They’re rising. And when I say ‘they’re’ I don’t mean them. I mean us. We’re rising. The people.
You might remember us. We’ve done it before. We’ve brought down governments. We’ve beheaded the aristocracy. Currently we’ve been corralled into our capitalist feedlots, doe-eyed with mortgages, addictions, obesity, and this belief that we’re powerless.
But we’re not. The sedation is wearing off. We are angry people. Pissed-off people. People tired of waiting. People who know we’ve got f-all time to make the systemic change that might have a a chance to turn back the impending environmental armageddon.
This is no time to sit back and be polite. This is the time to rattle the cage. To scream. To disrupt. To bring attention to what matters. Last week in Brisbane 70 people got arrested at a peaceful sit-in that shut down parts of the Brisbane CBD and caused ‘commuter chaos’.
One of the arrested was a quoll. Well not an actual quoll. A guy in a quoll suit. Watching the police trying to contain a guy in a fur suit was both hysterical and heartbreaking. We are arresting the wrong people.
The real cause of social disruption isn’t a bunch of people having a sit-in for climate change; it’s corporation. Don’t arrest a guy in a quoll suit; go grab a few corporate honchos, arrest the CEOs. And their shareholders. They’re not just stopping a little bit of traffic, they’re co-conspirators in the END of the WORLD. And the end of the world is about as inconvenient as it gets.
Welcome to the Extinction Rebellion. XR. The door is open for you to step through and join the uprising. This is global. All around the world activists are making noise about climate change and demanding immediate action because their politicians were too weak or self-invested to act on their behalf. Because their governments are handmaidens to corporation. Because everyone wants to get elected and no-one wants to be the architect of real change.
Our governments continue to pass the environmental buck to the next incumbent. It’s like Pass the Parcel. Except what’s in the parcel isn’t a plastic toy. It’s our planet. It’s us, our kids’ future, and by the time the music stops and the last idiot unwraps it there’ll be nothing left. Except plastic of course. There will be a shit load of plastic.
The Extinction Rebellion is here. This is a sociopolitical movement that uses civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance to protest against climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. Last week when they shut down parts of the Brisbane CBD the reaction by the Queensland premier and Brisbane Council was to suggest that ‘inconveniencing’ people was not a good way of getting attention about climate change. Bullshit. That was a lead story. The Quoll being arrested is all over social media.
I’d say it’s a bloody good tactic. This IS the time to inconvenience people. Remember Al Gore’s movie The Inconvenient Truth? That was his attempt nearly 14 years ago to educate people about global warming. It wasn’t enough. This is not about payback. This is not about global terrorism. It’s about survival.
In London, the Extinction Rebellion have their sights on the textile industry and London Fashion Week and they’re demanding instead a people’s assembly of industry professionals and designers as a platform to declare a climate and ecological emergency. If this doesn’t happen they’ll blockade the venues. Because even in this tech savvy world, something as simple as a blockade still works.
Like the kids in Brisbane who blocked a bridge with their kayaks… and then were called ‘spoilt brats’ by the Courier Mail. Wow, when did wanting a sustainable future make you a spoilt brat? Aren’t we, the generation 50-plus, the baby boomers, the economic groomers… aren’t we the spoilt brats? Aren’t we the greedy change-resistant generations who have forced our kids onto the streets in protest?
The Extinction Revolution is here. And you are either part of the solution, or you are the problem. You decide. But I should warn you. There’s no time. Become an Inconvenience.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
