi-Debrah.

"Can you imagine giving up 10 days [of work] to sit in central London? It is absolutely not feasible for those in low-paid jobs.  I'm not saying everyone in Extinction Rebellion is in a privileged situation, but a lot of them were in jobs that make it easier for them to take time off work." ...

The Wretched of the Earth, which describes itself as "a collective of grassroots indigenous, black, brown and diaspora groups", wrote an open letter to Extinction Rebellion asking the group to rethink its tactics.

While commending Extinction Rebellion's successes, the letter said ethnic and minority voices were missing from the movement and need to be included early on, in order to effectively challenge systems upholding "racism, sexism and classism". 

Referencing Miss Thunberg's "house on fire" analogy, the group said: "Our communities have been on fire for a long time and these flames are fanned by our exclusion and silencing."

So how can pressure groups draw everyone in? People from BAME backgrounds need to be taken into consideration from the very start, says Prof Emejulu. "It's not about organising in your own terms and then trying to draw people in. You have to be embedded in the communities with the people that are affected by this. It's also about democracy - if democracy isn't reflected in your activism then that's a problem." ...

Ms Moyo says Extinction Rebellion is working on taking action to ensure that people of colour are not being left out. 

"I'm excited about what we're doing," she says, "because we'll be raising awareness and providing training around racism, colonialism, systemic trauma and other important issues."

Other campaign groups are also addressing the matter. Greens of Colour is part of the Green Party, aiming to represent BAME members. And Friends of the Earth (FoE) has also acknowledged there is a problem with diversity in climate debates. In particular, says an FoE spokeswoman, groups need to be better at recruitment and "bringing people in that the sector hasn't done very much to interest".

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48373540

This week there have been widespread Extinction Rebellion protests in Canada

On Monday the activist group Extinction Rebellion blocked bridges across Canada in Halifax, Toronto, Kitchener, Ont., Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria. While the climate action group may have been relatively unknown until now, they've been expanding rapidly around the world. Here's a rundown on the group and what they're calling on governments to do.

What is Extinction Rebellion?

Extinction Rebellion (XR) was launched by Roger Hallam and Gail Bradbrook on Oct. 31, 2018.  It was formed after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 C that said policymakers have only 12 years to stop global catastrophic climate change. ... The group is also concerned about findings that suggest we have entered the sixth global mass extinction event. Its symbol is an hourglass in a circle that represents time running out.

How big is Extinction Rebellion?

The group says that its first protest in 2018 drew 1,500 people to Parliament Square in London. It has spread now to more than 60 countries with 350 local groups. According to their website, there are more than 30 XR groups across Canada, with both local and provincial groups.

What is it demanding and from whom?

Extinction Rebellion has three primary demands of governments, that they: 

• Declare a climate and ecological emergency.
• Act immediately to stop the loss of biodiversity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.
• "Create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens' Assembly on climate and ecological justice."

What kind of tactics does XR use?

According to the group, it "uses nonviolent civil disobedience" to stop the mass extinction of life on Earth and "minimize the risk of social collapse." 

Writer and activist George Monbiot is also a strong supporter of XR. Speaking from London with CBC News, he said one of the reasons he supports the group is because it's unlike anything he's ever seen before. "It's really the first movement in my life that's been of sufficient scale to address this issue," Monbiot said. "I've been an activist and journalist in this field for 34 years, and there've been lots of movements coming and going, and a lot of them have been great … but none of them has reached this scale and this impact."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/extinction-rebellion-1.5312502

lagatta4 wrote:

Not to mention Indigenous leaders and climate defenders killed by Bolsonaro's henchmen.

The murder of 1,780 environmentalists identified in Global Witness's 2002 to 2018 reports is only a small fraction of those murdered globally. Not all of these murders involve Canadian firms nor the mining industry. Many of those attempting to protect the land, water and atmosphere live in remote regions where there is little or no law and their deaths are not even noted officially. Here is the url of the 2017 Global Witness report: (https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/at-wh...)

According to the Brazilian environmental watchdog Comissao Pastoral da Terra (CPT), the death toll in Brazil alone is even worse than that reported by Global Witness. Note that the article below is from BEFORE Bolsonaro came to power.

More than 1,500 Brazilians have been killed trying to protect the Amazon rain forest over the past 25 years, and some 2,000 more have received death threats. ...

For decades, Brazil has struggled with how to manage the staggering natural resources of the Amazon. The region, which is nearly the size of the contiguous United States, shelters 10 percent of the Earth's known species. The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group, estimates that an average four-square-mile plot in the Amazon contains 750 species of trees, 400 species of birds, and 150 species of butterflies. The rich soil means there's also huge financial potential for farming and livestock. In the 1970s, the country's dictatorship inaugurated a policy known as integrar para não entregar (­"Occupy it, or risk losing it"), and a frenetic landgrab ensued. The new land barons seized vast tracts of forest, which they promptly clear-cut. The timber was sold to foreign countries or burned to make charcoal, and the land was planted with soybeans or populated with cattle.

This, in part, has led to Brazil's emergence as a global economic power. It is already the world's largest exporter of beef and the second-largest supplier of soybeans. ...

In July 2011, public outcry over the violence forced the Brazilian government to announce that it would provide protection to approximately 130 threatened activists, and at the end of September, four months after Zé and Maria's deaths, the country's Council of Justice unveiled plans to create a special task force to investigate the killing of activists. According to federal prosecutor Pontes, however, only five of the 40 threatened activists in Pará have received any government protection. A spokeswoman for the Council of Justice said that her office has actually reduced the number of unsolved murders from nearly 700 to 74. ("The court figured that a dispute over land was not the main reason behind many of the murders," she said.)

Brent Rushforth, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., who in 2005 helped Brazil prosecute the killers of a 73-year-old American nun and rain forest activist named Dorothy Stang, blames flaws in the country's legal system for the inefficacy of these programs. "Brazilian criminal law is a stew that's made up of common law, Napoleonic code, and Brazilian salsa," Rushforth says. "The Amazon is so vast and completely unfettered to any true rule of law." Rushforth says that to find the men who killed Stang, the Brazilian government had to send its army into the rain forest – and it did so only in response to international pressure.

Many believe that the Brazilian legislature operates under the undue influence of the ranchers, who have the money to win favor. ...

 The Brazilian congress voted to amend the country's forest code, granting amnesty to ranchers who have illegally cleared land while also reducing the percentage of holdings that they're required to preserve. As an ecologist with Greenpeace put it, "Brazil woke up to the news of the murders of two leading environmental activists, and it's going to bed with the murder of the forest code."

Meanwhile, the killings and death threats continue.

http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/murder-in-the-amazon-brazils-endange...

Earth Defenders, many of them indigenous, around the world are under threat, with many more killed in remote rural areas than the 684 confirmed murdered in last 15 years, as the following report acknowledges. The report also expresses great concern for the rapid increase in deaths since Bolsonaro came to power in Brazil, with 56 confirmed murdered during his first year in power alone.  

Indigenous people are particularly at risk. This indigenous man from the Guarani Mbya community in Brazil was protesting to have his people’s voice heard in a land rights dispute in February 2019.

Fighting to protect your land is a risky task. A new study shows that every year, more people are killed defending their environment than those killed while deployed to war zones from the United Kingdom and Australia combined. ...

The Nature Sustainability study confirmed at least 684 defenders have been killed protecting their land over the past 15 years. That’s likely an underestimate as language barriers and lack of human rights advocates in some countries make the deaths difficult to track. Among those killed are community activists, journalists, lawyers, and indigenous peoples. The latter group has been disproportionately targeted with indigenous people accounting for 40 percent of all environmental defenders deaths in 2015 and 2016 and 30 percent of deaths in 2017. ...

Most deaths relate to issues around agribusiness where a government or private entity wants some land to grow their crops on, but the people who live on the land or depend on it for their sustenance resist. Environmental defenders have also died in large numbers fending off mining and resource extraction. That means the metals in your smartphone, the fossil fuels that power your home, and even the food you eat can come at a cost to the people who live near them.

Unfortunately, the number of deaths is increasing annually. The study blames the high death rate largely on the weak rule of law. Forty-three percent of homicides go convicted globally, the report notes, but for environmental defenders murdered, the number is just 10 percent. Corruption within some police forces or courts makes any murder tough to solve, particularly if police are involved in the killing. If there’s no mechanism to protect people, it can embolden more extrajudicial killings. ...

The paper authors highlight the case of Brazil, which has seen an outsized number of deaths even before the country elected Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right fascist, president this year. In 2017, 56 environmental defenders were killed in the country alone. That’s on the scale of some armed conflicts, the study notes, which are marked by about 25 deaths a year. Police officers are the main suspects for a massacre in 2017 related to land conflicts.

Bolsonaro has been clear about his intentions to expand industry in the Amazon Rainforest. Since his election, deforestation rates have been on the rise in the rainforest that’s home to indigenous communities. The president has denieddeforestation is happening and recently fired a top scientist at Brazil’s National Space and Research Institute for speaking out about the issue. Advocates and environmentalists have worried about what his presidency will mean for environmental defenders; just last month miners killed an indigenous leader in northern Brazil.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/more-people-die-defending-the-environment-in...

Extinction Rebellion finished a week of protests in Canada with a die-in in Montreal.

It was how the group of climate activists who scaled a Montreal bridge and overtook a downtown street last week ended their “Rebellion Week” on Sunday. ...

Their message to Montrealers was to stop drinking the “Kool-Aid of denial, despair, inaction, and guilt when it comes to climate change facts”. ...

Activist and group leader 14-year-old Bea Mellett said the idea behind the demonstration was to sensitize and educate the public. “(We’re) educating people about the psychological barriers that stop them from taking action and to encourage them to finally come with us as a group because we’re here to support them and we’re all in this together,” said Mellett. ...

Saturday, the group raised banners and flags at pedestrian crossings, aiming to “sensitize” drivers and pedestrians to the urgency of climate change. “Everyone is being very insincere about their actions,” Mellett said. “For example, our current prime minister declared the climate emergency in Canada and a day after approved the trans mountain pipeline and I’m sick of seeing people lead our country down such a bad path.”

The group said their aim is to continue protesting through non-violent civil disobedience demonstrations until governments take serious climate change action.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6028066/extinction-rebellion-montreal-die-in/

Last week indigenous and the environmental group Extinction Rebellion protested against the opening of the Frontier  Mine that would increase oilsands greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. 

Protesters against approval of Teck's Frontier oilsands mine gather on 9th Avenue S.E. in Calgary on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020. The protest was countered by a pro-oilsands group. JIM WELLS/POSTMEDIA

SHAREADJUSTCOMMENTPRINT

About 100 protesters gathered outside of a downtown Calgary office Wednesday morning to rally for — and against — a proposed oilsands mine in northern Alberta.

Protesters from both the pro-pipeline Canada Action and the environmentalist Extinction Rebellion groups convened outside Teck Resources’ office on 9th Avenue S.E., calling on the federal government to back or reject the $20.6-billion Frontier project.

“We’re putting pressure on the government to take action on the climate crisis that we feel is bearing down on society,” said Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman Sarah Flynn. “We feel that the Teck mine is for many reasons not in line with Canada’s goals, so we’re here to put pressure on the government to reject this proposal.”

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/protesters-for-and-against-oil...

Extinction Rebellion was back in action in the UK in September, leading to complaints against them by the PM and the leader of the Labour Party. You are getting somewhere when they no longer ignore you. 

Extinction Rebellion has also started working with Black and other minority groups, as is discussed below. 

Numbers demonstrating on the streets have been smaller but the actions much more targeted 

 

 ‘We desperately need groups like XR to highlight the political and economic actors that are driving this climate crisis’. Illustration: Guardian Design

A few minutes before Boris Johnson’s convoy swept past on his way to prime minister’s questions this week, around a dozen people stepped off the pavement and into the middle of the busy junction outside parliament.

As they hurriedly sat down and tried to glue their hands to the road, they were surrounded by scores of police officers. Within seconds they were lifted – or dragged – back to the pavement. The protest was over almost before it had begun and minutes later the prime minister’s motorcade sped past unhindered.

The action was one of scores of Extinction Rebellion non-violent civil disobedience protests – from a migrant justice demonstration outside the Home Office to blockading a slaughterhouse in Manchester – that have been taking place in major cities across the UK over the past two weeks to try to highlight the escalating climate crisis.

Unlike XR’s previous rebellions in April and October last year, which saw thousands of people blockade large parts of central London day after day, protesters have focused on what they say are some of the the key actors driving the climate crisis – from the UK government to rightwing thinktanks and media companies, fossil fuel corporations to big infrastructure projects.

Numbers on the streets have been smaller – mainly because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic – and the more targeted actions have caused neither the same level of disruption or gripped the public imagination to the same extent as they did last year.

However, XR organiser say its more focused campaign have given the movement a renewed sense of purpose.

“In the past we have raised a very generalised alarm which needed doing,” said Clare Farrell of XR. “But there are things that are structurally important to understand about the causal reality of this crisis and I think we have done a fantastic job of drawing attention to them.”

‘Free the truth’

A key target of the protests was rightwing thinktanks and lobbying organisations that campaigners say play a crucial role in downplaying the climate crisis. Last week, XR activists joined novelists, poets and playwrights, including Mark Rylance and Zadie Smith, to demonstrate outside 55 Tufton Street in London, a venue infamous for hosting meetings of thinktanks and lobbying outfits linked to climate science denial and the oil industry. ...

A few days later, XR upped the ante, using trucks and bamboo scaffolds to block roads outside the printing presses of a raft of national newspapers – including the Sun, Times, Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday – with banners reading “Free The Truth” and “5 Crooks Control Our News”.

The action not only blocked the printing presses of those newspapers, it also had a knock on effect of the distribution of other titles, including the Guardian. For the first time since the protests began, XR was high up the news agenda and once again the subject of heated public debate. The nature and target of the protests drew stinging criticism, with the prime minister and home secretary Priti Patel accusing XR of undermining democracy and a free press, and branding the group “criminals” and a threat to the British way of life. In anonymous briefings the government even floated the idea of classing XR as an “organised crime group”.

And it was not just the Conservative party who criticised the action. Labour leader Keir Starmer said the blockade was “an attack on the cornerstone of democracy” and the newspapers themselves, as well as media commentators and the Society of Editors, have since lined up to denounce the group.

But for XR – and many in the wider environment movement – the action was deemed legitimate and necessary. They argued that much of the rightwing press, owned by a handful of billionaires, have played a key role in downplaying the climate crisis and undermining the structural changes needed to address it – that much of our press, in fact, is far from free.

Angus Satow, co-founder of the leftwing grassroots environmental group Labour for a Green New Deal, told the Guardian: “We desperately need groups like XR to highlight the political and economic actors that are driving this climate crisis. Many of the big ideas that were being discussed in relation to the climate crisis when the coronavirus hit seem to have been forgotten by politicians who are scrabbling to get us back to a normal that will be disastrous. 

“We need groups like XR and the school strike movement to keep the pressure on and drive the climate crisis up the agenda.”

Zoë Blackler, a journalist working in XR’s media team, said that despite the backlash from the establishment, the protest at the print works had been “really galvanising across the movement”.

She said that although it had brought a huge amount of negative media coverage – with journalists trawling through the private lives of those involved, contacting former members for information on the group and approaching funders to disown them – she hoped it had also opened up a space for important conversations about the climate crisis and media ownership. I can imagine there are conversations going on in newsrooms now about how they cover the climate and ecological crisis ... I hope when things have settled down this will lead to real progress in the quality of the reporting.” ...

A criticism of XR ahead of its latest rebellion, especially from black and ethnic minority groups, was that its tactic of encouraging mass arrests ignored the reality of police racism, and effectively made the protests the preserve of privileged white people.

The September protests aimed to be different, with XR working more closely with other groups and recognising the connections between structural racism, inequality and the climate crisis.

Daze Aghaji, who has been involved with XR since the beginning of last year, said the last two weeks had been the most diverse rebellion so far.

“There is still loads of work to do on this but we are learning … we are having good conversations with other groups, listening and making sure we are much better at making sure everyone knows they are welcomed.”

Black environmental activists outside of XR say the movement was making some progress but urged the media to highlight the work of other grassroots groups who are focusing on climate and racial justice.

As XR wound up its latest rebellion on Thursday, it was already preparing its next campaign. According to those involved it will take the form of a “Money Strike” – with people encouraged to withhold debt or taxes from institutions deemed to be fuelling not only the climate crisis but also structural racism and wider inequality.

Launched less than two years ago, the group is still thinking big. Its actions over the past two weeks did not capture the public imagination in the way it had done in April last year. By attacking the rightwing media, they have made a formidable enemy – and according to some critics, may have distracted the press and the public from their core message about the climate crisis.

But as evidence of the climate and ecological emergency mounts – from melting glaciers in the Antarctic to wildfires in California and the widespread destruction of wildlife and the natural world – XR still believes it has a crucial role to play.

As Boris Johnson stood up in parliament for PMQs on Wednesday, 92-year-old Arnold Pease, from Manchester, was being arrested outside for his part in the protests.

As he was being led away by police, Pease said: “We’re here to continue holding them to account. They call 92-year-old great grandparents ‘organised criminals’ for doing what’s necessary to protect their grand kids? The government’s criminal inaction on the greatest existential threat we’ve ever faced is the real story.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/11/extinction-rebellion...

Extinction Rebellion is carrying major protests in London. 

Nearly 2,000 officers have been policing the group every day (Ian West/PA)

Nearly 500 people have been arrested and 81 activists have been removed after gluing themselves to structures during the latest wave of Extinction Rebellion protests in London. The Metropolitan Police said there had been a total of 480 arrests in the capital since the environmental group began its action dubbed the Impossible Rebellion on August 23.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said nearly 2,000 officers have been involved in policing the activists every day, adding that they had acted “swiftly” when demonstrators caused “serious disruption” to Londoners.

Mr Twist told Times Radio on Friday: “It’s not the numbers of protesters but it’s the level of serious disruption that they’re looking to cause, which is impacting on other Londoners. We’ve said right from the start, we know that Extinction Rebellion have the right to protest and the right to assemble. But what we also made clear is these are qualified rights and they have got to be balanced against the rights of the rest of London and Londoners, the people, the businesses, the communities who want to lawfully go about their business. Where we’ve seen cases of both very serious and totally unreasonable disruption looking to be caused, we have to take action and move in and make arrests.”

The protests have seen activists scaling the seven-storey Tower Place West building in the City of London, occupying both London Bridge and Tower Bridge and blocking roads across the capital.

Police were accused of heavy-handed tactics after officers could be seen using batons and dragging protesters from the top of a bus near London Bridge on Tuesday.

Defending the tactics, Mr Twist said: “There’s an overall strategy to deal with the protest, to facilitate the peaceful protest and try and work with the organisers to minimise the level of disruption. What we saw at London Bridge and what we saw at other locations on Sunday was an attempt outside the Science Museum to set up complex structures with complex lock-on devices to cause serious disruption to the public of London. And that’s when officers are moving in and acting more swiftly to make arrests and try to lawfully remove the protesters. Over the 10 days we’ve made 480 arrests, we’ve removed 81 people who were glued on to structures, we’ve removed 52 people who were locked on to structures, and 31 of those from height. The important point is all of this takes a huge amount of time and resources and these resources are the same officers that are being obstructed from what we want them to be doing in their local boroughs, which is bearing down on violence.”

He described the “very protracted” protests as “frustrating” as they divert attention away from communities. Mr Twist added: “We must also be alive to those Londoners who are likely sick of this protracted disruption, particularly as the capital continues the economic and social recovery as a result of the devastating pandemic. “As demonstrations look set to continue this weekend, we urge organisers to consider the wider impact of their protests and to engage with us.”

https://www.largsandmillportnews.com/news/national/19556877.nearly-500-a...

Four people were arrested on Saturday, the opening day of the Extinction Rebellion protests in Vancouver as it demands that governments and especially the Trudeau government end fossil fuel subsidies and fossil fuel expansion. 

• 

• Extinction Rebellion activists have been blocking traffic in Vancouver  at various times for the past two years.

A group of Vancouver climate activists succeeded in their goal of tying up traffic for a while in the downtown core.

Today (October 16), four members of the grassroots group Extinction Rebellion Vancouver were taken into custody for sitting in the intersection of West Georgia and Burrard streets.

They were there to draw attention to the climate crisis two weeks before world leaders are scheduled to discuss this subject at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

According to police, the two men and two women were arrested for mischief and were released pending a future court date after being driven to jail

“A group of 50 people marched to the intersection of Georgia and Burrard streets Saturday afternoon,” VPD Const. Tania Visintin said in a news release. “There, 13 people staged a 'die-in' by laying on the ground. This impacted vehicle traffic throughout downtown.”

The arrests came on the first day of what the activists are calling a 14-day "October Rebellion". Today's action was taken in honour of Wet'suwet'en people who are battling the Coastal GasLink pipleine.

"Two weeks of constant disruption aims to put the climate and ecological emergency in the national media spotlight and push the provincial and federal governments to end all fossil fuel subsidies," Extinction Rebellion Vancouver said in a news release issued today.

Tomorrow (October 17), demonstrators willl gather in Grandview Park at noon before blocking traffic at Commercial and East Broadway. It's being done to call attention to the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project, which will result in more annual greenhouse-gase emissions than are currently being released each year in B.C. 

"With extreme heat, fires, droughts, and flooding affecting communities across the country, it’s become increasingly clear that we are facing a major catastrophe," the group noted in its news release. 

It quoted an 18-year-old student named Blake, who said: “I shouldn’t have to be here, but I’ve got another 50 [to] 60 years left on this planet. The government needs to keep its promise of ending subsidies.”

https://www.straight.com/news/four-people-arrrested-on-opening-day-of-ex...

Extinction Rebellion is holding ten days of protests in Helsinki, Finland.

As a prelude to the 10-day protest, an Extinction Rebellion art group organised the "Stillborn" funeral procession for victims of climate change in Helsinki on Monday/Lehtikuva

Activists with Extinction Rebellion Finland (Elokapina) are set to gather at Mannerheimintie, the main thoroughfare in Helsinki, at 6 pm today for a demonstration that is scheduled to last for 10 days. 

The group announced plans for the protest earlier this month. According to Extinction Rebellion, over a thousand people have signed up for the event. On Friday, police stated that the demonstrators had declined their request to move the venue to a safer location, adding that it will likely cause significant disruptions to traffic.  

The statement also asserted that police will be liable to break up the protest if it endangers public safety or blocks traffic. Prime Minister Sanna Marin has commented on the planned event, saying that citizens have the right to express their opinion and she trusts that authorities will handle the situation appropriately. 

“Of course, I do not consider breaking the law acceptable,” she told MTV. Minister of the Interior Maria Ohisalo has been criticised for not taking a stand on whether protestors should be permitted to intentionally defy the law.  

The Extinction Rebellion movement has made its demands clear by staging multiple demonstrations over the past year, including one in June. Activists are calling for the government to declare an environmental emergency and bring forward Finland’s deadline for achieving carbon neutrality to 2025.

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/news-in-brief/20066-extinction-rebe...

In Dublin, Ireland Extinction Activists called for action against overfishing and government inaction on creating marine protected areas. 

Climate activists dressed in black and wearing skeletal masks drag a mocked-up fishing trawler through Dublin. Picture: Dominic McGrath/PA Wire

Climate activists gathered outside the Dáil on Monday afternoon to call for the Government to take action against over-fishing.

Activists dragged a mocked-up fishing trawler through the capital, with protesters dressed in black and wearing skeletal masks walking in a procession behind the vessel.

The climate action group, backed by several other organisations, is calling for the Government to increase the proportion of Irish waters where conservation is prioritised, so-called “marine-protected areas”.

On Monday, protesters said that they also wanted an immediate end in Irish waters to bottom trawling, where heavy nets are dragged along the ocean floor.

Extinction Rebellion led the demonstration, marching from the Garden of Remembrance to Kildare Street and on to the Department of Agriculture, to demand urgent action from the Government to protect the country’s waters. ...

“There’s a sickness in these oceans and there’s a sickness in Government Buildings,” said Ceara Carney, an Extinction Rebellion volunteer. She said that people need to care about what happens to the fish in the world’s oceans. “We’re protesting today to highlight the Government’s inaction for basically creating marine-protected areas. We want the Irish Government to allocate 30% of the Irish seabed to be marine-protected. Currently, we only have 1-2%, which is really bad especially amidst a biodiversity crisis,” Ms Carney told PA news agency. ...  “The industry is being damaged by these super-trawlers. There is no enforcement of regulations and that’s another thing we’re asking to happen. This huge-scale fishing, where 40% is thrown back anyway, is damaging the ocean life and we can’t live sustainably on that.”

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40718379.html

In Adelaide Australia, Extinction Rebellion protesters glued their feet to the road to disrupt traffic. 

Police remove a protester glued to the road.(ABC News: Natasha Thiele)

Extinction Rebellion protesters glued their feet to the road in the heart of Adelaide's CBD this morning, causing major traffic delays for morning commuters.
Eight protesters were later arrested by police. One said members of the group were "glued or chained to be irremovable, symbolising how resolute they are". "Attached to prams that symbolise the future of our children are parents, grandparents," another said.
The rally has been timed to coincide with the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, which begins in Glasgow on October 31.

About two dozen protesters were involved, holding placards reading "Climate Crisis" and "Code Red".

"It's a code red. It's about taking action immediately," one protester said.

"We believe the science on COVID. Why don't we believe and act on the science on climate change?"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-20/extinction-rebellion-protesters-g...

The number of Extinction Rebellion protesters that have been arrested in Vancouver during their two weeks of protests continues to grow. 

• 

The number of arrests continues to climb in Extinction Rebellion Vancouver's 14 days of climate action.

On October 23, two more were taken into custody in peaceful civil disobedience blocking the Cambie Bridge. That came after another person was arrested on October 22 after gluing herself to the bridge.

That brings the total number of arrest to 17 in the group's "October Rebellion" leading up to the COP26 international climate meetings in Glasgow at the end of this month. ...

According to Extinction Rebellion Vancouver, its supporters were able to hold the bridge for 25 minutes until police arrived.

One of those arrested, identified as Leenie in the group's news release, acknowledged that it's annoying for people when roads are blocked.

But she explained that acts like this is what enabled ACT UP to gain broader access to critical medications during the AIDS epidemic and that women gained the vote through hunger strikes, breaking windows, and, in one instance, jumping in front of one of the king's horses at the races.

"I’m pretty annoyed that the beautiful town of Lytton where I visited every summer during my childhood, is now gone," Leenie added. "I’m pretty annoyed that despite all of this, our government continues to subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $40 million a day with my tax dollars. It has never been clearer that our government has no intention of ending their loyalty to the fossil fuel industry that is literally killing us, and if they think that they can get away with this level of criminal disregard for my life and future without consequences, they're in for a surprise."

https://www.straight.com/news/another-extinction-rebellion-vancouver-ral...

More Extinction Rebellion protests are planned to have "high impact" disruptions of COP 26 in the UK.

IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES

Image caption, Extinction Rebellion said it is planning further protests during COP26

Climate change protesters from Extinction Rebellion say they are planning high impact "deliberate disruption" during the COP26 summit. 

World leaders and delegates will gather in Glasgow next week in a bid to hammer out a deal to tackle climate change. 

Extinction Rebellion uses what it calls "non-violent direct action" to call on leaders to take urgent action on the climate emergency.

Its activists say they are prepared to be arrested.

But they will try not to affect the wider community by blocking routes used by emergency vehicles.

Catherine Idle, from the protest group, said: "Our approach is to have deliberate disruption where it's going to make the most impact.

"There have been 25 COPs already and emissions are still rising and so we're there to demand they do better."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-59071603

In the video below members of the Exctinction Rebellion group hold a protest outside of the headquarters of JP Morgan bank in the city centre of Glasgow. The protest is meant to highlight the bank's alleged role is funding fossil fuel projects.

https://www.africanews.com/2021/11/02/extinction-rebellion-group-protest...

Extinction Rebellion has started a "jump ship" campaign aimed at getting people to leave the fossil fuel industry and just had its first victory.

The Extinction Rebellion demonstration that inspired Caroline Dennett to quit (Photo: William Templeton)

A safety consultant has vowed to stop working for Shell after 11 years because of its investments in new oil and gas production, in a first victory for Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) “jump ship” campaign.

In an email to over 1,000 Shell employees and directors, Caroline Dennett said she could no longer have Shell as a client because it “is not winding down oil and gas, but planning to explore and extract much more”.

“It pains me to end this working relationship which I have greatly valued, but I can no longer work for a company that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the risks of climate change and ecological collapse,” she wrote in her email on Monday morning.

Her resignation came the day before Shell’s annual general meeting, where the oil major is resisting calls by a shareholder activist group to align its activities with the targets of the Paris Agreement. If adopted, the resolution would result in “unrealistic interim targets”, company directors argued.

Dennett told Climate Home News that she had started working with Shell shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. While she was uncomfortable, she reasoned that her job was to prevent those kind of disasters.

She became more uncomfortable when she was tasked to work on new production projects in Nigeria.

“I just thought ‘this is not transitioning'”, she told Climate Home. “Supporting a company to continue to operate safely while they transition to hopefully renewables, that’s one thing. But to support new extraction projects, that’s another thing.”

Last month, XR campaigners demonstrated inside and outside Shell’s London headquarters. Their posters had the first names of individual Shell staff members on and invited them to “switch to the right side of history, before Shell turns toxic on your CV”.

They offered to fund career coaching to anyone thinking of making the leap.

Dennett saw a video of this action online. She went on XR’s TruthTeller.Life website and messaged a dedicated number using secure messaging app Signal. The message was picked up by Zoe Blackler, an investigative journalist and the TruthTeller project coordinator.

After phone calls, Dennett travelled from Dorset to London to meet Blackler in person and the two planned how Dennett would cut ties with Shell.

A screenshot of her resignation email was distributed to the press and she explained her decision in a LinkedIn post with video, where more than 2,000 people reacted positively.

While Dennett’s safety consulting firm has other clients, she says Shell is a “significant” one and she is sacrificing revenue for her firm.

“Thats a sacrifice that’s definitely worth making”, she said, while accepting that not every fossil fuel worker is in the position to quit.

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2022/05/23/extinction-rebellion-inspir...