Tube protest was a mistake, admit leading Extinction Rebellion members

[ray245]

Senior figures in Extinction Rebellion (XR) admit it was a mistake to target London’s public transport network at rush hour, a move that has split opinion within the movement. Future strategy is now being reassessed, they say.

At the end of the two-week global “uprising”, members of the movement’s political circle announced that it needed to learn from the angry scenes at Canning Town tube station last Thursday when commuters dragged protesters from the roof of an underground train and set upon them. Eight XR activists were arrested during the disruption, joining a total of 1,768 held during the fortnight of demonstrations.

British Transport Police confirmed it was also investigating and looking to acquire evidence against a number of commuters who appeared to embark on a vigilante-style attack on one of the Canning Town protesters.

Sarah Lunnon, a member of XR’s political circle, said: “There is absolutely no shrinking away from the fact that we have got to learn from what happened around the Tube, most especially within our own internal decision making.

“Obviously we did not get that right. People have given up their jobs to join XR, for them to be so upset and so dismayed by the action is an absolute pointer to us that we have to look again at how we make those decisions.”

Among the provisional plans is a move away from the fortnight of disruption that is scheduled to take place twice a year. Instead the movement will look at how to build a high-profile platform for experts on subjects such as food security to try to shape global debate on the climate emergency.

The two-week action has also seen criticism of policing tactics after officers implemented a London-wide ban on the protests last week. New reports yesterday suggest that the government and police have already discussed strengthening public order laws to allow a tougher crackdown on future XR demonstrations.

Despite the controversy over some XR tactics, many believe large-scale disruption remains effective in applying pressure on the government to tackle the climate emergency.

Lunnon said: “There is a really fine line for XR and it is something we are having to learn. Nobody has launched a peaceful rebellion against a government before in this country. But we do have to consider how the rebellion is going to move forward.” Many also feel the XR campaign has been successful at drawing attention to the climate emergency with analysis of the “uprising” indicating that the movement was mentioned more than 70,000 times in online media reports. Of these, 43.5% of online coverage was in the UK followed by 15.2% from Germany, 14.6 % in Australia and 12.1% in the US.

The campaign drew 30,000 activists to London including Ben Atkinson, a 43-year-old tree surgeon from Rydal in Cumbria, who scaled Big Ben’s tower on Friday and unfurled banners calling for action on climate change.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -a-mistake


This is in part why I feel rather frustrated with protest movements like this, because action for its own sake without a careful consideration of backlash can easily undermine the credibility of the movement. XR has an image problem of being too white and middle-class, and if what they are doing is to alienate people of colour and the working class, it risk jeopardising the entire movement.

In part, the fact that this movement has been largely driven by the white middle-class in the UK and the lack of diversity as a result has led to incidents like this. XR's target audience needs to be more than the white-middle class, and ensure their message could resonate with people from other socio-economic groups.

[madd0ct0r]

Did you post the wrong article? Im not seeing the link between "tube protest was a mistake" and "xr are too white and midfle class"

[K. A. Pital]

I don’t see XR being white and middle class.

White „middle“ class is going full steam ahead (there is no such thing as as middle class; it is either highly-paid techies who are bourgeois to the core or actual small bourgeois, who are wishing to make more profits at the expense of large capital, but can’t).

You are frustrated because you’re not a part of any movement and you don’t realize how hard it is to make a protest matter under capitalism, where it can easily be muffled and drowned out at the whim of the media.

One mistake doesn’t mean there are actually any of the problems you are talking about. The right way would be to disrupt traffic fare collection, thereby earning the sympathies of working class people, but that may well come soon.

[ray245]

Did you post the wrong article? Im not seeing the link between "tube protest was a mistake" and "xr are too white and midfle class"

That's the XR is too white article.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -diversity

[ray245]

You are frustrated because you’re not a part of any movement and you don’t realize how hard it is to make a protest matter under capitalism, where it can easily be muffled and drowned out at the whim of the media.

I know how hard it is to get anything heard, but it is also easy for the media to portray any protest as a nuisance at best or as a riot at worst. What I hope for is people to be more calculated in understanding which sort of protest can achieve a positive response and what sort of protest might lose support, especially from the working class.

One mistake doesn’t mean there are actually any of the problems you are talking about. The right way would be to disrupt traffic fare collection, thereby earning the sympathies of working class people, but that may well come soon.

XR in the UK has been seen as lacking in diversity, and the recent train protest has led to people framing it as a case of white-middle class ( with the benefit of time, wealth and relatively lack of consequences from being arrested due to civil disobedience) vs the non-white working class who don't have the time and money to take leave from work, and who will suffer heavy consequences of having been arrested.

[Broomstick]

You are frustrated because you’re not a part of any movement and you don’t realize how hard it is to make a protest matter under capitalism, where it can easily be muffled and drowned out at the whim of the media.

Riiiiiiight.... because protest is so easy under any other system...

It's not hard because of the economic structure or government system, it's hard because the average person is concerned, nay, consumed by the day-to-day struggles involved in putting a roof overhead and food on the table whether that involves individual struggle or collective struggle. It's to rock them out of their complacency to care about meta-issues, no matter how important those meta-issues are.

The tired, downtrodden working classes coming home tired and hungry tend not to respond positively to having their transport to food and rest disrupted.

[K. A. Pital]

I was talking not about the protest itself, but about getting it to be noticed. It is hard and requires bold thinking; sometimes an idea may fall flat (transport disruption), but it just means one needs better ideas on how to reach the goals.

[ray245]

I was talking not about the protest itself, but about getting it to be noticed. It is hard and requires bold thinking; sometimes an idea may fall flat (transport disruption), but it just means one needs better ideas on how to reach the goals.

In order to have better ideas, the movement needs to be diverse and actually take in the view of many people from non-middle class background. Yes, you can discuss the semantics of who is working class and who isn't, but in general there is a difference between people who don't have to worry about losing their jobs for being 5 minutes late and be unemployed for a long time and those that do.

[Vendetta]

I was talking not about the protest itself, but about getting it to be noticed. It is hard and requires bold thinking; sometimes an idea may fall flat (transport disruption), but it just means one needs better ideas on how to reach the goals.

Part of the point made is that the Extinction Rebellion is organised in a way that tends to prevent it getting better ideas, because it has a narrow range of perspectives.

Canning Town is one of the poorest boroughs of London and many of the people trying to catch that tube would be travelling to work zero-hours contracts at which lateness could simply have them be given no more work.

A movement which had a wide range of people from different backgrounds would not have produced the idea "disrupt the poor and vulnerably employed" because it would have been discarded when it was raised as obviously counterproductive.

[ray245]

Any climate protest movement that fails to effectively offer a solution that can help those who are poor and vulnerable is doomed to failure imo. Pushing for climate change should not be a badge of honour for someone who is of the middle-class, or someone who is well on their way to becoming middle-class.

[Starglider]

The injection/manufacture of strident cries for 'more intersectionality' usually makes me smile. It's almost the universal antibiotic against libleft nonsense: a cheap, easy, general-purpose shot that is suprisingly effective at stalling and degrading all kinds of social 'movements' (although of course with modern media and social media the disparity between what the public thinks are a significant social movements and the movements that are actually making a difference to geopolitics is usually wide).

In this case though it's bitersweet, because this is a genuine problem that does need more political action. The protestors were idiots for targetting one of the most sustainable forms of transport in one of the highest population density areas (density = good according to the current wave of socioarchitectulectuals) used by the relatively (locale-adjusted) undercompensated. Given the scale and urgency of the issue though, I'd rather see relevant movements get constructive criticism and become effective rather than the usual spectrum of disruption & co-option efforts. In particular the intersectionality trick of tying disparate groups together with false equivalence so they waste time in tug of war is a bad idea here, because a side effect is even more stupidity leaking in from the bottomless well which is the SJW twittergentsia.

[ray245]

The injection/manufacture of strident cries for 'more intersectionality' usually makes me smile. It's almost the universal antibiotic against libleft nonsense: a cheap, easy, general-purpose shot that is suprisingly effective at stalling and degrading all kinds of social 'movements' (although of course with modern media and social media the disparity between what the public thinks are a significant social movements and the movements that are actually making a difference to geopolitics is usually wide).

In this case though it's bitersweet, because this is a genuine problem that does need more political action. The protestors were idiots for targetting one of the most sustainable forms of transport in one of the highest population density areas (density = good according to the current wave of socioarchitectulectuals) used by the relatively (locale-adjusted) undercompensated. Given the scale and urgency of the issue though, I'd rather see relevant movements get constructive criticism and become effective rather than the usual spectrum of disruption & co-option efforts. In particular the intersectionality trick of tying disparate groups together with false equivalence so they waste time in tug of war is a bad idea here, because a side effect is even more stupidity leaking in from the bottomless well which is the SJW twittergentsia.

The problem is there is no effective and clear leadership of such movement. Mass movement might make some topics to people's attention, but without a clear strategy it will just be useless in making effective change at the end of the day.

For issues like climate change, you need to make sure the working-class and those who are well-off on board and willing to embrace solutions. Otherwise there is no immediate political or financial incentive for those in power to really do anything. Otherwise all you get is a bunch of celebs saying we need to do something about climate change while taking private jets to a climate change meeting.

[K. A. Pital]

The well-off will not be “onboard” no matter what you do. Why should be?

They’re buying up NZ properties and making their investments “climate-change proof”.

Don’t deal with the devil!

[ray245]

The well-off will not be “onboard” no matter what you do. Why should be?

They’re buying up NZ properties and making their investments “climate-change proof”.

Don’t deal with the devil!

And how successful has it been in not dealing with the well-off regarding climate change?

[K. A. Pital]

How successful has it been dealing with them? Not at all. Mark Carney just laid out that investments are aimed at catastrophic warming (+3,7 or +4 C) with a potential 9-meter sea level rise. The Paris “agreement” is just a fig leaf and dead and buried.

You think deals with the rich are possible?

[Solauren]

Any climate protest movement that fails to effectively offer a solution that can help those who are poor and vulnerable is doomed to failure imo.

Correction: Any climate protest that fails to provide a solution that includes a way for people to make money off of is going to fail.

[Proletarian]

You are frustrated because you’re not a part of any movement and you don’t realize how hard it is to make a protest matter under capitalism,

When you protest under Capital you are always protesting to someone. You are implicitly not only acknowledging class relations but appealing to them.

This explains, in part, the Bordigist antipathy towards activism.

https://libcom.org/library/activism-amadeo-bordiga

Activism always claims to possess the correct understanding of the circumstances of political struggle, and that it is “equal to the situation”, but it is incapable of engaging in a realistic evaluation of the relations of force, enormously exaggerating the possibilities of the subjective factors of the class struggle.

...

Those who, even if they are few in number and far removed from the limelight of “grand politics”, carry out a labor of Marxist interpretation of these real phenomena and a labor of confirmation of Marxist predictions (and it seems to us that there has been no serious examination of these problems outside of the fundamental positions advocated in our Prometeo, and especially in the study, “Property and Capital”), are nonetheless assuredly performing a revolutionary task, because they are establishing from this point on the itinerary and the starting point of the proletarian revolution.

The resumption of the revolutionary movement does not require, for its realization, the crisis of the capitalist system as a potential eventuality; the crisis in the capitalist mode of production is already a reality, the bourgeoisie has experienced all the possible stages of its historical career, State Capitalism and imperialism mark the extreme limits of its evolution, but the fundamental contradictions of the system persist and are becoming more acute. The crisis of capitalism has not been transformed into the revolutionary crisis of society, into a revolutionary class war, and the counterrevolution is still triumphant even though capitalist chaos gets worse, because the workers movement is still crushed under the weight of the defeats it suffered over the last thirty years due to the strategic errors committed by the communist parties of the Third International, errors that have led the proletariat to look upon the weapons of the counterrevolution as its own weapons.

[Proletarian]

This is a point which Marx returns to time and again, in e.g. the Paris Manuscripts.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /needs.htm

When communist artisans associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need – the need for society – and what appears as a means becomes an end. In this practical process the most splendid results are to be observed whenever French socialist workers are seen together. Such things as smoking, drinking, eating, etc., are no longer means of contact or means that bring them together. Association, society and conversation, which again has association as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies.

Contrast this with his conception of what we currently term 'activists'.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... 01a.htm#a1

The first phase of the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie is marked by a sectarian movement. That is logical at a time when the proletariat has not yet developed sufficiently to act as a class. Certain thinkers criticize social antagonisms and suggest fantastic solutions thereof, which the mass of workers is left to accept, preach, and put into practice. The sects formed by these initiators are abstentionist by their very nature — i.e., alien to all real action, politics, strikes, coalitions, or, in a word, to any united movement. The mass of the proletariat always remains indifferent or even hostile to their propaganda. The Paris and Lyon workers did not want the St.-Simonists, the Fourierists, the Icarians, any more than the Chartists and the English trade unionists wanted the Owenites. These sects act as levers of the movement in the beginning, but become an obstruction as soon as the movement outgrows them; after which they became reactionary.

[Xisiqomelir]

This is like those vegan nuts trying to keep the hungry Dane (?) out of the Burger King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-Ld4GmZPiY