Rebellions aren't easy: where do we go from here?

Thanks Douglas. I know the feeling about busy periods so that's fine. I am in an extended one myself! I followed up because I seemed to have missed the boat at the time as you had replied to all the other responses. I really wanted to make a link as I'd like to be connected to XR emerging thinking about the way XR's special nature works at local level with all the community actions there are already there. Huge potential but it won't be realised well enough without thought and reflection. I just ask that you link me in when this point comes up. And if and when you get time to read my paper I'd be glad to hear your thoughts on how it might help to think through some of XR's issues. Thanks.

My personal email is changing in the next couple of months and now needs to be changed on this site as at some point I will not get messages in my inbox. I don't know how to do that so I will give here Peckham Vision's email address - [email protected] - which will still get to me so ask if you would email me as well on that when you are ready to make a connection on this site .

 I think xr could lead a transitional action. do'able in or out of lockdown. The concept is that "climate INCOME" tax is a critical part (BEST? ) of how we transition and subsidising fossil fuels is the  worst (WORST? ) of the fiscal directives out there (worse than banks conceptually). By withholding our proportion of tax that goes to fossil fuel subsidies and starting a voluntary climate income fund which we try to donate to government (maybe at each local level ), we cause PR by both withholding (eg. news articles ) and by donating (eg. event presenting funds ) whilst leading by example and demonstrating this willingness. The undertone is everyone becomes more familiar with "climate income" See: 

https://citizensclimatelobby.uk and the end of this video 

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change/up-next?language=en

What do you think?

Regards, Adi

Sounds cool! I'll admit, I'm no tax laywer, so I find it hard to evaluate that side of things. I guess my main concerns would be that from a movement/momentum-building perspective, it might further confuse our collective understanding of action strategy: at one point we had a very clear focus that change happens on streets, and that all else was in support of concentrating on this pressure point. My impression is we've diffused from this a bit, with many good results but perhaps also a deeper of loss of identity or clarity, to the extent that there (rumour has it) entire local groups that don't believe in taking direct action(!).
My other concern would be PR - there'd be a risk of being painted as 'privileged tax-dodgers'. It'd need really sensitive management (I can imagine certain tabloids would do everything to get a photo of a rebel with a Starbucks coffee or an iphone, or a scoop that they had tutored kids or something) but I'm sure this could be done.

I think in both cases the main factor would just be timing. Pre-October I think this would have been great; as is I'd see this working best after we've got a less tendentious public narrative. Hopefully that won't be too long!
In any case, I think it's already in the works! https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/extinction-rebellion-plan-to-withhold-taxes-czg0f5d60

Hi. Thanks for reply. Yes I think this tax refusal on link you sent - at a time when NHS etc needs funds and recession could be perceived wrong and give xr bad press. To withhold only the proportion which is used to subsidise fossil fuels is micro and so wouldn't damage government coffers or individual landlords but would make a point and show government how redistributing resources ought to happen. Still, it's underway now so maybe next time...

I like the idea but .....when XR's main strategy is expecting the government to react to its

demands and get on with sorting out the CEE the Gov will need funds to do it. Its possibly also a privileged action (for self employed people ) as most working , tax paying, people have their tax deducted by HMRC via PAYE before they have a chance to even consider not paying it.

Good point about PAYE. Maybe it'd have to come our if council tax, then almost indiscriminate.

Sorry to be rather late to this discussion, but thank you for the article and to everybody for the comments.

My main point will be 'Doing what is necessary'.

1. We should be far less concerned about public reaction to our actions and once we decide on an action, we need to press it to its maximum.

Example: The protest on Parliament Sq, masked and at 4m apart, but still being arrested for no apparent reason. XR is too worried about articles in the papers accusing us of spreading Covid and similar nonsense. All the recent demos are now showing just how responsible our approach was and the contrast regarding damage and violence both at the BLM and the latest unfocused anti BLM demos is enormous. But also a wasted opportunity.

We needed to have defied the authorities and repeat exactly the same dome every Saturday right up to now and into the future. That would have beautifully demonstrated and contrasted our thoughtful approach against the largely disorganised chaos and lack of preparations of the others, improving again our public image and thus recruiting members and attracting finance.

We are unlikely to make the necessary impact by occasional distributed protest around the country. If we cant mount a mass protest, then we should be organising repeated protests regardless of the police reaction to it. Fridays for Future comes to mind.

2. We should do what is necessary and also STOP doing what is not necessary.
That, in my view is the main cause of the exhaustion you speak of and also of member disengagement.
Glaring example of that is this displacement activity (in my view for activities sake) of the major effort and destruction of changing our software systems. I wish nobody ever thought of Mattermost. I don't see the numbers, but it appears pretty inactive in comparison to what we had before. In any case, I find it less user friendly, less informative, most messages are people just joining and leaving some of the hundreds of silos created on it.

Our obsession with secrecy is misplaced. I am sure the police have informers in the inside of most of our groups and are probably better informed of our plans than most of us, ordinary members.

Similarly, I think we must have surely reached peak documentation - another XR obsession. Procedures, documents, presentations etc are being for ever invented, modified, updated, improve - as if that made any measurable difference to our final goals.
We need to keep reminding ourselves that all previous movements on which we model ourselves have not had even 1% of the documentation and administration we seem to generate - and still managed to achieve their goals.
Please let stop this avalanche of displacement activities, most of which stop us doing what is necessary.

3. My final point is on leadership and consultations.
I have noticed that XR now seems to be lead and controlled by mall cliques of mutually supportive officers, who allow discussions and ideas to come through mainly only when they agree with them. I have experienced that first hand, but see it happening everywhere I look within XR.
All the consultation I have been involved in and seen happening are highly constrained and manipulated to ensure that ideas not in agreement with the current local leadership are either not discussed at all, dismissed at an early stage or just left out of the summary.
The PA system is almost designed to support group think and exclude new ideas that may require fair amount of explanation and discussion before they are properly understood.
We need something else in addition.

I suggest that for all future consultations, art from the formal distributed methodology you also explicitly encourage the membership to submit specific proposals, bypassing the normal process, commit yourself to emailing the membership with such proposals and then run a second wave of consultation, including such new ideas.

Or maybe there is a better way of bypassing the XR hierarchy, but a short cut of some kind needs to be found.

I think that will do for now
Love and Rage
Paul

I agree with some of your comments Paul but regarding Mattermost and the UK Hub the reason you don't find much going on there is that many people are not properly aware of it yet. My local group and another nearby are only just starting to get tech champions sorted out and to roll it out to all the group. At present there's no point in me putting much in our town square as there are not many people using it. Give it 2 or 3 weeks and ours will be quite busy I hope. These things take time.

I like the idea of a regular repeat action.. It'll build and people will join from all over country if its, regular enough. Along the same lines, there could be an ongoing action. Eg. Walk around coast of Britain continuously (or more radical version like in middle of motorway central reservation or less radical.. just town to town plan of a crowd continuously walking/campaigning ramble/hike.. ongoing and Web monitored)

We have abandoned a functional system (Basecamp) for an unproven system, which I for one find less intuitive, more spam ridden, much more difficult to navigate and find documents/ information on - and at the same time losing hundreds of members. So far over 6 months wasted on it for zero gain and great losses. My prediction is it will never be as popular or useful as Basecamp and that means the loss of activists will be permanent. What a disaster!
We should be working on what is necessary, not on what maybe good to have.