To our friends from XR

In recent years there has been an explo­sion of activ­i­ty in the cli­mate move­ment in the UK. It’s inspir­ing to see so many deter­mined to take action on cli­mate change and com­mit­ting them­selves to fierce­ly defend­ing nature. Extinc­tion Rebel­lion (XR) in par­tic­u­lar has brought in thou­sands of new peo­ple, shift­ed pub­lic opin­ion, and reignit­ed a move­ment. There has also been excit­ing move­ment with­in XR, increas­ing­ly tar­get­ing those in the cor­po­rate media and fos­sil indus­tries caus­ing the prob­lem rather than just creat­ing pub­lic dis­rup­tion.
But it seems that some impor­tant lessons from the past have been for­got­ten. We know some of you are think­ing and talk­ing about these things already and we hope what we’ve writ­ten is received as it is intend­ed, as some con­sid­ered reflec­tions from crit­i­cal friends:

We are not pawns for a personality cult

Cli­mate Change is urgent, and we need to take action now, but we also need to be in it for the long haul. Treat­ing peo­ple as dis­pos­able — get­ting arrest­ed for the sake of get­ting arrest­ed — and ignor­ing the threats of burnout means peo­ple will drop out and feel dis­card­ed. This is already hap­pen­ing. We want to build an inclu­sive, diverse, car­ing move­ment that treats every­one as valu­able, not for­got­ten once they have served their pur­pose in a strat­e­gy they have lit­tle say in. Non-hier­achi­cal organ­is­ing means mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion for all, not unac­count­able lead­ers and unad­dressed invis­i­ble hier­ar­chies.   

FTP!

Cops are not your friends. The police defend the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that are destroy­ing the plan­et’s life sup­port sys­tems. Pris­ons and police are part of the prob­lem, not the solu­tion. They enforce a sys­tem that is eco­ci­dal and vio­lent in nature; they defend the right to degrade, pol­lute, con­trol, and exploit humans and nature. They are inher­ent­ly racist and sex­ist. They need to be abol­ished. These aren’t impos­si­ble dreams. Black fem­i­nists have long led the fight for abo­li­tion, and when the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment erupt­ed around the world, sud­den­ly peo­ple were open­ly dis­cussing police and prison abo­li­tion in the main­stream media.

It’s ALL about politics

Pol­i­tics isn’t about politi­cians and par­lia­ment, it’s about peo­ple try­ing to cre­ate the soci­ety they believe in. Cli­mate change is not ‘beyond pol­i­tics’, tak­ing action on cli­mate change is fun­da­men­tal­ly polit­i­cal. Issues such as race and class aren’t annoy­ing obsta­cles to a big­ger move­ment, they are essen­tial to build­ing effec­tive, endur­ing change. The dom­i­na­tion of humans and the dom­i­na­tion of nature are intrin­si­cal­ly linked, and we can’t end one while the oth­er con­tin­ues. De-politi­cis­ng cli­mate change not only ignores cap­i­tal­ism and oth­er root caus­es, it also means XR will con­tin­ue to be dom­i­nat­ed by white mid­dle class ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ists’.

Diversity of tactics

Civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is just one of many tac­tics, and not the only way to take action. You don’t have to put your­selves in the hands of the state. Eco­log­i­cal direct action is about doing it your­self, attack­ing those destroy­ing nature and inspir­ing oth­ers to fol­low suit, not lob­by­ing gov­ern­ment to act on your behalf. Polit­i­cal vio­lence should nev­er be resort­ed to light­ly, but dog­mat­ic paci­fi­cism pro­tects the state, the rich and the pow­er­ful. His­tor­i­cal strug­gles against slav­ery, feu­dal­ism, colo­nial­ism, patri­archy and fas­cism all involved vio­lence. Riots, revolts and rebel­lion against oppres­sion have their place and should be cel­e­brat­ed not reviled. Preach­ing non-vio­lence also ignores how the very idea of ‘vio­lence’ is used to repress and paci­fy resis­tance, and leads to self-polic­ing and author­i­tar­i­an­ism with­in our move­ments. A diver­si­ty of tac­tics means dif­fer­ent approach­es to work­ing togeth­er and rein­forc­ing each oth­er. In this way we can build towards rev­o­lu­tion­ary change.

Love and rage

Self-reflec­tion and crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion isn’t infight­ing and fac­tion­al­ism, it’s how to build strong, pow­er­ful move­ments that can bring about the unprecedent­ed changes cli­mate change requires. We’re not writ­ing these words to show our­selves as ‘more rad­i­cal than thou’ and we know that every­one goes through their own polit­i­cal jour­ney in life. But if any of what we’ve writ­ten speaks to you, come and talk to us, lets work out where we go next.
We’re ready. Instead of griev­ing for a dying plan­et, it’s time to step up and fight, for peo­ple and nature, with love and rage.
Your friends from the Earth­First! gath­er­ing col­lec­tive
Down­load­able here: Rebel, rebel!