Sheffield 2019/Extinction Rebellion Discussion
Extinction Rebellion discussion CoTech
Q: what're the next steps for ER?
A: see what action politicians take, continue escalating non-violent direct action
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Q: can you explain more about citizens assemblies? is anyone working on the tech?
A: successful examples in Ireland
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Q: some people have felt alienated by rhetoric from ER towards the police -- not to do with getting arrested, more what's been said -- but feel conflicted because it's a serious issue.
A1: different people have different experiences of the police, some might get much worse treatment. ER needs to accept that that is the case, many roles are completely non-arrestable. discussion within the group, particularly around "we love you" chants at the police
A2: focus on arrest is partly to do with the media
A3: policy of people stepping forward to be arrested has been successful, really hard to arrest 100 people at the same time. 0-3 people might be arrested out of a large group. we internalise the state in this country
Q: this movement interacts with e.g. Black Lives Matter, I hope to see more acknowledgement of that, and an intersectional approach
A: London XR group hoping to do an action with Greenfell soon, saw it as important for it to be led by them rather than XR. some of the London sites were more representative than others depending on geography.
A: We've known about climate change for ~100 years, and first conference was in early 90s. Tactics so far not working. Climate change is an intersectinal issue, refugees will be coming from global south
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Q: what could CoTech do to help?
A: Helping meet core XR aims: communicating accurate information about the crisis, and engineering to reach carbon neutrality. e.g. improving national grid, "massive control systems". Supply chain issues, e.g. conflict minerals