I feel passionately about every video in my YouTube channel highlights playlist:
The first video in the playlist (above) is a rare occasion when I showed anger against ‘the authorities.’ This is footage of me disrupting a council meeting in Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, when I visited in November 2019. In a sense this was a kind of anniversary of me taking part in the disruption of London, when as part of the first mass actions of Extinction Rebellion, I did my small part to help block the city’s bridges (see header image above).
A few days previous to the Charlottetown City Hall action above, I attended the Remembrance Day ceremonies with my partner Daphnee Azoulay. I hate war and the deceitful, colonialist pomp that recalls the dead. Nevertheless on that day of remembrance I observed and took upon myself a vast lake of human feeling which I unleashed during the council meeting disruption. The theatrical action was successful in drawing attention to the climate and ecological emergency on PEI in that it made the front page of The Guardian -one of the island’s most-read newspapers. This impact wasn’t dependent on me getting arrested, which I stopped short of.
Daphnee had given me some emotional and practical coaching for the occasion which was advertised on Facebook as a ‘laugh in’. In the event I felt unable to laugh at the ridiculousness of the proceedings. Instead I burst into tears and anger.
I urge you, if you are feeling overwhelmed, upset or disrupted by the climate and ecological crisis, then break through your paralysis and do something expressive and disruptive to draw attention to it.
Sensitive strategy tip:
Well calculated disruptive actions can stop short of arrestable behaviour, and still make newspaper headlines. In Canada or the UK, you will usually get a warning before arrest. Play with the boundary between non-arrestable and arrestable behaviour and only get arrested if you think it’s truly useful to your cause, or as part of a concerted mass movement to fill jails. Play the long and epic game.
More strategy tips here.
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