{"id":175008,"date":"2020-12-14T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=175008"},"modified":"2020-12-13T07:55:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T07:55:17","slug":"to-force-climate-action-we-need-more-than-just-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/12\/to-force-climate-action-we-need-more-than-just-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"To Force Climate Action, We Need More Than Just Protests"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two years ago, the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion both captured media attention through bold direct action. Since then, Sunrise has combined protest with political work challenging fossil-fuel interests. XR and other groups tepid about electoral politics should do the same.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Supporters of the Extinction Rebellion movement dance to disco hits during a “Discobedience” protest in Berlin, 2020. (Sean Gallup \/ Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

11 Dec 2020 – <\/em>In November 2018, two climate activist groups crashed onto the public stage. In Washington, DC, the Sunrise Movement occupied Nancy Pelosi\u2019s office, demanding a Green New Deal (GND). In central London, Extinction Rebellion (XR) seized five bridges, blocking traffic with their camps and getting arrested at an even faster rate than Sunrise.<\/p>\n

A month earlier, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report had declared that humanity had only twelve years to act to limit ecological catastrophe. Student strikes led by Greta Thunberg were kicking off across the world; it felt like a new era in climate activism.<\/p>\n

Both Sunrise and XR engage in nonviolent direct action, and much of their activity is run by semiautonomous local chapters: Sunrise has over four hundred \u201chubs\u201d in the United States, while XR has nearly five hundred in Britain and dozens of other countries. Yet they follow starkly different approaches to politics. XR has stayed mostly on the \u201coutside,\u201d pushing for change through protests and cultural renewal, while Sunrise has combined such actions with direct political involvement.<\/p>\n

In last December\u2019s British election, XR sat on the sidelines, proclaiming itself \u201cbeyond politics\u201d even as parties with a decent climate plan challenged a right-wing prime minister with an abysmal climate record<\/a>. By contrast, Sunrise mobilized to help oust Donald Trump, a climate change denier, even though the alternative candidate was uninspiring.<\/p>\n

XR\u2019s abstention can\u2019t be blamed for the Labour Party\u2019s loss, and Sunrise played a relatively small role in Donald Trump\u2019s defeat. But Sunrise\u2019s electoral efforts have helped propel many pro-climate candidates to victory \u2014 and pushed Democrats to take bolder policy stands. Beyond its short-term results, Sunrise has begun to build a political machine that could be a model for other climate activist groups including XR and Fridays for Future (FFF), the main organization behind the school strikes.<\/p>\n

XR and FFF are larger and better-known internationally than Sunrise, and this makes it all the more important that they channel their energies strategically. With the planet heating up and less than a decade to act, it\u2019s time for climate activist groups to convert their disruptive capacity into concrete political influence.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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The Sunrise Machine<\/h1>\n

Though run by young people, Sunrise has matured into a political force. Its founders cut their teeth on pipeline and divestment campaigns in the mid-2010s, and they were inspired by Bernie Sanders\u2019s 2016 primary run. They launched Sunrise in 2017 as a hybrid group that would protest and<\/em> do electoral organizing, including by campaigning for pro-GND, left-wing candidates.<\/p>\n

It recently helped New York\u2019s Jamaal Bowman and Missouri\u2019s Cori Bush to upset primary wins over establishment Democrats in blue seats, ensuring their election to Congress. Sunrise also produces savvy ads, such as one that dubbed Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who faced an establishment challenger, the \u201cGreen New Dealmaker<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Sanders\u2019s defeat, Sunrise could have shut down its operations. Instead, it kept building them to beat Trump and help down-ballot candidates. This summer, Sunrise executive director Varshini Prakash was invited to join the Biden-Sanders unity task force on the climate. She helped convince Biden\u2019s team that a strong climate platform was a political winner, especially with young voters. \u00a0Now, Sunrise is in a position to pressure him to follow through on his declaration that climate is his \u201cnumber one issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahead of November\u2019s election, Sunrise reached millions of young voters<\/a> by phone and through social media. It helped fuel a surge of youth turnout; eighteen- to twenty-nine year olds were a bigger share of the electorate, even as the number of elderly voters also increased.<\/p>\n

Young people ultimately put Biden over the top, with \u201cnet youth votes for Biden<\/a>\u201d exceeding his margin of victory in decisive swing states. Meanwhile, the GND had success down-ballot. Ninety-two of ninety-three House cosponsors of the GND resolution won reelection, including four in swing districts<\/a>. (There are 101 cosponsors<\/a> in the 435-member House, but several are retiring; fourteen<\/a> out of a hundred Senators cosponsor the resolution.)<\/p>\n

Sunrise\u2019s decision to go all in for Biden was controversial on the Left, but it helped lead to immediate, consequential change, however insufficient. Its bolder efforts may take more time to pay off. Targeting \u201cRed to Green New Deal\u201d seats, it campaigned for eight left-wing candidates taking on Republican incumbents in Congress \u2014 but none came close to winning.<\/p>\n

Still, it was always going to be difficult to go from zero to GND in just two years. And Sunrise is helping to build networks and institutional capacity for the future.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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A Not So Rebellious Rebellion<\/h1>\n

From the start, XR\u2019s orientation has been rather different. One cofounder, Gail Bradbrook, is a scientist and former NGO project manager. A miner\u2019s daughter, she today lives in Stroud, a prosperous English town with a bobo vibe; she has said she was inspired to start XR after using psychedelics in Latin America.<\/p>\n

In 2018, before the bridge-taking in London, Bradbrook and others started giving a \u201cHeading for Extinction<\/a>\u201d talk across Britain. It was heavy on science and light on power dynamics. \u201cClimate change is not a political issue, it\u2019s a moral issue,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Some of the same messaging has endured. Last year, my local XR chapter proclaimed itself \u201cA-political\u201d and \u201cneutral\u201d on social media, arguing for \u201ccross-party\u201d solutions. The press team recently wrote on Twitter that XR was \u201cnot a socialist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

This approach has doubtless succeeded in drawing in some people who wouldn\u2019t join a left-wing organization or are alienated from politics. It\u2019s also unleashed a surge of energy, tapping into a talent for spectacle among its activists.<\/p>\n

Before protests, they \u201cpaint the streets\u201d with brightly colored posters, flags, and badges, many adorned with XR\u2019s signature hourglass. During protests, they samba, hula-hoop, and move through synchronized \u201cmourning\u201d rituals (for the dying natural world), all while the police try to remove them from the streets.<\/p>\n

Last year, its protests helped prompt the UK parliament to declare a climate emergency and strengthen its decarbonization plan. Yet this didn\u2019t mean substantive climate action. In general, XR hasn\u2019t had the concentrated or measurable political influence that Sunrise has.<\/p>\n

On a given week, when major actions aren\u2019t on, XR activists might create community gardens, lobby local councils, or form tree protection brigades at construction sites. This is laudable work, but not enough to bring the drastic structural change that\u2019s needed. XR activists call themselves \u201crebels\u201d and refer to multiday actions as \u201cuprisings\u201d even when these events\u2019 end times are announced in advance. But what exactly is XR rebelling against?<\/p>\n

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(Joel de Vriend \/ Unsplash)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As political ecologist Heather Alberro wrote<\/a> recently in the Conversation<\/em>, \u201c[W]ithout a political analysis of the problem, XR risks leading a mass of motivated people nowhere.\u201d Indeed, the people at BP, Barclays, Ineos, and Conservative campaign headquarters can\u2019t be very worried about XR in its current form \u2014 it presents little direct challenge to their power. Boris Johnson\u2019s own father, himself a Tory, joined the street protests, as if to stamp them \u201cnonthreatening.\u201d<\/p>\n

XR sat out Britain\u2019s December 2019 general election, aside from a few publicity stunts, and refused to draw distinctions<\/a> between parties. When Labour slightly dialed back its climate commitments due to union concerns that a rapid green transition would hurt workers, XR dressed the party down rather than sizing it up next to the Tories. This revealed a lack of perspective \u2014 a puritanical bent \u2014 and an unwillingness to seek common ground with the working class.<\/p>\n

XR\u2019s main foray into politics has come via its push for \u201ccitizens\u2019 assemblies\u201d in which randomly selected juries of non-party, non-experts set policy. It recently lobbied for a Climate and Ecological Emergency bill in Parliament, putting major focus on such assemblies. Very few MPs support the bill.<\/p>\n

Citizens\u2019 assemblies, while an interesting idea, are hardly a cure-all. To demand them is to delay addressing the most difficult political questions; it indicates a na\u00efve belief that presenting \u201cthe truth\u201d convincingly is enough to effect change. Indeed, \u201ctell the truth\u201d is one of XR\u2019s demands and slogans.<\/p>\n

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