620 square miles is a lot. Is it just the dark blue (and white) bit?
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I wonder if George Monbiot managed to get arrested…
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What tf does “linked to” mean? This can and will be stretched like rubber band…
This would kill any Fridays for Future as well, as they could always argue some “linkage” be it by attendees, organisers, using the same communication channel, operating in the same virtual ‘communities’.
Hail Cancelled Sutler…
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However, as this morning’s splinter action at Canning Town station shows, disrupting public transport is a)Counter to the movement’s message an b)Guaranteed to antagonise the public (whose sympathies would otherwise be quite aligned)
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The blue bits are the London Boroughs, which are Met Police territory. The white bit is the (ancient, semi-feudal) City of London with its own police force. You can tell if they’re CoL cops if they have red and white checks on their uniform.
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Brexit is, Brexit was, Brexit shall be… We have always been at Brexit with Eurasia.
@deltaecho I’m always struck by the way that stabproof vests don’t cover the guts and groin.
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Despite this setback, XR is on the right track
Because… democracy, rule of law is no longer applicable.
Whether it’s banning public protest, starting an illegal foreign invasion, storming an embassy to arrest a journalist, or covert, or corrupt fundraising to rig a referendum…
… these days, the power brokers are used to making (and breaking) their own laws, without accountability, without due process, and without the will of the electorate.
Ex tobacco-industry lobbyist, Priti Patel, is the current Home Secretary, and is the person who has the ultimate say about how to police public protests. She is typical of the self-serving, neo-liberal attitude that climate change is something we can gloss over, and stamp down.
But I think she is about to find out she’s on the wrong side of history.
Climate change is not going to go away. Neither is XR.
Mass civil disobedience is the only viable means of making change. And I’ve got the feeling that we’re witnessing only the very beginnings of a wider public acknowledgement that this type of protest is the only way we’re going to bring about meaningful change.
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It’s me.
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Being a naturalist has become so incredibly hard lately—since about 15 years or so, but all the more so these days.
It’s not just people we’re out to protect. It’s everything. It’s the Great Barrier Reef: sure, it’s a great breakwater for ocean waves, which is why I assume Australians found the climate there tolerable (maybe not so much now but let’s move on). And forests might not supply the bulk of oxygen we breathe, and they make super carbon sinks, but burning them is threatening species we haven’t had time to study.
Diversity isn’t just interesting, it’s crucial. We owe our very existence to it’s existence. The billions of humans it supports are just a good start.
It kind of blows my mind that we’re not good at this yet.
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Agree 100%.
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Yup.
It’s interesting to compare this to the disobedience tactics of the suffragettes or civil rights activists in the 60s, we look back on those as brave and noble acts for a just cause. I hope those people dragging the activists to the floor and kicking them in the head shouting “i have to feed my kids” look back on it with utter shame and embarrassment when they have to explain to their kids what they did.
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You are complying already with the most green solution that makes sense to you that you can and taking public transportation to get to work to pay the taxes that fuel the nation you live in.
XR berates you and gets between you and being able to provide for your family. They do it not by displaying the scientific evidence, they do it with college-sophomore performance art and interpretive dance, making sure you get the message that not only are you personally destroying the earth, you are nekulturny chavs into the bargain.
They are lucky they have gotten off uninjured so far.
My in-laws live deep in what’s left of coal country. Lots of miners and ex-miners there and they don’t ride the tube, they drive Rams and F-150s. I wonder if XR would have the guts to block some roads down there.
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I’d say they are berating the system that has brought us to where we are, the system in thrall to the oil industry and successive governments not doing nearly enough for decades to stop this. Time is up so a polite little gathering on parliament square just isn’t gonna cut it.
They have extensive scientific evidence to back up what they’re saying.
ETA: But more than this actually, they have spokespeople who know their shit.
Really? You’re going with that? Even though they quite clearly haven’t gotten off uninjured it sounds like the apologists for violence against civil rights activists or those disruptive women wanting the vote - ‘well, they got what they deserved’.
Very likely actually, considering they have 652 upcoming events worldwide in 56 countries.
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According to this (no idea how they conduct the ballot or who gets to vote), most of XR London voted against action on the Tube.
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It’s always a useful exercise to keep the script, but play a different character.
Suppose you were on the tube going to work, or school, or home, or a medical appointment, and the train you were on came to a screeching and indefinite halt due to action by pro-Brexit Farage-worshiping protesters.
Would this make you
(1) more likely to support Brexit
(2) less likely to support Brexit
(3) not change your opinion even a little
Very glad to hear this.
Oh come on, that’s a straw man argument and you know it. You can substitute any proposition you like but the fact is we’re not in that situation, we’re in this one.
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I refuse to accept the comparison.
Civil rights activists in the '60s were beaten to death (the photos of Emmett Till are available online), shot to death, or firebombed to death. In places where the police and courts were completely on the side of their killers.
Suffragettes nearly died of hunger strikes in prison or were brutally force fed by prison guards. Emily Davison threw herself to her death under the hooves of race horses to protest the treatment of women.
In places where the police and courts were completely on the other side.
One thing the civil rights workers and suffragettes did not do was put on silly skits that might earn a C+ in a performance art seminar. They were conservatively dressed, well spoken and determinedly serious. They knew the value of not being seen by others as goofballs.
By comparison, the coddled cadres of XR apparently fully expect the police to protect them and the courts to support them. My guess is that if they faced the kind of opposition that the freedom riders of the 1960’s did, they would evaporate in seconds, leaving no trace except for a few specks of face paint drifting to the ground.
I’ve heard that argument before. “The situation is so bad that we must do everything, no matter how utterly stupid or unproductive any given thing may be.” Almost three quarters of the XR membership disagree according to @tekna2007’s post above. I wish we could get some of them here to comment.
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Yeah, he did. Was an article about it in the Graun, iirc.
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