“By using modern scientific methods to compare alternative actions, it is possible to make solid progress on which policies, procedures, tactics, and strategies best advance extremist objectives. Extremist campaigns will continue to fail unless they adopt and properly leverage this knowledge.”
Over the next year, Hallam joined a small group of people, mainly around Totnes, Devon, England, and began several attempts to put into action a set of specific policies, procedures, tactics and strategies.
The protest movement that would become XR was conceived over six weekend rallies over a two-year period, starting in early 2016. These rallies were held mainly in activists’ homes. The group itself was a loose collection of people involved in environmental, transition town and anti-roads campaigns in England.
Stuart Basden, the other co-founder, said: Ecologist“There were probably about 20 people at each gathering, about 10 of them were regulars and the rest just came and went.”
Unconventional
Dr Gail Bradbrook was one of those regulars. In March 2016, Dr Bradbrook travelled to Costa Rica where she underwent an intense psychedelic trip, taking ayahuasca and other drugs. She prayed for “the codes of social change”. Just a few weeks after returning to the UK, she met Hallam for the first time, who declared that he held the codes for change. This story plays a central and thought-provoking role in the story. XR’s founding myth.
Bradbrook, her partner Simon Bramwell and Hallam provided continuity and momentum for the group. Calling themselves “Rising Up”Fittingly, the name was reused after being coined during a failed anti-roads protest in Bristol. The new group ran what Hallam describes as “all sorts of little prototypical campaigns that nobody knows about now, which are really rubbish and we have to learn from our mistakes”.
Undaunted by their failures, the small group spent time drawing lessons from each incident and putting together an evolving theory of change that was compiled into a series of documents as it developed. The three spent hours drafting a 50-page strategy summary document, which they then compiled into a seven-page briefing document that took another year and a half to develop. Overview of Rising Up It was finally completed in March 2018.
In an ominous pattern, at this point Hallam proposed rolling out the strategy into a national campaign, but Bradbrook and Basden opposed, demanding a further month to further refine the ten most important principles and values.
In April 2018, the group agreed to “go all in” with the newly named campaign, “Extinction Rebellion,” a pattern that would be repeated for the next few years.But what was special about the GoogleDoc “Rising Up Overview” shared among several climate activists?
prominence
Published by Oskar Berglund and Daniel Schmidt Extinction Rebellion and climate activism: breaking the law to change the world In 2020, they made an important contribution to the climate action literature: “The most striking aspect of XR’s theory of change is that it exists in the first place,” they argue. It’s therefore worth highlighting how rare this kind of blueprint effort has been, and remains, rare.
These writers weren’t just riffing; they were referencing the movement’s blueprint, sometimes literally. Understanding how XR was situated within a particular tradition of movement organizing is crucial.
Srdja Popovic and Matthew Miller in 2015 Blueprint for Revolution: How to use rice pudding, Lego figures, and other nonviolent techniques to galvanize communities, topple dictators, or simply change the world Summarizing what we have learned from working together Otto Paul! It toppled dictator Slobodan Milošević. Hallam said of the book:of Key Text.
of Otto Paul! The protest movement and how it was documented also inspired Paul Engler and Carlos Saavedra of the Aini Institute, who, drawing on their decades of activist experience, proposed a “movement method” of organizing that would take the best from the traditions of structure and momentum that had evolved (and diverged) over the previous decades. Paul and his brother Mark also TThis is Rebellion: How Nonviolent Rebellion Will Shape the 21st Century.
Engler and Saavedra were an even bigger influence on the founders of XR: these two thinkers were pioneers in applying social science to social movements. overviewThe quote is no coincidence: in fact, it stems from Bradbrook’s participation in a training session conducted by Saavedra in 2017.
Destructive
Engler and Saavedra’s work is recognized in the second of the 10 fundamental principles of XR:We are on a mission to do what mattersThe Ayni Institute’s goal is to mobilize 3.5% of the population to achieve systems change, leveraging ideas like “momentum-driven organizing.” The Ayni Institute’s approach is explored in depth in the Movement Power series. Ecologist.
Momentum’s influence on the birth of XR cannot be overstated. overviewThe content continues to emphasize the need to target pillars of the status quo, the need for polarization, and the need for decentralized organizing. overview We also recreated Momentum’s prescribed set pieces regarding context, values, story and tactics.
This influence is also evident in the movement’s conceptual horizon: XR, like Momentum, works in the tradition of Gene Sharp. overview Quote: This explains the importance of the work of Erica Chenoweth, originator of the famous (or infamous) claim that if 3.5% of the population organized, they could create radical social change.
XR’s approach and reliance on a particular stream of ideas has been criticized. Berglund and Schmidt state: “Contrary to XR’s claims, their theory of change is not validated by social science. XR’s theory of change comes from a small subset of scholarship called the civil resistance literature, which has little to do with the vast literature on social movements or critical political economy… Beyond destructive polarization, the lessons XR draws from the civil resistance literature are both valid and limited.”
It must also be said that XR is not simply an expression of Momentum: one of the driving tensions within XR has been the contrast, even contradiction, between the scientific language used as a “code for social change”, alongside the mysticism and eclecticism that has been present since the beginning.
Elusiveness
In fact, Bradbrook has scientific training in the field of biomolecular physics, and attributes much of XR’s success to her hallucinatory prayers in Costa Rica. She also refers to Tom Nixon’s concept of the Source Field: “It’s how you express where you really come from. I like to call it the ‘spiritual vessel’. It’s where the unity, the vision, the wisdom is, and it’s where you set your intentions. I feel that’s a very feminine thing that is necessary as part of social change. The mobilization, the organizing part is more Left hemisphere“
She added: “We certainly drew on existing movement theory, but some of the things we incorporated were sadness and emotion. You need a vision. That’s what draws people in, but I don’t think that’s understood. I didn’t really understand it.”
“There’s been a lot of prayer and conscious work on how to bring intention, values, and regenerative culture into the movement. It may have been written about, but nothing has been written about it. A lot of it Sensed It’s not necessarily based on deep theory, but it might help.”
A striking example of this sensibility is the Statement of Divine Intent written by Skeena Lassau, which was often read aloud before and during actions in the early days of XR. A more enduring, but no less colorful, contrast might be found here: Playback reminder text The poem is still commonly recited at the opening of rebel rallies today.
The element of regeneration may be XR’s deepest mystery, in part inherent in the idea itself. Spirituality is hard to measure, and its elusiveness is reflected in the relative lack of theoretical underpinnings and marginal status of XR. overview But another reason for this mystery is that the history of XR is itself the story of how the movement has lost its initial appeal.
It’s easy to forget how strange, sensational and successful the XR movement was in its first years. I see a lot of what happened in those early years as Ecologist In the coming weeks, we will critically examine the groundbreaking strengths and subtle limitations that the Momentum tradition brings to XR. These articles will form the next phase of the Movement Power project.
This author
Douglas Rogers is a writer, activist, and editor. Loveller magazine.
