To use an already overused analogy, if your house is on fire and your baby is inside, you don’t lobby the local fire department to improve its response time, you (and i use this word carefully) fucking panic.
You do whatever you can to get anyone who will listen to stop what they’re doing and help. That’s literally where we are, and if you don’t think that’s a reasonable response, then you don’t understand the seriousness of the problem.
Suppose you were a colonial merchant whose tea shipment was interrupted by a bunch of ruffians in Boston harbor.
Suppose you were a resident of Manhattan in 1911 whose commute was disrupted by 80,000 protesters marching down Fifth Avenue in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.
Suppose you were a working-class East Berliner in the 1980s whose weekly schedule was thrown into chaos by the Monday presentations.
The point of public protest isn’t to avoid disrupting anyone’s lives. The point is to force people to pay attention to an issue they might otherwise choose to ignore.
If the government and big business were willing to listen to reason then this would have been sorted out 30 years ago. They weren’t, so now we have to take more drastic measures.
This is just crazy on everyone’s part here.
Turning off WiFi won’t do much, as few parts of the underground have any signal, and any organisation will have gone on well before protesters are in the stations.
Also, this is a terribly targeted protest. If you care about the climate, you should be targeting London’s Airports, or its streets clogged with single passenger vehicles, rather than blocking the most environmentally friendly mode of transit that most people use.
I think the point is to cause economic chaos, if the people in power won’t listen to reason then maybe they will pay attention to the money they think they are losing.
Sorry, the correct response is to panic and do something that won’t make any difference, while damaging your case in the eyes of people placed to make decisions?
There is more than one way to skin a cat, but if I question the one you’ve gone with (and looking at the success rate of British protests over the last twenty years isn’t effective) I’m acting superior, while condescending to me that “you don’t understand how serious the problem is”. Cheers.
Jesus wept. We’re on the same side, but you’ve managed to make me feel like dipping tyres into petrol and winging them into the sea.
The problem is you’re telling everyone what they should be doing. I want to know what you’re doing? Have you joined XR to influence policy? Do you have any quantifiable result for your lobbying? These are serious questions, because right now I’ve no idea what we should be doing and I desperately hope this time things will be different.
I had no intention of being snarky at you personally, so i apologise. I’m exasperated at the lack of progress and the desperation of our situation.
Hint: not this. This just alienates people who otherwise might agree.
A key part of your statement is “anyone who will listen”. Confronted by this asshattery, I will not listen. So far as I’m concerned, those involved have thrown away their right to be heard.
FTFY
And likening these fuckwits to the civil rights movement is kind of offensive.
In the long view, stopping and eventually reversing the effects of climate change is an outgrowth of the civil rights movement. The first people to be harmed by climate change are the most vulnerable - POC.
