Extinction Rebellion campaign continues

Over 1,000 protesters from the environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion came together in Central London on the Saturday 28th November to demand environmental justice and demand legislative action to confront climate breakdown and the global biodiversity crisis.

The Extinction Rebellion campaign has mobilised thousands of activists across the UK to participate in acts of mass civil disobedience, causing major disruptions across London. This Saturday’s protests blocked Parliament Square, marched on Buckingham Palace and finally went on to block Westminster Bridge. They marched clad in black as a funeral procession, with memorials that were stacked at the Palace gates for all that has been lost and all that might be lost if governmental inaction continues. Saturday’s demonstration follows 2 weeks of action organised by Extinction Rebellion. The previous weekend, 6,000 people gathered on London’s 5 major bridges, blocking all roads across the Thames river and creating gridlock in the city centre in one of the biggest acts of peaceful civil disobedience in the UK in decades.

Some have criticised the movement for the disruptions caused, but the organisers argue that “the ‘social contract’ has been broken...it is therefore not only our right but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty and to rebel to defend life itself.”

In their declaration of rebellion, read aloud by all who participated this weekend at the gates of Buckingham Palace, Extinction Rebellion “call[ed] upon every principled and peaceful citizen to rise with [them].” The declaration ends with the following, “we act in peace, with ferocious love of these lands in our hearts. We act on behalf of life.”