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00:00:17.040Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:00:21.100economic disruption is how you get the attention of people in power you know they feel pressure
00:00:31.900if the police are stretched economically if the businesses in central london are stretched
00:00:38.240economically that is when the people in power are going to be really pressured and they're
00:00:42.200going to feel like they have to respond today we are speaking with three representatives from
00:00:48.720Extinction Rebellion, Liam Gary Balch, Jasmine Salter, and Linda Doyle. Liam is an artist and
00:00:56.140activist who helped launch Extinction Rebellion and has worked to create national actions with
00:01:01.340them since September 2018 and previously with Stop Killing Londoners, one of Rising Up's earlier
00:01:08.720campaigns on air pollution. Jasmine is one of the regenerative culture coordinators with a focus on
00:01:16.400action, well-being, and has helped build the support networks throughout Extinction Rebellion's
00:01:21.520actions. Previously studied architecture at Glasgow School of Art and left to become involved
00:01:27.600in climate activism, joining Extinction Rebellion during the November Rebellion weeks. Linda is one
00:01:33.800of the coordinators of Extinction Rebellion's UK National Citizens Assembly team. She completed a
00:01:40.620research master's in social psychology and decision making at Tilburg University, Netherlands.
00:01:47.400So welcome the three of you. This is so wonderful to be speaking with you and definitely all the
00:01:52.660fluttering memories of Occupy are swirling in my heart and mind right now and it feels so
00:02:00.040energizing to be speaking with you all. So to begin with, I want to start with a pretty direct
00:02:05.540question, and that being Extinction Rebellion has three main demands that center the movement.
00:02:12.220So I'd like if you could share what these demands are and why you have collectively decided that
00:02:18.680these three are to be the utmost of importance. Yeah, hi. So our three demands are that the
00:02:28.980government tell the truth so that they really take on board the fact that we are now in a climate and
00:02:34.500ecological emergency but we've actually expanded that demand not just to the government but also
00:02:39.840to the media and to the school systems so that they are also telling the truth informing the
00:02:47.600general public through education and through the media and then the second demand is that they act
00:02:54.160now on that emergency that they really take drastic action because we're in this emergency
00:02:59.820And the third demand is actually that they set up a citizens assembly, which is a more direct democratic way to deal with the problem that gets past all of the party politics and the fact of politicians trying to get reelected rather than trying to look after our planet for future generations.
00:03:18.480It's really amazing that since the April International Rebellion, the UK Parliament has actually declared a climate and environment emergency.
00:03:29.460So that's been a small win for our movement.
00:03:32.680And we've seen media outlets really start to change.
00:03:36.340But we do need the government to officially declare a climate emergency still.
00:03:42.020And there's more that can be done around telling the truth.
00:03:44.720and I think Jasmine was going to talk a little bit about Demand 2 more.
00:03:50.020Yeah, Demand 2 I want to speak to a little bit
00:04:12.020um being an issue that's kind of obviously we've been aware of for a really long time but things
00:04:16.640this debate and this talk always tends to center around climate change and climate issues but
00:04:21.980actually with the report that came out a few weeks ago biodiversity loss is like huge as well
00:04:27.060and needs the focus as well and so i'll just say a little bit about the third demand which is that
00:04:33.760the government create a citizens assembly on the climate and ecological emergency
00:04:39.080so this is a really important demand because Extinction Rebellion don't claim to have
00:04:45.980all of the answers we want the UK public to have a chance to respond to how we're going to take
00:04:53.260this radical change to adapt to this crisis that we're currently faced with and that's really
00:04:59.980important because we've seen what's happened in other countries with governments trying to
00:05:06.180impose carbon taxes for example and it's just not it doesn't sit well with the public so
00:05:14.060we think this is a really good way to ensure that the the public are on board with the changes
00:05:21.780that will have to be made and gives them a chance to come up with you know their own ideas and to
00:05:29.100deliberate, to discuss and ensure that all of their interests of everybody across the whole
00:05:36.220spectrum of society within the UK public, that their views are being represented.
00:05:43.580I've absolutely seen a huge shift in the media in the last few months, especially with talks
00:05:49.940around climate emergency, climate change. I smelt just a global reckoning with extinction
00:05:57.500by diversity loss. I'm actually quite shocked and I don't know if I'm excited by it. It kind of
00:06:04.660feels like a moment of truth telling, of course not full truths. I think it's a lot of quarter
00:06:13.080truths, half truths, but I do think that Extinction Rebellion has been pushing the media
00:06:17.640to jump on these stories a lot more and I'm really appreciative of that. Now I want to talk
00:06:24.800about how Extinction Rebellion emphasizes the absolute necessity of non-violence and acts of
00:06:30.740civil disobedience, citing an extensive body of work that proves the overall success of non-violent
00:06:36.620movements. For example, between 1900 and 2006, research found that between state and non-state
00:06:44.280actors, 53% of non-violent campaigns were successful versus 36% of campaigns that used
00:06:51.040violence. So I'm wondering if you could share more on why Extinction Rebellion thinks nonviolence
00:06:57.260is imperative to building climate momentum. And how does violence destroy the movements in terms
00:07:03.840of whom it encourages or discourages from joining? Yeah, so Extinction Rebellion did a lot of
00:07:11.760research into different campaigns kind of over the last 100 years and saw similar things to the
00:07:18.860trend that you described we also noticed that for a non-violent movement to have success they need
00:07:25.520to change the hearts and minds of the general public but also the security services whereas
00:07:31.300for a violent movement to have success they would always rely on some other state funding them with
00:07:38.880arms or armaments and that's just really not the road we want to go down not to mention kind of
00:07:46.140the environmental impact of the arms trade and war obviously the u.s military being one of the
00:07:51.420biggest carbon emitters and excluded from the paris climate accord so we've yeah we chose non
00:07:57.600to be kind of radically non-violent and and look at many different ways of non-violent civil
00:08:03.520disobedience and how that can pressure governments and people in power to make change by targeting
00:08:10.520kind of trying to make economic disruption the priority of actions rather than you know
00:08:17.760physically being violent or or even being violent in the language that we've used we purposely
00:08:24.700tried to not pick out individuals or blame and shame anyone and we see that as part of our
00:08:31.740radical non-violence in in that we're really saying that this is everyone's concern and everyone
00:08:37.720can come on board because we all care about our children's futures we all want to see
00:08:43.100improvements over across society and if the climate emergency carries on as it is you know
00:08:49.860our society is going to be continue to be wiped out you know people are already starving and
00:08:54.680dying across the world and so we want radical change now but we know that this is everyone's
00:09:00.180concern this isn't just a left-wing issue or an environmentalist issue this is everyone's issue
00:09:05.980And so by not blaming and shaming individuals, we really welcome everyone to join us and be part of this nonviolence.
00:09:13.820And rather than having a small group of trained individuals take direct action against a specific oil company, we've tried to design actions that anyone can do.
00:09:23.820So we've had mothers, grandmothers, children just sit down on the road together peacefully and wait and say, we're not going to move until something happens on this issue.
00:09:34.900And they peacefully allow themselves to be arrested if they're willing to take that risk.
00:09:39.760And those with privilege have stepped up and taken that risk.
00:09:43.120and we've seen that as being a way for many many more people to get involved and to really create
00:09:48.300a mass movement around this issue rather than having a few highly skilled people go and do
00:09:54.440specific direct actions yeah i would like to just add that yeah it's been so amazing just the the
00:10:02.600sheer scope of people that have been welcomed into this movement and who've been willing to
00:10:07.480get involved during the the rebellion in April there was like several old people and one of them
00:10:15.980one old granny had her a picture of her grandchildren around her neck and I just found this incredibly
00:10:23.880it was kind of both heartening and heartbreaking that she was out here standing in a road willing
00:10:31.220to be arrested just to protect her grandchildren. And so it's heartbreaking in that that's what she
00:10:37.580has to do. But it's also heartening that she's there doing it. So really incredible, incredible
00:10:43.260moments like this where we had so many during the rebellion. Now, I know that despite working with
00:10:51.300the nonviolent framework, Extinction Rebellion utilizes escalation strategy in order to create
00:10:57.120a sort of drama necessary to capture the attention of the media. So I'm interested in thinking about
00:11:05.100the level at which syphil disobedience needs to be visible to the public, as well as the many
00:11:10.040different ways Extinction Rebellion has gone about this. For example, direct actions include
00:11:15.780blocking major bridges across the Thames, planting trees in Parliament Square, staging mass die-ins,
00:11:22.540disrupting train services to performative artistic forms of action. So I'd love if you could speak to
00:11:29.440these different forms of action and how they each are important in their own right, and then maybe
00:11:36.200touch on specific importance of taking action that is, above everything else, economically disruptive.
00:11:43.740Yeah, so I think it's been really important that creativity has been at the heart of
00:11:47.660all of our actions I think it's unsurprising that there are many artists in the actions team
00:11:53.660who are designing the actions because it's really important that obviously disruptive action gains
00:11:59.340the media's attention as well as those in power and when you have that attention to use that to
00:12:06.360vision what we want to see in the future and so during the international rebellion we had
00:12:13.460occupied four areas of london and three of those areas represented our three demands visioning
00:12:20.180what we wanted to see using the symbol of a boat to talk about the truth of sea level rising
00:12:25.760and the climate emergency and we we put that boat just down the road from the bbc
00:12:30.820the kind of the biggest media hub in london and uh we created a garden bridge visioning the future
00:12:38.800we want to see talking about acting now to, you know, increase biodiversity. We planted 47 trees
00:12:46.520on that bridge and they were all chosen because they're good at dealing with air pollution. Those
00:12:50.560trees have now been given to community gardens around London who suffer from serious air
00:12:56.240pollution, including the Grenfell Community Garden and other community gardens around London.
00:13:02.760And then in Parliament Square, we actually held people's assemblies, where a demonstration of what a citizens assembly set up by the government could be, where people discussed what they want to do about the climate and ecological emergency, right outside Parliament, kind of showing that direct democracy in action.
00:13:22.080And so that's been the case with all of our actions. And I think it's really important that economic disruption is how you get the attention of people in power.
00:13:35.340You know, they feel pressure if the police are stretched economically, if the businesses in central London are stretched economically, that is when the people in power are going to be really pressured and they're going to feel like they have to respond to these demands.
00:13:50.280And by keeping up economic disruption like we did for 11 days, that really put pressure on the people in power to do something.
00:13:58.140But it was really important that we kept the creativity as part of that, as a way to make these spaces friendly, welcoming, nonviolent, but also as a way to tell our story through the media attention we were getting about what we want to see change in the world, really.
00:14:14.500I can just elaborate more on the People's Assemblies that were held in Parliament Square.
00:14:21.700So we had speakers speak about new forms of democracy, alternative economics, and international solidarity.
00:14:32.560And then after each of those, we held People's Assemblies, which is a form of deliberative democracy,
00:14:39.560where you're getting people together in small groups
00:19:08.460And I really have to say I honour those
00:19:11.760who are willing to get arrested at all
00:19:14.960and especially those who are willing to take on more
00:19:19.000of that responsibility like the people you were talking about in France.
00:19:23.020Now I want to ask as well, what is the importance of breaking the law
00:19:27.720And how have you navigated between causing enough of a disturbance to rupture people from psychosis, while not tipping the scale over into an area in which the state solely seeks to remove you? And I'm wondering maybe if you'd like to discuss this in relation to your new publication, This Is Not a Drill, an Extinction Rebellion Handbook, which will be released June 13th.
00:19:51.980Yeah, so something that's been really interesting and tricky to navigate is the fact that we've been so open and public about our willingness to risk arrest and be disrupted to the point where we've actually built a relationship with the Metropolitan Police to a certain extent.
00:20:12.060and we actually go and tell them in person anything that's in the public knowledge about
00:20:20.540our actions and we remind them in a personal and human way about our non-violence and about why
00:20:27.020we're doing this and about the emergency and I think that's gained a very different response
00:20:33.800from the police the obviously it's very location specific the police in in London and the UK have
00:20:40.800been drastically cut and affected by austerity and so they're stretched and they're perhaps not
00:20:46.980as willing to enact what the government would like necessarily and perhaps they're using our
00:20:54.040protest as a demonstration for the fact that they're under-resourced and they need more funding
00:20:59.060but also many of the officers that we've we've spoken with and met on the ground are also you
00:21:06.460know care about their children they care about their children's futures and I think they're you
00:21:11.240know they see a diverse group of people sitting on the road calmly it's clearly not a mob of people
00:21:18.060they have to respond in this very slow calm way and we've purposely designed a lot of these mass
00:21:26.100actions to to be people are only really risking the kind of lowest level of criminal charge by
00:21:32.480sitting on the road in the uk you risk a charge of obstruction of the highway which is a really
00:21:38.000low criminal charge and we purposely designed these so that with um as little kind of resource
00:21:45.920drain as possible to create a mass impact and a mass economic disruption if we were to go and
00:21:52.680like actually for example kind of break into an oil refinery or do something you know where we
00:22:00.040damaged property immediately those charges would be drastically increased and it would reduce who
00:22:05.680would be able to take part and so we've purposely designed ways that we can we can be non-violent
00:22:11.980risk a low criminal charge but create mass economic disruption and gain a lot of attention
00:22:17.880and i think partly that's that's been different from other non-violent protests in recent years
00:22:27.000because of the openness with the police to actually say look we are going to do this and
00:22:31.800we are going to risk arrest and that's actually put them on the back foot in a lot of ways because
00:22:35.900they've been unwilling to arrest us because they know that that's part of our strategy and if they
00:22:41.500do arrest a lot of us we'll then get more attention and potentially more support so they're always
00:22:46.180having to roll that dice over do they allow this to continue and therefore more people see that
00:22:52.240they actually have the power to come and join us and sit on the streets or do they take a
00:22:56.820harder approach which they may do soon the met has now said in response to the international
00:23:01.620rebellion that they want to take a harder approach next time it'll be interesting again to see how
00:23:07.620much that's pr in terms of their government funding and how much that actually happens on
00:23:11.980the street but if they roll that dice of taking a hard approach will we get a backfiring effect
00:23:17.840of more people coming and joining and saying why are you attacking these mothers who are non-violently
00:23:22.820sitting on the road? Why are you arresting this 82-year-old who cares about his grandchildren's
00:23:29.300future? And so that's kind of the dilemma action that we're framing for both the politicians and
00:23:36.840the police when we're taking these non-violent actions. And This Is Not a Drill is a handbook
00:23:44.240for a rebellion that's going to be published very soon. It's had contributions from a whole range of
00:23:50.460people across our movement and academics who are interested in non-violent, interested in
00:23:55.960climate justice. My section of the book is about how to block a bridge. We've actually had lots of
00:24:03.260other activist groups come to us now and see that they no longer need to do an A to B march.
00:24:08.860They actually can, you know, take non-violent civil disobedience and get a lot more effect
00:24:14.140from their protest. And so we've trained groups in London, for example, an anti-knife crime
00:24:19.720coalition mostly made up of mothers who care about their children's lives just like we care
00:24:25.480about our children's lives and we train them in how to block a bridge and so this this handbook
00:24:30.420hopefully will allow like this kind of resistance to grow and continue because i think as well as
00:24:36.720it being amazing that parliament's now declared a climate and environment emergency in the uk i
00:24:41.560think it's really amazing that hopefully more groups will start to take non-violent civil
00:24:46.380disobedience and see that they can actually organize effective protests and get lots of
00:24:51.880people involved. Because when we actually take these disruptive actions, we're seeing
00:24:56.720our movement grow rapidly. The first action we did in October, when we declared a rebellion
00:25:02.960against the government, we grew from 3,000 followers on Facebook to 9,000 just in that
00:25:08.680first day of disruptive action. We see every time we take mass disruption, our movement grows again
00:25:15.020internationally now as well and so i think hopefully other movements will see that actually
00:25:20.720by taking disruption you don't scare people off as people often worry about you actually get more
00:25:26.640people involved because they see that this is actually a route to changing the system just in
00:25:32.000terms of the yeah longevity of the movement as well i think another key thing that kind of xris
00:25:36.780focused on at least at the action senate it was palpable is the support networks the well-being
00:25:42.100and the police station arrestee support making sure that like anyone that is putting themselves
00:25:46.300into a vulnerable position um has proper support networks built in um and in terms of the the book
00:25:52.980that um i've contributed to is how to create a kind of a well-being group who who are at the
00:25:58.800action and are there both for like the people that are involved and the people that bring themselves
00:26:02.640involved with situation but the whole uh space the public making sure that everyone is kind of safe
00:26:07.480and held and hopefully to prevent kind of burnout so that we are able to kind of keep on going
00:26:13.740because yeah that that's also really important lots of new people all the time which is fantastic
00:26:18.800and amazing and we love them but it's also good to kind of make sure that we're taking care of
00:26:22.740the people that are there from from the start as well and on that point I'd just like to add so
00:26:27.440there are a lot of different roles for people within the movement that are non-arrestable so
00:26:34.240people who don't want to get arrested can be the people who are waiting outside of the police
00:26:40.540station for those who were arrested to give them a hug and some oranges and whatever and make sure
00:26:48.240that they have a play you know if they're released in the middle of the night that they they have a
00:26:52.060way to get home etc so that's just one non-arrestable role but there are several based
00:26:59.120to kind of around outreach and art and training and facilitating yeah there is a within the
00:27:08.460organism we also have a lot of like we're trying to organize ourselves in a very non-hierarchical
00:27:14.640way and there are a lot of people working on the kind of democracy of the movement and how we enact
00:27:20.900that within the movement so there's kind of a lot of roles to be filled perhaps by non-arrestable
00:27:57.860I am the water, I am the air, I am the earth, we are the spirit, if you can hear it, I am the earth, you are the earth, if you can see it, you can truly be it, oh, if you can feel it, you can truly be it, oh, revolution is in the air, oh, revolution is here if you can.
00:28:27.860Oh, revolution, tear in the wind, oh, revolution, starts within, so sing, sing your heart out, sing it loud and clear, oh, sing your heart out, let everyone know you hear, let everyone know you hear.
00:28:51.140Speaking to the longevity of the movement and also the relationship with the police, and I hear that on one hand, Extinction Rebellion emphasizes their strategic decision to communicate with law enforcement, and that by maintaining a positive relationship with the police, people are hopefully arrested with dignity.
00:29:12.600And I'm wondering if this tactic can be applied globally, or do you think it's just specific to the UK and it doesn't hurt that the people, many of the people in Extinction Rebellion seem to be more privileged, upper class, white activists.
00:29:32.320So I guess what I'm wondering is, you know, how would this play out the United States? Would the relationship with the police still work if the people who were protesting were immigrants or Muslims, etc? Would that, you know, how would that dynamic shift in your mind?
00:29:47.580i think there is definitely a recognition that um although we can be polite the police is a
00:29:56.600historically institutionally racist thing that that is kind of there is a recognition of that
00:30:03.440and although we can still see every police officer as someone who who will be facing the
00:30:09.340same things that we face that the institution has its issues and i was in a meeting earlier
00:30:15.500on today where we were talking about supporting specifically anyone with an identity that may be
00:30:22.180more vulnerable to to the police in um if they if they were arrested or at an action uh what what
00:30:29.080support would go into that as well but yeah i think across the world it's very different as well
00:30:33.900yeah i think every country is going to have to work out its own um strategy for action and it's
00:30:41.100really important that our international solidarity network which is supporting groups across the
00:30:47.800world who are starting to do xr actions is it's really looking to support the climate work that's
00:30:54.840already going on in that country and and work out ways extinction rebellion can kind of just
00:31:00.200continue that and support that and rather than you know prescribing exactly how each group take
00:31:08.860action again countries um sometimes rewrite their demands because they're in a in a different
00:31:15.220political situation and the demands need to be need to be phrased differently for their
00:31:20.740individual situation so it needs to be worked out yeah for every country but also even regionally
00:31:26.200you know police around the uk are different from force to force i think yeah what extinction
00:31:33.580rebellion is doing in terms of building this relationship or having an openness with the
00:31:40.580police here is really trying to follow on from this strategy that we really do need a shift in
00:31:46.780the security forces for any non-violent movement to be successful and so it's a strategic decision
00:31:53.300it's not a moral judgment on the police and we're aware that of the classism and racism embedded in
00:32:00.300you know in the security forces way of dealing with public disorder you know the vice commissioner
00:32:07.140for the metropolitan police just compared extinction rebellion to the 2011 riots in
00:32:14.260london which were policed completely differently and people received severe sentences for very
00:32:22.520minor crimes and i think this is as well as having this international solidarity group we've now got a
00:32:28.760UK solidarity group which is going out to communities similar to what I was describing as
00:32:33.620we did with this anti-knife crime campaign we gave them some training on a issue that we're
00:32:39.960dealing with that they wanted to use our tactics around we gave that training we're offering other
00:32:45.680trainings around different things to other groups and really trying to meet different community
00:32:50.440groups where they're at and and follow their lead about how they how they want to act on this issue
00:32:56.440or other issues rather than prescribing a way of acting in.
00:33:01.140Now, I have a question that may seem really simple,
00:33:04.240but I know that the Declaration of Climate Emergency in the UK
00:33:07.780does not actually legally require the government
00:45:19.100O great spirit, give me back the courage of the old people, and through it, rise up and go on, rise up and go on.
00:45:37.840so perhaps you can begin by differentiating a citizens versus a people's assembly and then
00:45:50.180share why extinction rebellion thought it necessary to include this demand how does the
00:45:55.320implementation of citizens assemblies reduce the possible strengthening of shock doctrines for
00:46:01.020example where powers utilize crisis to justify ideological agendas or what measures are taken
00:46:10.280in the formation of citizen assemblies to ensure a diverse group is represented also who is in
00:46:16.800charge of presenting information and what sort of oversight is guaranteed i know those are a lot of
00:46:22.620questions but you know you can kind of popcorn around which ones y'all want to answer so the
00:46:28.940difference between a citizen's and a people's assembly is well there are several so first of
00:46:35.840all a citizen's assembly is selected by sortition this is basically a word that means random
00:46:43.200selection much as you would select a jury so plus this is also done in a way called stratified
00:46:51.540random sampling which is when you kind of use quotas to ensure that the assembly is representative
00:47:00.920of the group or the community that it is trying to represent so that's one of the key differences
00:47:08.020also just citizens assemblies are a very formal process that will take months to organize and
00:47:16.360they will be done by a professional organization that know exactly how to do that and they usually
00:47:21.860take place over a few weekends so that in contrast to a people's assembly both utilize deliberative
00:47:30.220democracy so both have people sitting in small groups and discussing and deliberating with each
00:47:37.420other however people's assemblies are usually self-selected we could have a people's assembly
00:47:43.060kind of anywhere any place any time just whoever shows up and that's what we did throughout the
00:47:49.860rebellion we were just having them on the spot in parliament square at oxford's circus and we had
00:47:56.080them there on many different topics as i previously mentioned but it was also great to just call one
00:48:02.100towards the end of the rebellion to see what should our exit strategy be and just call on
00:48:07.580the movement of all of the people who were camping there in marble arch and asked them how how they
00:48:13.380wanted to go out did they want to go out with a bang or they did they want to you know should we
00:48:18.660should we focus on kind of cleaning the space and leaving marble arch looking quite tidy when we
00:48:24.400left and which is quite what we ended up doing but also that we had a closing ceremony anyway
00:48:30.140So those are the key differences between citizens and people's assemblies.
00:48:37.420One of the other, so you also asked about how it is organized.
00:48:44.240There are kind of several organizational bodies.
00:48:48.380One is an independent coordinators organization, which should be independent and nonpartisan.
00:48:55.860they would be selected by via tendering process and there are kind of several different mechanisms
00:49:03.820and it can get quite complicated but for example you could randomly select a small group of people
00:49:10.860who would choose who won that tendering process for example if you were worried about the government
00:49:17.480having influence you know that the government would just choose whatever organization would
00:49:23.020fall in line with them for example then there will be like an oversight body who are monitoring the
00:49:29.720independent coordinators and then there will also be an expert panel so the independent coordinators
00:49:36.920would be setting the criteria of who is considered an expert and who is considered a stakeholder
00:49:43.420they don't make a selection of who they want in that group they just set the criteria
00:49:49.040And then of the people who meet that criteria, perhaps some trusted organization, trusted by all parties, including special interest groups, which I guess you could consider Extinction Rebellion as, but also government, hopefully an independent organization, such as, I don't know, something like an independent society of climate scientists.
00:50:16.460and they would be the ones who would select the experts and those experts would then represent
00:50:23.260a range of views within their specific fields to give a very comprehensive and balanced view
00:50:31.180to the citizens assembly and then the same would be done with stakeholders who would represent
00:50:38.620their opinions and how decisions and how policies will will affect them how they're how they're
00:50:45.760affected by the status quo and how they may be affected by potential policies that the citizens
00:50:51.560assembly are considering and also the citizens assembly themselves can decide who they want to
00:50:59.280hear more from they can decide we want to hear more on renewable energy or we want to hear more
00:51:05.940on x y or z policy and they can also decide that in relation to stakeholders too so the citizens
00:51:12.520assembly themselves do have power to determine where where they go and who they hear more from
00:51:19.440what they what they want to learn more about this has been such an incredible conversation i
00:51:24.860definitely feel back in the days of feeling yeah just energized and feeling like there's these
00:51:33.360sparks being a fed kindling and i want to offer you all this time to wrap up the conversation
00:51:40.940in whatever way you feel like it's important to you what you know speak to whatever you feel
00:51:45.760hasn't been said in the interview so far or what you want to leave people with I'd love to hear
00:51:50.040from each of you I think I'd like to talk a little bit more about grief I think it's something that
00:51:58.380is really integral to what makes XOR unique and I think if we could successfully bring that to
00:52:09.760to kind of create a cultural shift around that towards dealing with that effectively
00:52:16.460and also holding each other and supporting each other through that I think that could be an
00:52:22.260immensely powerful thing and I think quite frankly it's exactly what needs to happen
00:52:27.500for us all to come to terms with where we are and without just becoming completely
00:52:36.160despondent and and just be you know just continuing with our lives as is and saying well
00:52:41.760what does it matter anyway i'm going to be dead in 10 years i might as well
00:52:45.620keep enjoying the convenience of of capitalism so i think really yeah i'm definitely
00:52:54.680i i kind of encourage everybody listening to this to kind of try to think about how you are
00:53:03.360coming to terms with the future that is currently awaiting us and how you were grieving for for the
00:53:12.680state that we are already in and and the hundreds of species thousands of species that have already
00:53:18.040gone extinct just hearing about another subspecies of rhino that that has gone extinct um in the last
00:53:25.280few days so I think this is it can be a very powerful emotion to drive us forward really
00:53:35.900I hope that people can connect to that in a way that is effective and a way that allows them to
00:53:43.660move forward rather than disables them yeah I think just on that still kind of going through
00:53:50.500that last point in my mind it's like when we are sitting down in the roads we often get this oh but
00:53:54.900you're creating more air pollution or you know some of the the best emails we've had to the
00:54:01.320action team have been you use facebook i thought you were completely ethical but it's you know
00:54:06.660it's like how do we find ways to do something about this crisis and i think the big difference
00:54:13.840from those marches is that we are as extinction rebellion willing to create economic disruption
00:54:19.520and we're willing to take non-violent civil disobedience and break the law and i think it's
00:54:23.700time now for people to really consider how they can come together with other people and and be
00:54:31.320powerful and create change through whatever way they see fit but I think through non-violent civil
00:54:37.960disobedience really because whether we get it exactly right every time and you know we're not
00:54:44.040going to we will make mistakes and we'll continue to try and learn and and debrief from our actions
00:54:48.980and engage with different communities and it's amazing to see how different people all around
00:54:54.040the world now are taking up the mantle of extinction rebellion and doing actions that
00:54:58.940are relative to where they are and it's just beautiful to see how different people's creativity
00:55:04.080is involved in doing that around the world so i think it's just you know let's just all reflect
00:55:08.900on how we can just do something rather than be passive now in this time of emergency i would like
00:55:16.340to speak to something as well that is is very important to me which is tortured already but is
00:55:21.700is the nature connection is the respect of the natural cycles of things and that we have lost
00:55:27.860touch with that we've been so removed from and continuing a kind of awareness that if we're
00:55:32.880trying to change a system because it's like fundamentally and uncaring and destructive
00:55:36.920to start to kind of feel into what that difference might be so I myself after this I'm going to go
00:55:42.640for a walk outside and i just want to say that and i'm going to get my hands in the soil and i can't
00:55:47.280wait oh me too me too i'm i think the nature connection is absolutely incredibly important
00:55:56.180the healing that comes from both sides i think not just our own healing but the the healing of
00:56:01.740the earth and the land to feel us again to feel us acknowledging them touching them being with them
00:56:08.280And the grief, because if we are acknowledging the land, the earth, the humans, our non-human kin, it is a time full of grief. And to not be able to be aware of that is, I think, a real disservice to our relationship with the planet right now.
00:56:26.240and I love that Extinction Rebellion ties in the grief
00:56:29.140because I do think it is a huge missing component