MARBLE ARCH – THIS IS AN EMERGENCY
DAY 3 is underway for the Extinction Rebellion’s shutdown of London. They have successfully held their blockades at their five designated points: (oxford circus, marble arch, piccadilly circus, parliament square and waterloo bridge). As mentioned yesterday each one represents a different aspect of the climate situation and their demands. All the shots featured are from the base at Marble Arch which is where most people have camped out. Some of the Earth marchers walked from Lands End and left up to 5 weeks ago to get to London in time for the protest. And there are people here from all over the country. People who have put everything on hold to do this. To give up their lives for as long as it takes for the Government to acknowledge the situation and respond accordingly. And these people are just regular folk. Lots of ordinary families who are not born activists, they just don’t know what else to do.
I don’t think I have ever been part of something that had so much goodwill and positivity and a sense of community which is what we will all need if we want to go forward as a species. There was an incredible atmosphere up at Marble Arch with music, meditations, yoga sessions, speeches and even piano recitals powered by kids on dynamo bikes. There is no aggression, no violent intent, no negativity despite the despair felt with the desperate lack of action by anyone in power. There have been dismissals of this movement as a hippy affair but there is not one type here. The only thing that unites them is that these are just people who understand that this Earth was not built for us. We just live on it and we need to take on board that if we don’t live in harmony with it we will not make it. This is not to protect Nature. We are nature. We are protecting our own compatibility within it. This is not a given. And we are in very grave danger of losing it if we continue to ignore the destabilisation we are causing.
Marble Arch has been taken up under the banner of “This is an emergency” because that is exactly what it is. It doesn’t feel like one and it definitely isn’t being tackled like one but it mostly certainly is and the sooner we start treating it like one the sooner we can intiate the drastic changes that are required for the human race to survive. If you think this is overly dramatic read the mountain of scientific evidence which shows that the perfect goldilocks zone we currently live in where this planet’s temperature is suitable for humans to live in and for us to grow our food and to have drinking water is rapidly altering to shunt the equilibrium that allows us the stability to exist.
If you have been affected by the shutdown and consider it an inconvenience you must understand that this is last resort tactics and not what anyone wanted to do. There is just no alternative left. Farhana Yamin, one of the most respected climate change lawyers in the world, was arrested yesterday at 3pm at Shell HQ. She had glued her hands to the floor. Her reason for taking direct action? “Because writing books wasn’t working”.
And as Owen Jones tweeted yesterday: “If you think #ExtinctionRebellion causes outrageous inconvenience, boy are you in for a shock when climate chaos envelops the planet!”
If you are in London, come down to any of the blockades and see what is going on and you will see these people are not different to you in anyway. They are you. And you are them. And we all need to recognise we are one and the same and this sense of solidarity and belonging amongst us is what is so vital so that we can rise up together to demand action and to defeat this problem which will affect every person on the planet bar none.