Extinction Rebellion XR
aha throwing your body on the gears is the last line of defense, a way for activists to try to offset corporate power (see various suppressions) so not surprising CRC/notEPA tires to tie "extremist" Extinction Rebellion to "foreign Billionaire" [well, British anyway Hohn? holm? sp]
Dozens arrested as scientists worldwide mobilize to demand 'climate revolution'
Jake Johnson and Common Dreams April 07, 2022
More than 1,000 scientists across the globe chained themselves to the doors of oil-friendly banks, blocked bridges, and occupied the steps of government buildings on Wednesday to send an urgent message to the international community: The ecological crisis is accelerating, and only a "climate revolution" will be enough to avert catastrophe.
What organizers described as "the world's largest-ever scientist-led civil disobedience campaign" kicked off just days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report detailing the grim state of efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C by century's end, a target set by the Paris accord.
As one of the report's authors put it during a press call earlier this week, "Unless there are immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, 1.5°C is beyond reach."
Warning that the IPCC report's language was watered down at the behest of governments unwilling to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, scientists and their allies took that message further during their direct actions on Wednesday, operating under the slogan "1.5°C is dead, climate revolution now!"
"I'm taking action because I feel desperate," said U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who along with several others locked himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A recent report found that the financial giant is the biggest private funder of oil and gas initiatives in the world.
"It's the 11th hour in terms of Earth breakdown, and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity," Kalmus continued. "World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane. The science clearly indicates that everything we hold dear is at risk, including even civilization itself and the wonderful, beautiful, cosmically precious life on this planet. I actually don't get how any scientist who understands this could possibly stay on the sidelines at this point."
The Los Angeles demonstration was accompanied by other protests across the U.S., the largest historical emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide and home to some of the most powerful fossil fuel companies in the world.
In Washington, D.C., climate scientists chained themselves to the White House fence and were ultimately arrested as theydemanded that U.S. President Joe Biden declare a "climate emergency," a step that would unlock a range of tools needed to combat global warming.
"We have not made the changes necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C, rendering this goal effectively impossible," said Dr. Rose Abramoff, one of the scientists arrested at the White House. "We need to both understand the consequences of our inaction as well as limit fossil fuel emissions as much and as quickly as possible."
"I'm taking action to urge governments and society to stop ignoring the collective findings of decades of research," Abramoff added. "Let's make this crisis impossible to ignore."
Similar acts of civil disobedience were held across the globe as scientists took to the streets to demand that governments ramp up their transitions to renewable energy as the climate crisis intensifies extreme weather, endangers critical ecosystems, and takes lives worldwide.
In Madrid, Spain, scientists splashed red paint on the walls and steps of the Congress of Deputies to decry lawmakers' inaction in the face of the existential climate threat. More than 50 scientists were arrested during the demonstration, according to organizers.
Scientists also mobilized in Germany, blocking a bridge near the country's parliament building.
In an op-ed published in The Guardian on Wednesday, Kalmus warned that "Earth breakdown is much worse than most people realize."
"The science indicates that as fossil fuels continue to heat our planet,everything we love is at risk,"he wrote. "For me, one of the most horrific aspects of all this is the juxtaposition of present-day and near-future climate disasters with the 'business as usual' occurring all around me. It's so surreal that I often find myself reviewing the science to make sure it's really happening, a sort of scientific nightmare arm-pinch. Yes, it's really happening."
"If everyone could see what I see coming," Kalmus added, "society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years."
==
trying to trash via foreign bilionaire BS ~ sino ChiComm
https://unherd.com/2021/12/does-the-ccp-control-extinction-rebellion/
no lnx
Does the CCP control Extinction Rebellion?
Western activists are blind to President Xi's ambition
BY DAVID ROSE
. Is he just a useful idiot? (NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP via Getty Images)]
David Rose is aninvestigative journalistand author. His next book is about caving.
DavidRoseUK
December 15, 2021
Filed under:
Global affairs Beijing CCP Censorship China Climate change Communism Don't miss Education Environment Extinction Rebellion Fossil fuels University WEF Xi Jinping
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A few blocks away from Tiananmen Square, amid the cavernous splendour of the Beijing Hotel Convention Centre, an array of senior Communist Party officials gathered in September to proclaim a clear message: by “focusing on cutting carbon emissions… China will promote green development, and continuously improve its ecology”. The annual general meeting of the China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development (the CCICED) was in full swing.
Rapturous applause filled the room, though that was hardly unexpected. Conferences run by the CCP are not usually marked by dissent, especially when they’re attended by the likes of Xie Zhenhua, who led China’s delegation to Cop26, and vice premier Han Zheng, one of the seven standing committee members of the Politburo, the Party’s supreme elite. Indeed, as the room fizzled with optimistic eco-rhetoric, you could almost forget that China is the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases — and that the new coal-fired power stations in its construction pipeline alone have a greater capacity than Britain’s entire generation fleet.
What was remarkable about this meeting, though, was the surprising presence of an external delegation: joining the CCP apparatchiks on a collection of screens dotted around the room were a number of enthusiastic Britons and other Westerners. According to the official conference report, the “foreign committee members and partners lauded China’s ecological civilisation building and its new and greater contributions to promoting the construction of a clean and beautiful world”.
Who were these people? Strange to tell, they consisted of a veritable Who’s Who of British, European and American climate activists.
Here, for example, was Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, Chairman of the Grantham Centre on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, and a longstanding government adviser who wrote a report for Blair’s Labour government on the need to go green. He told the meeting the world is beginning a “new growth story” that “fits well with China’s vision of an ecological society”.
Here too was Kate Hampton, chief executive of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which is mainly bankrolled by the billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn, a key financial backer of Extinction Rebellion and one of the world’s biggest sources of green largesse. During the meeting,Hampton said she “supported Chinese leadership on setting the global path for fulfilling Paris goals”— the attempt to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — and praised China for “supporting green Covid-19 recovery”.
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Others were equally fulsome, including Laurence Tubiana, France’s former climate ambassador and now chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, which also gives millions to British green campaigns, such as UK100, an alliance of local authorities pledged to turn Net Zero by 2030; and the Conservative Environment Network.
Also present were representatives from ClientEarth, a law firm that tries to block development in Britain and other countries on environmental grounds in the courts; the Worldwide Fund for Nature, whose president is Prince Charles; and representatives from rich and influential organisations based in America including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the World Resources Institute and the Energy Foundation.
And yet in the weeks since the CCICED meeting, Cop26 has come and gone; and largely thanks to China, any hope of a meaningful deal has evaporated. On the last day, British minister Alok Sharma was reduced to tears when India and China refused to promise to phase out coal. Back in the real world, President Xi Jinping has said China will increase annual coal production by 220 million tonnes.
Such moves have, unsurprisingly, attracted robust criticism. Professor Jun Arima of Tokyo University, one of Japan’s Cop26 negotiators, told me that allowing China to benefit from cheap, coal-fired energy will only consolidate its industrial domination. Lord Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, pointed out that China’s leaders have repeatedly shown they are not “men of their word”.
Yet those in attendance at the meeting in September have been unified by their reticence. Why?
Last year, in their book Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World, Clive Hamiltonand Mareike Ohlberg revealed how China influences Britain and other Western democracies by seducing their elites. Its ‘useful idiots’ often believe they are acting for the common good, but become blind to Xi’s avowed ambition: for China to achieve global supremacy by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Maoist revolution.
Nowhere is this more effective than in the climate movement. I asked a specialist researcher fluent in Mandarin to examine open-source material from the Chinese web. The results suggest Western greens have become prime targets. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising: before he was a climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua helped run the Party Discipline Commission, which operates a secret prison network where torture, according to Human Rights Watch, has long been rife.
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I asked Hamilton if China’s wooing of Western environmentalists explains why the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide has aroused so little protest? He believes it is likely: “They’ve fallen for what the Party calls ‘discourse control’ — to shape the way the rest of the world thinks and talks about China, presenting the Chinese government in a favourable light. Toadying to the Party leadership is letting them off the hook.”
For Lord Stern, this is nothing new: his environmental record is littered with papers saying CCP leaders are making great progress, and suggesting — prematurely — that their coal use and emissions have already or will soon peak. In 2014, for example, he claimed in a paper for the World Economic Forum that China was “emerging as a global leader in climate policy”. His co-author was He Jiankun, a ‘counsellor’ to China’s top administrative body, the State Council, and the director of the Energy, Environment and Economy Institute at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Three years later, following the the annual WEF jamboree at Davos, Stern said: “The world is looking for a climate champion. In China, it has one.”
Has Stern been naïve and let himself get too close to the CCP? Certainly for the Party, Tsinghua University has a special role: it is Xi Jinping’s alma mater, and home to multiple labs conducting secret research for the People’s Liberation Army. Yet the pair still work together: Stern’s spokesman told me that Tsinghua and the LSE are joint leaders of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate, which held two international meetings before Cop26 with contributions from Alok Sharma, US climate envoy John Kerry,and — of course — Xie Zhenhua.
This year, for what it’s worth, Stern has called on China to stop building new coal-fired plants. But he still spoke at this year’s CCICED, while his spokesman told me that China remained “keen to learn from the UK’s example of world-leading action on climate change” and said the rate of increase in its emissions had slowed enormously. While this may be true, China’s emissions continued to rise even through the pandemic, and now exceed the total produced by rest of the developed world.
On paper, at least, you might argue there’s no harm in that. After all, the CCICED’s “mission” is to build “a more beautiful China and a green and bountiful world”. Who could possibly object?
Hardly anyone, I suspect, until they learnt that, the CCICED’s Chinese members include not only top Party bosses but officials who work with China’s United Front Work Department, one of the CCP’s main instruments for exerting influence abroad. Among them is Li Xiaolin, a top party cadre and the daughter of China’s late president Li Xiannan. Until recently, she was the chair of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries — which, as Hamilton and Ohlberg show in their book, is one of China’s most important foreign influence organisations.
What does this mean in practice? According to Patricia Adams, director of the Toronto-based environmental think tank Probe International, in 2017 a new Chinese law forced foreign NGOs there to submit to “close supervision” by the Ministry of Public Security, responsible for crushing dissent and controlling China’s secret police. Any organisation deemed to have “harmed the national interest” risks having its assets seized, its staff jailed, and being permanently banned.
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Adams knows this fully well: in 2014, when the new law was being discussed, two Chinese academics she was working with were arrested and later jailed, and Probe International named as co-conspirators. Their crime? “Picking quarrels and provoking troubles” for speaking out on issues such as the rule of law. After that, Adams tells me, “it was no longer safe for us to work in China”. As for the Western environmentalists who still do, she adds: “They hope they can influence China’s leadership. But they are also aware that for them, to publicly criticise China’s policy would be suicide.”
Take, for example, the aforementioned CIFF, whose Chief Executive attended the CCICED gathering in September. Along with the WWF and ClientEarth, it has a branch in China which is subject to CCP control. There, the CIFF employs one Wang Yi as its “independent adviser on climate projects”. As chance would have it, he also happens to be a high-ranking member of China’s puppet parliament, the National People’s Congress.
To what extent that compromises his impartiality is anyone’s guess. But it is striking that the CIFF — a registered UK charity — gives away millions of pounds to projects in China. These include an £18 million grant to “help contribute to peaking China’s emissions”, £14 million to give China “evidence-based recommendations” for renewable energy, and, most astonishingly of all, £8 million to assist China “in global climate governance”.
This might not matter quite so much were Sir Christopher and the CIFF not prominent funders of green causes in Britain and Europe. He has personally given £50,000 to Extinction Rebellion, with a further £150,000 from the CIFF. When these payments emerged in 2019, Hohn said: “I recently gave them £50,000 because humanity is aggressively destroying the world with climate change and there is an urgent need for us all to wake up to this fact.”
But not, apparently, to China’s role in it. When I asked an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson why they never said anything about China, she told me: “It would be divisive to put pressure on one particular nation. It would be hypocritical.”
Yet the CIFF’s China connection extends well beyond Extinction Rebellion: it is also the biggest funder of the European Climate Foundation, based in Brussels but with an office in London, to which the CIFF donated £29 million last year. Strikingly, the ECF’s deputy chair is a familiar figure: the CIFF’s Kate Hampton.
Like the CIFF, the ECF website provides few details of the groups it funds. But its UK ‘grantees’ include ClientEarth and the Conservative Environment Network, an alliance of more than 100 Tory MPs and peers set up by environment minister Zac Goldsmith and his plutocrat brother Ben.
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Its ‘global ambassador’, meanwhile, is the Prime Minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, a self-declared “Sinophile” who said last year that China “will come over to our side”, and it was vital “not to raise the temperature” by criticising them. He added he had recently enjoyed “a wonderful, wonderful meeting with the Chinese ambassador”, at which, after discussing global warming, they had sung the Flanders and Swann song ‘Mud, Glorious Mud’ together, inspired by mud’s supposed ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
And yet for all the pledges made in recent years by China and Western environmentalists, the evidence suggests that any future action will be strictly on China’s terms. For many years, Chinese leaders avoided trying to promote the Communist system in the West, but since Xi took power in 2012, this has changed. China, says Clive Hamilton, now touts the ‘China model’ as superior to the West’s.
Anyone doubting this had only attend yet another Beijing meeting, held in June at a Chinese government office by the Foreign Environmental Cooperation Centre, part of China’s environment ministry. The meeting’s attendees included staff from the CCICED, and discussed “the building of ecological civilisation and the community of common destiny”. One leading participant was Chen Xiangyang, the Director of China’s Total State Security Outlook Research Centre — an arm of the Ministry of State Security, which has helped to direct a regime of surveillance against Chinese citizens.
Meanwhile, Qiushi, the CCP’s theoretical journal, published an article in Chinese this year which explores how foreign environmentalists can be utilised. The idea of ecological civilisation, it says, is “Marxist and scientific by nature”, and will have a big role in spreading the China Model’s appeal.
None of this is hidden. This article uses Chinese documents, but all are available on the Mandarin web. Yet climate change activists continue to blindly give China a free pass on its emissions and continued use of coal.
An ECF spokesperson told me: “Climate change impacts every country and so we work with every country, and of course that includes China.” A CIFF spokesperson added: “China is the world’s largest emitter and its transition to a net zero economy is therefore of utmost importance to the entire world. CIFF’s work in China aims to accelerate this transition.”
ClientEarth said: “As a result of our work delivering legal training, the legal system in China is now used to hold Chinese government bodies to account… We are focused on reducing pollution and bringing down emissions both in China and from its overseas investments.” And a WWF campaigns chief added: “All countries need to contribute towards reducing emissions to net zero by 2050. By promising to stop building coal plants abroad, China had ‘given an important signal’.
Ultimately, however, the meaning of that “signal” remains unclear. Is it a sign that President Xi is seriously committed to saving the planet? Or is it a sign that he understands how to fool an influential group of Western environmentalists, with the intention of making that planet his own?
nice overview, current state
https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/04/evolution-of-extinction-rebellion-climate-emergency-protest-coronavirus-pandemic
dn 220 also XR win?
==
week 2 actions. London banned moms and babies google nurse
With Babies in Tow, Mothers With Extinction Rebellion Target ...
https://www.commondreams.org › news › 2019/10/16 › babies-tow-mothe...
1.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/over-700-scientists-endorse-mass-civil-disobedience-to-fight-climate-crisis-moral-duty-to-take-radical-action/
no lnx greta?
Over 700 scientists endorse mass civil disobedience to fight climate crisis: ‘Moral duty to take radical action’
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams October 15, 2019
More than 700 scientists—and counting—have signed a declaration of support for the people around the world engaging in non-violent civil disobedience to pressure political leaders to act on the climate crisis.
“We can’t allow the role of scientists to be to just write papers and publish them in obscure journals and hope somehow that somebody out there will pay attention,” Julia Steinberger, an ecological economist at the University of Leeds in the U.K. and one of the declaration’s first signatories, told Reuters on Saturday. “We need to be rethinking the role of the scientist and engage with how social change happens at a massive and urgent scale. We can’t allow science as usual.”
The declaration, signed by scientists from a diverse range of fields and countries, states that “if global greenhouse gas emissions are not brought rapidly down to net zero and biodiversity loss is not halted, we risk catastrophic and irreversible damage to our planetary life-support systems, causing incalculable human suffering and many deaths.”
“As scientists, we have an obligation that extends beyond merely describing and understanding the natural world to taking an active part in helping to protect it,” the document says. “We believe that the continued governmental inaction over the climate and ecological crisis now justifies peaceful and nonviolent protest and direct action, even if this goes beyond the bounds of the current law.”
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https://theintercept.com/2019/07/23/extinction-rebellion-climate-change-capitol-hill/
On TUESDAY EVENING, members of the Washington, D.C., chapter of Extinction Rebellion superglued themselves to each other and to the passages connecting the Capitol to the Rayburn and Cannon office buildings, where House members have their offices. The protesters, who are part of an international group that uses nonviolent civil disobedience tactics to advocate for action on climate change, aimed to confront House members on their way to floor votes.
Many of the protesters, who did not expect the protest to last longer than 15 minutes, remained glued for more than two hours, alongside dozens of demonstrators who rallied as a distraction. They wore signs over their shirts that said “Declare Climate Emergency” and chanted: “What do we want? Green New Deal! When do we want it? Now!” Capitol police asked bystanders and reporters to move back and, after three warnings, kicked everyone out — except, of course, those who were glued. They arrested 13 activists, according to Extinction Rebellion, around 8:30 p.m.
Members of Congress, for the most part, ignored the protesters. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., former vice chair of the House Subcommittee on Environment, mocked the group on Twitter, posting a video of himself appearing to duck under a protester’s arm to get through with the note, “…Supergluing yourself to a door is a very dumb way to protest.
[banks vidd twt]
the climate activism group, which was formally launched in the United Kingdom last October and has iterations in 45 countries, uses disruptive acts of civil disobedience to call on lawmakers around the world to treat the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves. They’ve blocked traffic, stood on trains, staged “die-ins,” climbed buildings, and gotten half-naked. Because the group has no single leader, there’s no good estimate of how big the movement is in the United States, but the demonstrations it’s held in New York City have attracted hundreds.
Extinction Rebellion U.S. has four demands, which include the reduction of carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and the creation of a citizens’ assembly to oversee the “bold, swift and long-term changes necessary” to tackle the crisis. On Tuesday, protesters were specifically calling for the immediate passage of the joint resolution for the U.S. to declare the climate crisis an official emergency.
Russell Grey, co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion U.S. chapter, gave the demonstrators a pep talk before marching over to the Cannon House Office Building. “We are about to make history in this fucking building,” he said. “I’m sick and tired of waiting around.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., recently introduced the nonbinding resolution in the Senate, alongside Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who introduced a version in the House.
“The global warming caused by human activities,” the resolution reads,in part, “demands a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive scale to halt, reverse, mitigate, and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency and to restore the climate for future generations.”
Dominic Serino, one of the protesters risking arrest, said that considering the “extreme urgency” of the climate crisis, passing a nonbinding resolution “just acknowledging it exists is the smallest possible demand we could be making to Congress.”
If the resolution passes, the U.S. would join 16 countries and hundreds of local governments — including New York City — that have already declared a climate emergency. The New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to declare the emergency last month; though the vote was mostly symbolic, the gesture marked a victory for militant climate activists.
“I think this will show members of Congress who aren’t taking climate change seriously that the American people understand the risk and are taking it seriously,” Serino, who traveled from Baltimore, said. “And if members of Congress are serious about listening to their constituents, then yes, they will change their messaging.”
GIVEN THE REPUBLICAN control of the Senate, Congress likely won’t pass ambitious climate legislation anytime soon. But there are groups in Congress working to push the issue. Earlier this year, 10 Democrats in the Senate formed a Special Committee on the Climate Crisis to investigate “how climate change is affecting the country and the planet.” The committee, chaired by Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, held its first public hearing earlier this month and has a second one scheduled for this Thursday. The House has also been convening a Special Committee on a regular basis.
The Sunrise Movement, a youth-led environmental group, pushed the concept of a Green New Deal into the political mainstream in the wake of the midterm elections, when newly elected Ocasio-Cortez joined Sunrise protesters’ sit-in at the office of Nancy Pelosi, then presumed to be the incoming House speaker. In less than a year, the Green New Deal went from being an obscure policy proposal to having more than 90 co-sponsors in the House and 12 in the Senate as a nonbinding resolution.
The Sunrise Movement has also been instrumental in pressuring presidential candidates to address the issue. Last month, about 100 young activists held a sit-in outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., to demand the party reverse its decision not to hold a debate focused on climate change among the 2020 presidential candidates. Dozens of protesters camped out overnight and hosted a debate watch party outside of the building for both nights of the Democratic debates.
Last month, Extinction Rebellion also organized an action calling for the New York Times to improve its coverage of the climate crisis and use the term “climate emergency” instead. Activists stopped traffic in midtown Manhattan, and some even scaled the New York Times building to hang up banners, resulting in at least 70 arrests. In April, protesters in the U.K. staged a die-in at the Natural History Museum in London and stopped traffic near Waterloo Bridge in what organizers described as the biggest act of civil disobediencein recent British history. There were at least 1,000 arrests.
Nick Brana, a member of Extinction Rebellion, founder of the Movement for a People’s Party, and former Sanders national outreach director, said that the U.S. chapter has never done anything so audacious, and Tuesday’s action was the first of its kind. He added that Extinction Rebellion hopes to build up to shutting down entire cities by blocking key intersections like it did in the U.K.
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eg shillenberger
nb earlier allusion to radiohead is probably dog whistle to myth of celebrity, and maybe avataristic demon rock and roll?)
...As police arrested Extinction Rebellion protesters on Waterloo Bridge, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke to activists at nearby Hyde Park. “We are now facing an existential crisis, the climate crisis and ecological crisis, which have never been treated as crises before,” said the 16-year-old.
Extinction Rebellion has attracted popular support. It counts the rock band Radiohead as a financial supporter, and after the April protests, a senior Labour Party leader endorsed the group’s tactics.
...
BS pop psych reductionism
619
https:/YYY.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/22/new-york-times-protest-climate-crisis-coverage
no lnx
Arrests at protest over New York Times' 'unacceptable' climate coverage
Protesters block avenue between Port Authority and NYT
Extinction Rebellion calls for better coverage of climate crisis
Amanda Holpuch in New York
@holpuch
A climate change protest orchestrated by the Extinction Rebellion activist group briefly blocked Eighth Avenue in New York on Saturday afternoon, between the Port Authority transit hub and the home of the New York Times.
The New York police department (NYPD) said 70 people were arrested as they called for more effective media coverage of the dangers of climate change, in a dramatic demonstration that saw people stage a die-in in front of the newspaper building and disrupt traffic in midtown Manhattan.
Two demonstrators scaled the front of the Port Authority building, which houses a major bus terminal and subway interchange, to hang a protest banner. Protesters also climbed on to the canopy outside the Times headquarters and unfurled a banner that encouraged the use of the phrase “climate emergency” instead of “climate change”.
One protester, Donna Nicolino, told the Guardian she was ready to be arrested, because “we want the New York Times as well as all the other media to treat climate change as the crisis it is”.
She joined a line of people with arms linked on West 40th Street and Eighth Avenue, blocking the road. The group remained until they were arrested by New York City police officers.
“The lack of coverage of the climate crisis is completely unacceptable,” said Becca Trabin, a member of Extinction Rebellion’s press and fundraising teams. “It’s a public safety crisis on a global scale.”
...
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519 local
, June 9, 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Where: Willow Glen United Methodist Church, 1420 Newport Ave, San Jose
You may have heard about Extinction Rebellion (XR), and the huge success they have had in getting the government’s attention in the U.K. If not, you can read more about their London protests here.
XR is now organizing nonviolent direct actions in the Bay Area and around the U.S., just the sort of actions that Oily Wells campaign organizers and our 350 Silicon Valley partners envision as a follow-up to the March for Fossil Fuel Freedom.
Join us at an organizing meeting with XR SF Bay Area leaders and learn how you can become part of these joint actions over the next several months. Please RSVP and share the Facebook event.
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gave cover to? over 1k arrests
U.K. Labour Leader Corbyn to Call for National Emergency Vote on Climate Change
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ER BA
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-april-22-2019/
alex stephanolous sp april 15 sf march
XR logo
https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/extinction-rebellion-heres-how-disruption-and-arrests-can-bring-social-change/
the conv hensley sp
Extinction Rebellion burst onto everybody’s screens with disruptions and mass arrests across the UK and around the world, in protest against government inaction on climate change. Radical disruptions have been at the heart of Extinction Rebellion’s activism since it was founded in 2018 – from January’s disruption of London Fashion Week, to the infamous naked protest in Parliament – but the scale of the most recent actions has finally succeeded in forcing mainstream news cycles to start giving the politics of climate change the attention it deserves.
One could argue that Extinction Rebellion’s week of action was fortunately timed – the extension of Article 50 to October has created something of a news vacuum while everyone takes a momentary breather from Brexit. Nevertheless, activists would rightly claim that climate change is the bigger looming catastrophe. In October 2018, the UN’s climate agency published grave projections of the enormity of the challenge ahead if we are to limit the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. For both Extinction Rebellion and the Fridays for Future school strike movement, the piecemeal response of nations at the UN’s annual climate change conference two months later made it clear that there is no more time to lose.
The aim, then, is to force the issue. Through their blockades of iconic central London sites, Extinction Rebellion is keeping climate change at the forefront of the public and politicians’ lips, making the seemingly abstract problem facing all of us feel real. And rather than just warning of this climate emergency, it offers a vision of an alternative future, where a Citizens Assembly takes the lead in reducing UK emissions to net zero.
Perhaps inevitably, Extinction Rebellion’s actions have been met with a familiar backlash from some political commentators – witness Adam Boulton’s sneering performance on Sky News, and David Blunkett’s indignant authoritarianism in the Daily Mail. But while activists say they regret the disruption caused to working people, they consider their actions a necessary evil in order to change the conversation.
Older activists will surely point to the impact and legacy of 1999’s Battle of Seattle, when the Global Justice Movement successfully closed down the World Trade Organisation’s annual meeting. Not only was this extremely empowering for those involved, it crucially helped make resistance to a largely abstract neoliberal governance structure seem concrete and real.
Much like the Occupy demonstrations seven years ago, Extinction Rebellion’s latest eye-catching protests have been friendly and open, laden with artistic performances, talks, and human connection. This good-natured spirit has so far meant that the movement has gained significant traction not only on the airwaves, but on the streets too.
Extinction Rebellion’s efforts are aimed at building momentum, and they are based in political science – their website highlights a figure that it takes just 3.5% of a nation’s population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance to topple a dictatorship. In the UK, that’s less than 2.5m people.
Their clear demands and principles give the movement a clarity and focus that the Occupy movement may have lacked, and they are growing week by week – Extinction Rebellion says that 50,000 people have joined the movement since the protests started.
[textalk bouder on cd]
However, contemporary mainstream news cycles are fast and fickle, and the movement will have to act quickly and carefully to maximise use of their new-found public platform.
Danger of diminishing returns
It’s extremely important that the movement’s purpose does not become overshadowed by its tactics. Extinction Rebellion have ransacked the playbook of direct action repertoires – blocking roads, using fake blood, recreating funeral marches, and
. While these have so far been successful in bringing the movement’s name and cause to the fore, using such tactics ad nauseum can quickly lose the public’s imagination and support. This was evident in the Global Justice Movement of the 2000s, as the desire to recreate the euphoria of Seattle resulted in tactical “summit hopping” with diminishing returns.
State agencies also learn quickly how to police repeated mobilisations more ruthlessly and extremely – although Extinction Rebellion’s “trademark” repertoire, the tactical use of mass arrests, so far appears to be combating this threat effectively. Police have powers to disperse protesters, but the sheer number of people now willing to be arrested shifts the balance of power between the public and the state. For example, police have so far been unable to clear any of the four sites in central London, as spates of arrests were closely followed by new wave of protesters arriving to entrench control. The city’s police stations do not have the capacity to hold hundreds of arrested protesters for long periods of time, and court costs will discourage officers from pursuing charges, limiting the punitive power of the state.
At the same time, Extinction Rebellion’s tactics risk fetishising the act of being arrested as a symbol of participants’ commitment to the cause. The movement’s co-founder, Roger Hallam, recently told the BBC that in order to achieve its goal of “getting in the room with government”, it may need to create a law and order crisis on the scale of 1,000 arrests. Such an arbitrary target is problematic, as it may encourage activists to take more risk in pursuit of a goal that is by no means guaranteed.
Even if one is critical of the politics seemingly behind many “aggravated trespass:charges, a criminal record can be extremely costly and discriminating for many younger activists, especially people of colour. This contrasts with the relative risks posed to seasoned activists whose job, lifestyle, or privilege allows them to ride the consequences. It is crucial that Extinction Rebellion fulfils a duty of care to support those who are prepared to put their bodies on the line, but with more than 700 arrestedalready, its an expensive, high-risk game should multiple criminal charges be brought.
But for now, Extinction Rebellion activists will consider recent events as a runaway success. They have gained visibility, traction, and have at least temporarily steered media attention away from Brexit. Most importantly, they have put climate change squarely in the middle of public conversation. Let’s hope it stays there.