I couldn't go to the April Rising in London and sadly missed seeing the gentle people coming together for the first time. It took me a while to find XR Chichester but when I did I was so relieved and delighted. Since the inaugural Heading for Extinction Talk in May 2019 my life seems to have been taken over, as I can see lots of others have too, by generally working towards raising awareness of the climate emergency and swelling our numbers. There's an almost tangible energy surge filling the air. A direction and focus that's full of urgency. Time is slipping through our fingers and nothing can slow it down.
The Rebellion that October served to even more deeply heighten and embed my passion for what we are all trying to do. In the months leading up to October I have had long, quiet moments of introspection and research. I have discovered for myself just how badly we were being deceived and duped by both big business and governments around the world. I had watched the climate crisis get worse and worse over the years but had never really honed down into individual scientist's papers and articles. It was clearly far too inconvenient, if not outright dangerous, for the powerful institutions to let us in on their secrets and to be honest, I question if they had even properly understood just how bad the situation is themselves, at least on government level.
In my view we should be doing everything possible to force the governments to carry out proper, in depth risk assessments on the time frame related to further deterioration of the deep ocean permafrost layers. No one has done this as a comprehensive study taking on board data from international research stations. Have a look at what Dr Peter Wadhams says in this video link. We have to listen to him. He is after all, an expert and has spent his entire academic life studying and observing this particular subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3L0R6LzEUE
For me the October Rebellion was joyful, invigorating, saddening, shocking, funny, exhausting on every level and above all inspiring. I watched as people who didn't know each other stepped up to hold a space and give each other the strength to stand firm. Communities were formed and extended, sometimes in a flash as circumstances called. I still can't quite believe that we took and held Whitehall for as long as we did. So close to Downing Street and yet we stood or sat shoulder to shoulder and refused to be intimidated by the police. If they had been like the Hong Kong police the story might have been different but maybe not.
I have a number of snap shot moments:
The first time a policewoman politely asked me to just stand over there, on the other side of the barricade and being a generally polite and mild mannered person I started to do as she had so reasonably asked, until that is, a small determined young woman appeared at my elbow and whispered..."Don't do it. Stay where you are." I laughed and thanked her and took a few steps back in the direction I'd started to move away from. So easily I had complied. Not the next time though.
Later that same day my daughter joined me. The police had very shoddily refused to let the disabled facilities be unloaded. They were showing that although they were largely tolerant they could be harsh and unnecessarily unfair in their treatment of the more diverse among us. We'd just started, as a group from the South East Region, to put up tents and make ready for the evening. Whitehall was being covered in a patchwork of pop up tents and bigger gazebos brightly hung about with bunting and XR flags and posters. In the distance the hubbub of Trafalgar Square could be heard. Somewhere the drummers were working their magic. Suddenly a snaking line of police men and women were determinedly marching into our midst, grim faced and resolute. They were heading to the gazebos as their first target. A number of them surrounded the bigger of the two nearest to us. The rebels had been laying down carpets and hanging little flags to adorn it's walls. To their distress the police encircled the structure and ordered them out. Then with serious faces each policeman or woman grabbed hold of the nearest part of the structure and looking rather comical and ridiculous they lifted the flimsy tent high above their heads and triumphantly carried it off to the side of the road. They dropped it there leaving one of their number on guard and turned to do the same again.
However as the crowd roared with delight we realised the drummers were coming and all of a sudden they swarmed through our number and as the police surrounded the gazebos the wonderful, deafeningly loud, synchronised beating of the drummers mirrored the positions of the police and made a circle around them. The police faced outwards and stood to attention as the sometimes smiling drummers stood no more than a couple of feet away from them, facing them and lead us all in chanting. Extinction.....Rebellion, Extinction.....Rebellion, Extinction.....Rebellion ....OY to be repeated again and again. One or two of the police were visibly moved. It must have been hard not to be. The rest of the tents stayed where they were that evening. The police had been faced down and so loudly and joyfully. My eyes fill with tears at the memory of how truth will be heard.
Perhaps the most joyful and fun Action for me was swarming with the drummers through the City. This time with my son Ed and our Nikki holding on to the enormous road blocking XR banner. We set off down the tiny. winding lanes flanked by office buildings. Not great sky-scrappers but maybe up to four or five storey sometimes Georgian, Victorian or post-war buildings. Inside we could see the white shirted office employees distracted from their computer screens. We waved and smiled and for the most part they waved and smiled right back at us. The drums again worked their magic and we were loving interrupting business as usual. At every widening of the narrow paths we would hear the sharp penetrating blasts from the whistle of the drummers leader and they would form a circle to launch into the now familiar opportunity to chant again...Extinction.....Rebellion, Extinction.....Rebellion, Extinction.....Rebellion ....OY. Office workers were coming down into the streets, or at least huddle on the steps of their buildings to take photographs and do an occasional little participatory dance along with us. Only one kill joy hurled sticky water out of a third floor window at us. But even that wasn't enough to quell our elation and intention to spread our message to the chant of "Whose streets? Our streets" "What do we want? Climate Justice. When do we want it? Now"and "Power to the people. People got the Power....and "Get up, get down. Leave that oil in the ground" Just fantastic.
So what will 2020 bring. I suspect far more of us putting ourselves on the line but also with perhaps another dimension...a twist that remains to be revealed. But whatever it is we'll be there..EXTINCTION .....REBELLION!
