Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Richard Hakluyt]

The progressives, shooting themselves in the foot since 43AD.

[Eddie Teach]

Knifing themselves in the foot rather.

[Richard Hakluyt]

A ballista was used.

[Sheilbh]

I mean they're not wrong. I've been vermouth bars that are less white bourgeois than an XR protest.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.

[dps]

It's like how they chose a bloody sailboat as their mascot for their previous demos. I mean, how ELSE are you going to drag that into the middle of London than by burning a lot of fossil fuels?

Bring back slavery and take the whip to a couple hundred people? 

Or, since the Brits love inserting extra vowels, should that be "houndread"?

[Berkut]

It doesn't really fit this thread but couldn't think a better one. The Guardian goes full The Guardian:

"Live from the royal courts of justice," Extinction Rebellion London wrote. "It has been announced that all protesters arrested during the April rebellion will be prosecuted. We are asking the police and legal system to concentrate on issues such as knife crime, and not non-violent protesters who are trying to save our planet."

For those with ears tuned to hear it, the dogwhistle sounded clear. Stop bothering us non-violent protesters; focus instead on those frightening inner-city neighbourhoods, where black children carry knives.

Advertisement

"It was feeding into a racist narrative," says Guppi Bola, an activist with the Wretched of the Earth, an environmental group that focuses on black, brown and indigenous voices. "When those kinds of things come up, then of course you are not going to feel welcome."
....

But from the start XR has faced questions over its ability to reach out to diverse communities. Some critics go further, suggesting its tactics, its framing of key issues and a series of communications missteps show a carelessness around issues of race – or even institutional racism.

Article in its full glory:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/04/extinction-rebellion-race-climate-crisis-inequality

Nothing to see hear, there is not problem with identity politics on the left. Move along.

[mongers]

I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.

Yes, I like a quite a lot of what he has to say.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I mean they're not wrong. I've been vermouth bars that are less white bourgeois than an XR protest.

I think there is potential here for a mistake to be made. It is pretty obvious that XR protests do not reflect the ethnic makeup of the capital. But, on the other hand, it is the capital for all of the UK so protests in general might seem to be "too white" simply because of concerned citizens bussing themselves in from the parts of the country that are still overwhelmingly white.

My first instinct is to suspect that, like you said, a lot of worthy protests are bourgeois. So perhaps we should be asking why so few ethnic minority folk have found it possible to join this social category.

[HVC]

Too busy working

[Berkut]

I mean they're not wrong. I've been vermouth bars that are less white bourgeois than an XR protest.

But they are wrong, since they are claiming much more than that protests are predominately white.


edit: And actually, that is only the first thing, and not the most important thing, that they are wrong about.

[garbon]

I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.

Agreed

[The Brain]

I don't know how many made it to the end of the article but i thought that Benjamin Zephaniah was spot on.

Executive summary?

[crazy canuck]

I mean they're not wrong. I've been vermouth bars that are less white bourgeois than an XR protest.

I think there is potential here for a mistake to be made. It is pretty obvious that XR protests do not reflect the ethnic makeup of the capital. But, on the other hand, it is the capital for all of the UK so protests in general might seem to be "too white" simply because of concerned citizens bussing themselves in from the parts of the country that are still overwhelmingly white.

My first instinct is to suspect that, like you said, a lot of worthy protests are bourgeois. So perhaps we should be asking why so few ethnic minority folk have found it possible to join this social category.

White upper class kids have a lot less to fear from police.  Why would a minority kid give the police a reason to arrest him?

[Richard Hakluyt]

I was under the impression that a lot of the XR people were quite old; getting arrested is not such a big deal once one's career is over. On that basis one of my nieces will be participating in their protests; she subsists on small earnings from freelance writing, it really doesn't matter if she gets arrested. Clearly that would be a no-go area for people like civil servants or accountants.