‘Summer Uprising’ By Extinction Rebellion

Friday marked the end of Extinction Rebellion’s five day-long ‘Summer Uprising’ which saw protests and road blockages in five major cities across the UK.

Leeds, London, Cardiff, Bristol and Glasgow were all the sites of action led by the environmental advocacy group which launched the week-long movement to demand government action on the climate crisis. Activists blockaded major roads in each of the cities, camping overnight and leading smaller protest actions along with training sessions, workshops and speaker events during the days.

Extinction Rebellion, which has garnered international attention over the past year, particularly after their sit-in on a number of London bridges in November 2018, which led to the arrest of eighty-five people, organised this week’s protests in order to put forward their demand for action from the government in the face of the ongoing environmental emergency.

“[The] government must ACT NOW to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025”, say the group. “Time is running out. At this point in history we have three choices: to die, to survive or to thrive.”

“In the midst of the sixth mass extinction, the collapse of civilisation is a distinct possibility…Parliament has announced a climate emergency, but the government is not taking the necessary decisive actions required by the crisis. Their 2050 net zero target is an alarmingly insufficient response for halting climate breakdown and biodiversity loss. By then it will be too late.”

Among the demands made by Extinction Rebellion of the UK government is the creation of an “ecocide law” which would criminalise, especially deliberate, destructive action towards the environment. Activists in London gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice last Monday in support of such a move.

“If the United Kingdom, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, can show leadership, the resulting chain reaction across the world will be crucial for securing the future.”

The group also references recent reports published by organisations such as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which warn of the incoming catastrophic consequences of climate change if mitigating steps are not quickly taken. A special report issued by the IPCC in October 2018 projected with high confidence increased mean temperatures and more extreme heatwaves across most of the world, along with heavier rainfall and a greater probability of drought in certain regions as a result of a 1.5-2ºc rise in global temperatures.



On Thursday Extinction Rebellion members gathered outside City Hall in London to issue their “Tax Rebellion Declaration”, a pledge to boycott 22% of council tax, the portion which goes to the Greater London Authority, which the group accuses of sponsoring projects which are incompatible with the UK achieving carbon neutrality by 2025.

“We are not prepared to fund an institution that continues to ignore the current impacts of environmental degradation, affecting London’s poorest communities the most, as well as the looming threat of ecological collapse,” reads Extinction Rebellion’s website. “That is why we are demanding the GLA stop all infrastructure projects polluting the air of London’s poorest communities and committing us all to extinction, and it must empower a citizen’s assembly to re-write the London Plan.”

The idea of a citizen’s assembly is central to the mission of Extinction Rebellion which argues that the people must have a voice in order to spur the kind of radical change they seek to implement before it is too late to intervene in the environmental decline currently underway. Such assemblies, on a smaller scale, took place and acted as decision-making forums, at the various protests seen last week, and were accompanied by other events such as non-violent direct action (NVDA) trainings, which educate participants on how to peacefully protest.

The following day, activists held a “die-in” protest outside the offices of some of the UK’s biggest newspapers, including the Daily Mail, the Independent and the Evening Standard, urging the papers’ editors to use their platforms to help draw attention to the environmental emergency and push for change.

This echoed a similar protest held in Leeds the previous day, when activists marched from the Victoria Bridge, where, as in other cities, a large boat emblazoned with the words “Act Now!” was in place, to Briggate to stage another “die-in.” This form of protest involves participants lying on the ground and is a tactic which has been used repeatedly by Extinction Rebellion and is described by them as “a solemn act that symbolises the kind of future we face without government action on the climate crisis.”