Britain has been a bit shit of late. We have propelled ourselves into a shitstorm that has rendered us both divided & deflated. And yet, amidst all of the carnage of Referendumitis (can’t even bear to write the B word anymore) we have somehow led the way in a global uprising to rise up against the governments of this world and demand they actually do something about this threat, not just to our way of life, but to life itself.
The Extinction Rebellion, which was born in the U.K, has succeeded where pretty much every other avenue had failed before. It has managed to get the climate crisis to the top of the topic agenda and inspire people from all over the world to no longer sit back and accept the false promises their elected reps have been dishing out with no genuine intention to carry any of it out.
The rebellion returned at a time when there is little cause for optimism, both in this country and globally. And yet, when you are part of it, and you see how strong people can be when they join forces, how energising & empowering it is to have a collective purpose, it creates that most inspiring and positive feeling on Earth: hope. And without it we have nothing.
A lot of the criticism of the XR is that they are comprised mostly of white privileged middle class people and yet all I have seen is that it is now made up of people from all over the world, who are now united in a single purpose which dwarfs their tribal origins. Differences have been put aside in acknowledgement of the severity of the problem and we are starting to see that the climate crisis is rapidly becoming the common enemy the human race needed to create a sense of unity, And we will desperately need it if we are going to have any chance of successfully dealing with the far reaching ramifications of climate breakdown.
If you still don’t feel you associate with the type of people in the XR then the easiest way is to join and to get people like you to join and that will solve that problem. Then eventually it will comprise of everyone and we will have sufficient strength in numbers to take on the government’s failure to provide concrete actions to drastically reduce our ever-increasing emissions and to demand they do what is required, not just what they think they can get away with. We also need to find new leaders, ones that will lead the way, not get in the way.
The rebellion is now drawing to a close in this country but this is not the end, this is still just the very beginning of this fight. The pictures above were taken at Buckingham palace yesterday when I was with the XR Grandparents who were protesting outside the gates. As I was there I found out that the police had declared any protest or congregation of any kind to do with the XR was now unlawful which, ironically, in itself is utterly unlawful, as it is a direct breach of our human rights to peacefully protest.
I stood their with the older generation, out in force for the sake of their grandkids and future generations and they clearly had no intention of giving up and so to make criminals of these people and everyone else involved is just a waste of time and resources which could be better spent tackling the problem they are ignoring. Stop shooting the messengers and start listening to the message: this is NOT going away. The powers that be need to recognise that we are not the enemy. Inaction is.