Despite its slightly patronizing burlesque tone, the documentary is prescient as it follows Roger as he seeks his arrest at Lambeth Bridge. Hallam infamously complained to police liaisons that “arrests weren’t being made fast enough”, and he was incensed to find out next. Other bridges were combined at Parliament Square and closed for the day to prevent further arrests.
XR’s media profile and messaging mechanisms were in their infancy at best, and for better or worse, the goals and reasons for this day were not explained in detail. For Roger, the main objective was to put pressure on the elite. This was done in part by disrupting the functioning of London, particularly by staffing police stations with personnel who consciously emulated the precedents of XR’s official civil resistance movements.
But other reasons also existed. Jacot, for example, was more representative of a tradition of reclaiming the street, concerned with repurposing public spaces to model more pleasurable social possibilities. Related but distinct was the concern with the crowd itself. It is the prospect of unifying crowds through narrative, materiality, and tactics from groups of individuals to collective agents. The newest strain of this line might be considered Occupy (its veterans made up a significant portion of XR’s core players).
There is nothing necessarily contradictory in these different impulses, and in fact this trilemma soon takes formal form, with strategic forums arguing that any action is divided between vision (a better world), movement building, and destruction. It was declared that we must work towards at least one objective. In a sense, this was held as a space of constructive strategic ambiguity. But on the flip side, disagreements between XR’s founders proved detrimentally irresolvable.
portrait
Doctor from guardian It revealed more than a strategic contradiction. It helps to realize how much some things have changed, especially when viewed from the perspective of November 2024.
Perhaps the most notable detail is XR’s relationship with the police. The development of this relationship into a studied and mutually acrimonious relationship was perhaps inevitable, with as much tabloid frenzy as the left-wing-influenced reappraisal within XR (The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022) (reaching high tides) had a lot to do with it.
But writing as someone who has since experienced pain compliance alongside the UK’s widespread crackdown, I find that this era of “kill with kindness” has, ironically, had some real benefits, including increased accessibility of sorts. I can’t help but point this out. It’s also worth noting that this era was largely brought about by anger over the crackdown on climate camps and the 2009 murder of Ian Tomlinson.
This openness toward police officers was part of a broader sentiment that in retrospect could be called naivety, naivety, or, more conveniently, simply a lack of guilt. Seems impossible, but this was XR in front The media swarms and the culture wars devour it.
The activists on screen are painfully earnest, unencumbered by the neuroses of optics and movement politics, and exist far more authentically. This is evident in individuals, even Roger himself, but especially in groups. It’s disturbingly hard to imagine the current XR crowd singing “Never doubt that a few people can change the world,” especially as part of the roadblock.
This emotional aspect is especially useful in 2024, when we are obsessed with the government’s brutal positivity. As Amy Westervelt recently put it for United Nations-related New York Climate Week, “This insistence that everything is normal and okay when it is clearly abnormal is, in my experience, particularly dangerous for those in power.” And that’s kind of the hallmark of the climate movement among people with money.” Today, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to have another “feeling structure” about that prospect. But for a while, XR actually did just that.
You could say it was a more positive era. Just 4 days ago in America sunrise movement – another exemplar of the momentum model – conducted a breakthrough operation in Nancy Pelosi’s office. The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) were marching. But whatever the context, it cannot be overstated that this emotional quality is one of XR’s greatest and most elusive strengths.
continuation
Even after the Days of Rebellion ended, the new movement continued to closely follow the contours of its momentum. This was most evident in its rhythm. Momentum charts a very clear cycle from action to absorption, and its sentiment is encoded in the fifth principle of XR. “We value reflection and learning: following the cycle of action, reflection, learning, planning” To do more, we learn not only from our own experiences, but also from other movements and situations. ”
Even now, there has been debate about exactly when and how to end the behavioral cycle. Roger defended the attempt to escalate by the act of “swarming” after crossing the bridge (a sacred concept at the time). The experiment didn’t work out – hostility from drivers faded, press coverage was lukewarm – and the episode was quickly amicably forgotten. This is early evidence that from the beginning, XR was never willing to embrace anything disruptive for its own sake. But relatedly, this effort deserves to be remembered as the seed that would eventually grow into JSO and the whole thing. A22 network.
The cycle ended emphatically with a funeral procession to Parliament Square. There, about 1,000 black-clad mourners blocked roads and witnessed efforts to place the body in a coffin marked “Our Future.”
More obliquely related are the doctrines of momentum, which include competing theories of change, i.e. not only the “pillars of power” of the status quo, but also existing movements that momentum distinguishes as either “structure-based” or “popular protest.” It was designed with consideration to traditional mosaics.
Unlike other momentum lessons, this sophisticated explanation of the ecology of movement is essentially absent from XR, so many new members are lucky not to suffer from anything like foreshadowing. It was. Early repudiation from Chiss Saltmarsh Novara MediaThe National Forum for Reclaiming the Power has refused any support, and NGOs have given only vague support. These dynamics would dominate the XR the following year, but for now the reality was simple. XR differentiated itself from existing players and benefited from it.
hibernation
One of the many tensions animating XR was the tension between the mandatory post-action “reflection and learning” and the vaguely defined but heatedly necessary task of building a movement. The consensus timeline for the anniversary of the uprising is that it would be fully quelled by December. Perhaps two or three administrative heroes will keep the lights on in their offices, and the broader movement will remain largely silent in the hope of remobilization. In the spring.
The reality turned out to be very different. The action stopped, but the action continued to spiral. Many who attended in London returned home invigorated to satisfy their voracious appetite for local groups. Groups began to spring up all over the country and beyond. Meanwhile, the central office has acquired new rooms and even an entirely new location in an effort to channel a wave of energy and interest.
This enthusiastic cooperation was only possible thanks to a predetermined and clearly articulated short-term plan. The keystone was the next day of rebellion, preordained on Monday, April 15, 2019. This day was a vigorous response to all external input. It’s hard to overstate how much internal collaboration has become possible by eliminating the need for strategic considerations.
However, as Paul Engler said the person himself. Ecologist: “Culture eats up breakfast strategy. ” What was, just a few weeks ago, essentially a group of friends making some plans and filling out some paperwork, is now suddenly a movement, a set of openly untheorized intentions regarding vision-keeping and culture. However, the reality is that it is currently evolving rapidly.
Like other early organisms and nations, the three-week-old XR is currently in a “critical period.” Although poorly documented and poorly researched, this flow of development prior to XR’s April breakthrough is critical to shaping XR into what it is meant to be. By shedding light on this process in the next part of this series, I hope to inform the growing pains of the future mass movements we need to build.
this author
Douglas Rogers is a writer, activist, and editor. raveller magazine. This article was published through the Ecologist Writers Fund. We’re asking readers to donate £200 to some authors for their work. please Please donate now. For more information about the fund, you can apply through our website.
