Last week, Extinction Rebellion Netherlands called off a weeks-long blockade of the major highway A12 demanding an end to fossil fuel subsidies after the Dutch parliament agreed to consider the question. Yesterday, a majority of the Tweede Kamer adopted a motion that calls for a possible phase-out plan for fossil fuel subsidies.
In London, activists are taking to the streets to eschew hopelessness in favor of repair
The move to haul climate change protesters off London’s streets reflects … political and media elite in denial …
“We believe that the continued governmental inaction over the climate and ecological crisis now justifies peaceful and nonviolent protest and direct action, even if this goes beyond the bounds of the current law.”
A crowd of about 200 black-clad members of the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion gathered Monday morning at the southern end of New York City’s financial district. Some held banners painted with ghostly white animals or cardboard cutouts of trees and waves. In the background, a New Orleans-style jazz funeral band warmed up tubas, and one of the march’s emcees instructed people on the proper way to wail. (“Dig down and pull out your grief — because you gotta cry!”)
Police have announced they have made almost 1,300 arrests of Extinction Rebellion protesters since Monday, as activists hope the weekend will swell their numbers for a march through central London.
Extinction Rebellion activists charged in Melbourne with blocking streets as part of the “Spring Rebellion” climate change protest have won a battle to have their bail conditions revoked, following a similar court victory in Sydney.
A crowd 200 strong was gathered in the park, dressed in shades of black. It was a delightfully macabre scene. There were protesters done up as skeletons with papier-mâché masks. Others carried mobiles of fish, paper bones picked clean. Signs named extinct and soon-to-be-extinct species. White deer soared overhead, antlers made of twigs. The puppets gave an eerie, ghostly charm to the proceedings, as we planned to bury not the dead but the living.