Extinction Rebellion - I'm extremely sorry for the inconvenience

The Bristol hospital thing is a tough one. If you live in Bristol, we only have two hospitals, both are served by the M32 and are not really that far from each other. It's pretty tricky to shut down any roads in Central Bristol without one hospital or the other having access hampered. So generally I don't blame the protestors that a guy couldn't get to his dying father. That would never have been their intention.

But this is the problem with blocking roads. You are hurting the wrong people. The people that can change policy are always happy to sit back and wait out the protests as they know the public will always turn against the people who are visibly hurting them.

So I feel XR need to change their tactics massively because generally people support their aims but not necessarily their methods.

Karl_ wrote:http://hardyik.es/

I'm going to assume that wasn't aimed at me

Green Gecko wrote:This group is quite active in my home town and I know some of the organisers, they are very well learned people, published authors with histories going back decades with greenpeace and such.

Are you taking advantage of our tolerance for inflammatory posting to deliberately entitle topics with bait, mommy?

Yes, you are. As much as this topic needs discussion, I am deleting your original post and retitling the topic.

I dont see what was baity about the OP. The term was used, and widely reported in the press.
It appears that as you are chums with a number of these protestors, you have taken it on yourself to delete my post and change the title, as you have taken umbridge with it.
No matter. The topic is there to be discussed. That's the important thing, right?

Come on, Mommy. You cleared went out of your way to post something shitty.

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Pedz wrote:Come on, Mommy. You cleared went out of your way to post something shitty.

I didnt. Crusty was a term commonly used in the 90s when people like Swampy was climbing trees to stop dual carriageways and things like that.
The poletax riots before that was also carried out by similar persons.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49970717

At risk of sounding like the "I support their aims but not their methods" brigade, I do feel that the Extinction Rebellion movement has been very irresponsible towards its own members in the past, based mainly on what occurred at the last big London protests.

While building a movement requires bringing in people who are unfamiliar with protest, I know in the last batch of protests, they were encouraging people to go out, disrupt, and get arrested, without effectively disseminating information about what people should do once arrested, how they should talk, or not, to the police, or what legal counsel to seek. There didn't appear to be any system set up to support with legal costs for protesters who could not afford their own. Couple this with the way they were far too open to a close police presence, putting themselves at massive risk of infiltration and intelligence gathering. Also, stories like the below are not what you expect from radical protest groups... (click through for full thread)

twitter.com/SamGSwann/status/1120335165576892418

While I agree with Karl's statement earlier in the thread that XR are against the bourgeois, and the capitalist class, in their goals, they operate as a group with a large amount of white and class privilege, that a lot of the movement don't know how to check, making it a risk to any poor and minority ethnic individuals that may want to support their aims, by unnecessarily exposing them to arrest, when they are already at increased risk from the police, by not effectively preparing them, or operating without concern for what police contact might mean for them.

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Protest by all means, but not at the expense of regular people just trying to go about their already busy and in some cases difficult day to day lives. If XR can't or won't do that then balls to them and their cause.

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Protest by all means, but not at the expense of regular people just trying to go about their already busy and in some cases difficult day to day lives. If XR can't or won't do that then balls to them and their cause.

Protest, but quietly, somewhere out of the way.

Disruption is absolutely necessary for effective protest.

Mommy wrote:

Pedz wrote:Come on, Mommy. You cleared went out of your way to post something shitty.

I didnt. Crusty was a term commonly used in the 90s when people like Swampy was climbing trees to stop dual carriageways and things like that.
The poletax riots before that was also carried out by similar persons.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49970717

I didn't mention the term Crusty in the OP, I was referencing the post itself where you were saying gooseberry fool about dirty hippies or some nonsense.

Knoyleo wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Protest by all means, but not at the expense of regular people just trying to go about their already busy and in some cases difficult day to day lives. If XR can't or won't do that then balls to them and their cause.

Protest, but quietly, somewhere out of the way.

Disruption is absolutely necessary for effective protest.

And yet it's always regular people who have to step aside and have their daily lives disrupted for "the greater good", no one else.

Can't say I'm surprised many here think that's acceptable.

I’m not sure why so many are still arguing the toss on this.

People have shown that attention for climate issues has surged since these recent protests.

People have shown that previous movements have only been successful after reaching the point of requiring widespread protests, despite contemporary polling showing that those protests were supposedly harming their cause. Or do people think that the civil rights movement, votes for women etc. Would all have been achieved anyway without the need for such fuss?

Gemini73 wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Protest by all means, but not at the expense of regular people just trying to go about their already busy and in some cases difficult day to day lives. If XR can't or won't do that then balls to them and their cause.

Protest, but quietly, somewhere out of the way.

Disruption is absolutely necessary for effective protest.

And yet it's always regular people who have to step aside and have their daily lives disrupted for "the greater good", no one else.

Can't say I'm surprised many here think that's acceptable.

And if everyone decides they don’t give a gooseberry fool, which economic group do you think will suffer the most from climate change?

Knoyleo wrote:While I agree with Karl's statement earlier in the thread that XR are against the bourgeois, and the capitalist class, in their goals, they operate as a group with a large amount of white and class privilege, that a lot of the movement don't know how to check, making it a risk to any poor and minority ethnic individuals that may want to support their aims, by unnecessarily exposing them to arrest, when they are already at increased risk from the police, by not effectively preparing them, or operating without concern for what police contact might mean for them.

Aye, no argument from me here. In particular, I think my core criticism of the group (which I think perhaps explains why some of those problems happened) is that they've adopted the flat organisational structure of groups like CrimethInc, which really only works well when the core cause is explicitly insurrectionist-anarchist and therefore only attracts people who definitely already know things like "never call the cops" and "always say no comment" (and as you say, "protect newbies and minority comrades from arrest"...).

In a movement like XR which is going to attract liberals and newbies, there should probably be a direct-democratic hierarchical structure both for the education of new recruits, and to stop regional cells making silly decisions.

Gemini73 wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Protest by all means, but not at the expense of regular people just trying to go about their already busy and in some cases difficult day to day lives. If XR can't or won't do that then balls to them and their cause.

Protest, but quietly, somewhere out of the way.

Disruption is absolutely necessary for effective protest.

And yet it's always regular people who have to step aside and have their daily lives disrupted for "the greater good", no one else.

Can't say I'm surprised many here think that's acceptable.

It's regular people protesting, too.

People protest in the spaces they have access to. It would be great if these protests could be staged in the boardroom of BP, but people don't have access to that, and good luck effectively organising the storming of a corporate headquarters without putting people at even more unnecessary risk.

Moggy wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Protest by all means, but not at the expense of regular people just trying to go about their already busy and in some cases difficult day to day lives. If XR can't or won't do that then balls to them and their cause.

Protest, but quietly, somewhere out of the way.

Disruption is absolutely necessary for effective protest.

And yet it's always regular people who have to step aside and have their daily lives disrupted for "the greater good", no one else.

Can't say I'm surprised many here think that's acceptable.

And if everyone decides they don’t give a gooseberry fool, which economic group do you think will suffer the most from climate change?

Caring about climate change and who it effects and being against the disruptive actions of XR are two different things. I'm opposed to the latter, not the former and I'm not going to change that stance.

Mommy wrote:

Pedz wrote:Come on, Mommy. You cleared went out of your way to post something shitty.

I didnt. Crusty was a term commonly used in the 90s when people like Swampy was climbing trees to stop dual carriageways and things like that.
The poletax riots before that was also carried out by similar persons.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49970717

But XR was founded by (I think) a builder, a farmer and a barrister (the lawyer, not the server of coffee) or some other position in the legal trade. And they arguable have the widest range of members in any movement (race, age etc). Not really a group of people you can easily label as hippies.

Knoyleo wrote:At risk of sounding like the "I support their aims but not their methods" brigade, I do feel that the Extinction Rebellion movement has been very irresponsible towards its own members in the past, based mainly on what occurred at the last big London protests.

While building a movement requires bringing in people who are unfamiliar with protest, I know in the last batch of protests, they were encouraging people to go out, disrupt, and get arrested, without effectively disseminating information about what people should do once arrested, how they should talk, or not, to the police, or what legal counsel to seek. There didn't appear to be any system set up to support with legal costs for protesters who could not afford their own. Couple this with the way they were far too open to a close police presence, putting themselves at massive risk of infiltration and intelligence gathering. Also, stories like the below are not what you expect from radical protest groups... (click through for full thread)

twitter.com/SamGSwann/status/1120335165576892418

While I agree with Karl's statement earlier in the thread that XR are against the bourgeois, and the capitalist class, in their goals, they operate as a group with a large amount of white and class privilege, that a lot of the movement don't know how to check, making it a risk to any poor and minority ethnic individuals that may want to support their aims, by unnecessarily exposing them to arrest, when they are already at increased risk from the police, by not effectively preparing them, or operating without concern for what police contact might mean for them.

That's weird because (at least in the early protests) people to be arrested were volunteers knowingly going in to that position and it was a big topic at the time that it was better for a white guy to be arrested as they would get an easier time in the legal system than a minority group. No minority should have been in that position or encouraged to have been.

Also the XR website has two donation options, one to help with legal costs and the other crowdfunder to help support the mission in general

Gemini73 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Protest by all means, but not at the expense of regular people just trying to go about their already busy and in some cases difficult day to day lives. If XR can't or won't do that then balls to them and their cause.

Protest, but quietly, somewhere out of the way.

Disruption is absolutely necessary for effective protest.

And yet it's always regular people who have to step aside and have their daily lives disrupted for "the greater good", no one else.

Can't say I'm surprised many here think that's acceptable.

And if everyone decides they don’t give a gooseberry fool, which economic group do you think will suffer the most from climate change?

Caring about climate change and who it effects and being against the disruptive actions of XR are two different things. I'm opposed to the latter, not the former and I'm not going to change that stance.

How do we reach the point where real improvement is made, nationally and globally, within the necessary timeframe?

Vermilion wrote:I'd happily tear gas the lot of them.

Even the elderly?

twitter.com/Peston/status/1181628563054891008

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:
If you don't give a gooseberry fool about this via disruptive protest then you were never going to give a gooseberry fool.

Well in that case then I don't give a gooseberry fool.

Ok, maybe that was a bit of a glib comment.

What is the line for you to give a gooseberry fool then?

Protest by all means, but not at the expense of regular people just trying to go about their already busy and in some cases difficult day to day lives. If XR can't or won't do that then balls to them and their cause.

Protest, but quietly, somewhere out of the way.

Disruption is absolutely necessary for effective protest.

And yet it's always regular people who have to step aside and have their daily lives disrupted for "the greater good", no one else.

Can't say I'm surprised many here think that's acceptable.

And if everyone decides they don’t give a gooseberry fool, which economic group do you think will suffer the most from climate change?

Caring about climate change and who it effects and being against the disruptive actions of XR are two different things. I'm opposed to the latter, not the former and I'm not going to change that stance.

How do we reach the point where real improvement is made, nationally and globally, within the necessary timeframe?

When you say timeframe do you mean by 2025, because if so that was never realistic.