Over 1000 arrests have already been made at the latest Extinction Rebellion shutdown of London. Everyone in these shots has been or is willing to be arrested for the cause. The cause is simply to get the government to act accordingly to their own self-declared climate emergency, the emergency that we and everyone on this planet is now facing. ‘They’ (which can only include anyone who has a vested interest in preventing action) say that the XR are being alarmist but they are simply the only ones who are responding appropriately to what the 100% corroborated scientific research is telling them.
What is alarming is not that people are acting on their fears and anxieties but that our politicians are not responding to what they are being told. They have stopped listening to the ‘experts’. But why? They’re not idiots. They must be fully aware of the implications of their inaction. They know what will happen if they don’t do anything and yet still they shunt it. And so that is why it is left to normal people who have realised that we cannot rely on them to do the right thing. We must continue to exert pressure on them and show them that the ‘will of the people’ is to tackle this mutha of all problems. Don’t say you’re on it, don’t pay lip service to it like so many other perceived performance policies, actually fucking do it.. There is no time left to fanny around any further.
The people who have joined the XR are just ordinary law abiding citizens of this country. They are not trouble makers. They are not part of the criminal underworld. Most of them have never done anything like this in their lives. Do you think they wanted to put themselves in this position? Do you think they wanted to bolt and glue themselves to the ground so that they can sleep on the streets? Do you think they wanted to risk a criminal record? Look at the people in these pictures. Kids. Parents. Grannies and Grandads. Disabled people in wheelchairs surrounded by police like they were dangerous criminals. Do they look like wrong’uns? No, they are your friends, your family, your neighbours. They are you.
They just feel they have no other choice. Its this or nothing. And to simply do nothing when their children and grandchildren are petrified of what is to come? How can they? How can they stand back and allow this level of irresponsibility from their government who continue to ignore everything they are being told? These people have resorted to civil disobedience because it is the only thing that is left that might generate a response from our elected representatives. Everything else has been tried and everything else has failed.
And so, it is very easy for people to distance themselves from these activists who are sacrificing so much with dismissive (and inaccurate) generalisations about who they are or where they are from or what they are doing but this is so that they can justify their own inaction.
I have been with these protestors and they all come across as the most decent down to earth caring people you could ever meet. But they are afraid of what is to come based on the evidence presented to them and so they act. They refuse to stand by idly as we head ever closer to a much grimmer future, which can be avoided if we just accept the facts and accept the need to alter the way we live. None of us want to but there is no choice. There is no other option. And you can choose to not believe the science, to not take the warnings seriously, to think that life can just carry on as normal, but it can’t. And this is going to happen regardless of whether you accept that or not.