The Impossible Rebellion has been happening in London since August 23rd and so far at least 12 local rebels have taken part.
Throughout the week rebels took on various roles of arrestee support and outreach and of course tried to swell the numbers on various occupations and marches such as to the city financial district, Smithfield Market and the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy. The main thrust of the protest is to get the government to stop investing in fossil fuels and start investing in alternative energy sources. There were great road blocks at strategic points to maximise interruption of business as usual. Coverage in the media was evident with some sympathetic articles written in the Guardian and elsewhere.
Midway through the Rebellion, inspired by another rebel from home, I joined the chat group for arrestee support. It was the end of the day of ‘Imagine the Impossible’ at the Science Museum (where I’d spent the afternoon speaking to the public from my ‘Crisis Talks’ table and, as I’d left, a road blockade had been forming nearby) and the action during the evening service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Police stations in various parts of London were starting to ‘go live’ as the St. Paul’s rebels and those who were in the road blockade started to be taken into custody. The strong ethos of care for each other within XR means that once a station is ‘live’ the aim is to ensure there is support there until all rebels at that station are released from custody. Rebels wait (if possible at all exits from the station) with snacks and drinks, and emotional and practical support with which to help those newly released from police cells.
Following on from our success at Art in the Park we were out on the streets again outside Leamington Town Hall trying to engage the public in the Climate Emergency debate by highlighting the dire findings of the IPPC report. This action will be on the 2nd Saturday of each month, so the next one is on 11th September. All are welcome to take part.
For the first time since the lockdown ended, XRWD delivered an incredible event in a public space. The basic concept was to have a “Parade Against Extinction” around Jephson Gardens, with rebels carrying placards highlighting the plight of endangered species in the U.K. and the world, and accompanied by art work produced by adults and children.
On Saturday 1st May, members of XR Warwick District, along with people from a wide range of local organisations (including Keep Our NHS Public, Justice for Palestinians, Warwickshire National Education Union and Socialist Appeal), as well as youth climate strikers and others, formed a physically distanced protest of around 100 people to oppose the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill that has recently had its second reading in Parliament.
2021 is a critical year for our planet. Time is running out and we need to explode out of lockdown with renewed energy. We also need to respond to the ways in which the world around us has changed.
This new strategy, called 'Do or Die', is the result of a bold experiment.
We have understood the science of the climate crisis for over 30 years. The first IPCC report, where the world’s scientific community set out the scale of the problem, came out in 1990. But our governments chose not to act then, and still fail us today.
It is from that failure that protest movements like XR have sprung, and scientists have played a generous role in supporting our rebellion and offering us expertise. But, though integrated with our movement, they have tended to stay away from direct action.
Between November 2020 and February 2021, 30 local residents, selected by a process called sortition to give a group that was representative for the district, met to learn about the climate crisis from experts. After the 10 sessions, the participants decided which actions should be a priority in Warwick District and presented these as a recommendation to the District Council (which declared a climate emergency in 2019).
The UK Rebellion Of One team has taken the difficult decision to move our action date to 1st May.
While this may be disappointing and frustrating news to some, we are hearing many rebel voices across the UK who think a delay could make the action more powerful.
Back in the summer of 2019, a small group of UK rebels felt something was missing from the exciting wave of climate activism that XR had ushered into the world. Our first International Rebellion had pushed the climate emergency into popular culture, and we were busy linking the climate crisis with other systems of human oppression - the crises of Capitalism, and Colonialism, and the Patriarchy. But one oppressive ideology was not being mentioned. Speciesism - the belief that one species of animal can be morally superior to and so dominate another.
XR UK now has its own communications setup called The Hub bringing together all sorts of resources including Rebellion Academy, Rebel Toolkit, Forums and Mattermost.
Mattermost is XR's own chat platform with groups/channels at local, regional and national level. We have set up our own XRWD channel.
XRWD is taking part in the UK-wide campaign on Friday 26th March to raise the profile of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill amongst MPs. This is the date when the Bill was due to have its second reading, however Friday sittings in Parliament have been cancelled until after Easter due to the pandemic so we need to keep it in the public eye.