14/11/2018 - EXTINCTION REBELLION MEETING

After initiating a new body work based around the motifs and ideas expressed as part of the Extinction Rebellion, at the very last minute I caught wind of a meeting of the Norwich branch of the activism initiative.

I had already previously voiced my reservations about the initiative in my research page, however had been unable to find any evidence to support this in their ethos. I felt that the best way to truly get a sense for the minds behind the social-media campaign would be to go along and judge the voice of the rebellion myself.

Upon arriving at the event I was informed that a guest speaker was expected, and recieved a leaflet with the revolutionary slogan 'Welcome to the rebellion... Its time to rise up!' emblazoned across the front. Interestingly the audience was an extremely mixed bag between the ages of about 18 and 80, groups of younger and older friends, couples, induviduals visibly appearing in all varieties of dress and circumstance, slowly filled the room until at last as the talk commenced people were standing and sitting, both on chair and the floor, and backed up right out of the room into the hallway beyond. An impressive turnout.

Shereen Beaumont introduced the evening, and Rupert Read the guest speaker. However she immediately caught my attention within her introductory paragraph with the statement; "we are animals, albeit too clever for our own good". This interested me as it pitched things off on a very non-human conscious approach. Quickly I also discovered that the meeting had been the brainchild of three people, one of whom was Shereen, and the event had been created just one week ago. There must have been over 90 people packed into the small hall, which was an incredibly impressive feat garnered from a week old facebook event as its only platform. The speakers echoed this, citing hope that people had been so quick to show support in the severity of the circumstances. 

Rupert Read then began to speak. He said how he would be delivering a talk which was initially for the Churchill College at Cambridge University, and that he was faced with an unusual circumstance, as normally the first bulk of his talk involved convincing the audience of the truth and severity of the situation, but presumably because we were all here, we already understood. (I have attached a full version of the talk, as provided on the group after the event)

He did however not hold back in any way in the severity of his judgement of the situation, which I must say does in many ways mirror my own gathered understanding from my research. Because of the slow reactive nature of carbon and climate cycles, even if we sort everything out right now we have still already tipped the balance of nature too far in many ways, which I believe is visible in our current weather patterns alone if nothing else, and the further effects this will have on the ecosystem. He also emphasised at points the mention of 'non-human animal kin', again tipping regard to a less humanist viewpoint placing mankind back into the rest of the animal kingdom, which is paramount I believe in resituating ourselves in the world we have irreperably altered. Either way, I think it still would have been a shocking and harrowing talk had I not already acquainted myself with the multitude of grisly knock on effects of ecosystem and cultural shutdown, which was reflected in my discussions with people during and after the event.

He then began to pull apart the Paris Accords and IPCC Climate Report, stating foremost the fact that all these predictions and targets are well and good, but on the whole we have already been 'exceeding worst case scenarios repeatedly'. The agreements also dont take account for 'positive feedback loops' in their predictions, which are already showing signs of being massively driving factors in the situation. They also relied on negative emission strategies which are largely unproven and could have hugely unpredictable effects on the ecosystem when used on the scale needed.

Read also name dropped many concepts which have interested me from my readings, including the importance on localisation, the troubles with Green ethos' being non liberatory, and in fact restrictory to many peoples current ways of life and also the link between agriculturalisation and a potential hint to how some say this was infact a negative development.

Someone from the audience suggested the potentiality of building an actual court case for the earth, to use as a legal crutch against offending governments and corporations, which Read noted as 'climate litigation' and suggested two groups, Client Earth, and Plan B, both who were working in that area. Plan B in particular were pushing a piece about the approved new runway at Heathrow as going against our climate pledges as a country.

There was also then mention of an initiative to get 'Ecocide' written into legislation as an official term which would be used in a court of law to give clout to green cases. Finally an audience member mentioned 'Mission Life Force' which he described as 'having a corny name, but doing incredibly good work in relation to this'.

Hannah Duffew asked a question of how to engage with those outside of our shared understanding and Street Epistemology was mentioned as a conversational tool to get people to start questioning their own values and beliefs in a non-invasive, self reflective way. Read was also quick to reassure that it would not be necessary to get the entire populous on board with the mission, stating only 3-3 1/2 % of public support would be required for cultural change.

Regerative cultures and deep adaptation were also mentioned as things to further explore, the former a suggestion for a fully sustainable cultural model, the other, a paper which was turned down from formal acceptance due to the potential 'emotional impacts of its release' due to the severity of it's judgements.

There was a small amount of confusion regarding some aspects of the plan for the major demonstration in London on the Saturday, as some information had suggested Non Violent Direct Action training was required before attendance, however this was actually only really suggested for those prepared to face risk of encounter with the police. Someone then enquired into the movements legal backups, for which Shereen had a quick answer. Their legal protection was being provided by a group called Green and Black Cross who would also have solicitors available especially for the event to be called upon in the case of arrest. This aspect seemed very well covered.

Overall I was quite intruiged by the whole thing, and was definitely happy to have their motifs employed in some of this new body of work, particularly as it's installment will be right around the same time as they begin to scale up their efforts.  I wont be attending the march this saturday however I will be watching their progress very closely and continuing to support where I can. I feel like my medium of street art lends itself to the style and ethos of the movement very well also.