On Monday 15 April, a pink boat with the words ‘Tell the Truth’ painted on its side dropped anchor at the centre of the Oxford Circus crossroads. And I mean that quite literally: a hole was drilled into the concrete, securing the boat’s harbour for an entire week.
Many of us knew it was coming, of course. Camera crews and eager revellers had been waiting outside high street megastores for several hours by the time Extinction Rebellion’s ‘International Rebellion’ broke out across five of London’s busiest locations – Oxford Circus, Waterloo Bridge, Parliament Square, Marble Arch and Piccadilly Circus. These areas were brought to a standstill for days for what was to become one of the largest acts of non-violent civil disobedience in recent years.
I give the boat a special mention because, for those of us involved in bringing this peaceful protest to life, and of the many thousands who converged on the capital to join in, it became a symbol of poignant resistance in the face of government inaction towards the climate and ecological crisis. Passing commuters found themselves embracing the unexpected, transfixed by the festival atmosphere in an area normally crammed with buses and bustling tourists. For us rebels, the boat, named ‘Berta Cáceres’ after the murdered environmental Honduran activist, will forever be remembered as the symbolic life raft to which we all cling as the climate crisis speeds rapidly out of control.
Because the term ‘Tell the Truth,’ the first of Extinction Rebellion’s three demands, is what we came to do and arguably what we achieved. Across 11 days we made headlines both here in the UK and around the world day after day. Our mix of emergency messaging and family friendly, strictly non-violent engagement has pierced the public consciousness and we’ve seen more than 40,000 people sign up to become volunteers across just one week. More than 1,000 people were arrested in London and 53 charged in order to draw attention to this emergency. Many of them were grandparents who refuse to stand by as their grandchildren’s futures are in peril. Many of them young people angered over a crisis not of their making. And of course, there were many, many parents in attendance with their children, one of whom, seven months pregnant Hanna, became the final person to be arrested at Oxford Circus after 30 hours locked to an iron tube in the unseasonably hot Easter weekend heat.
Not only have these protests started a crucial conversation, but they’ve given a glimpse at the benefits a city can have on its people when it puts them before institutions and unlimited growth. We’ve seen traffic stopped and noisy, air polluted areas opened up to creativity, kindness, idea sharing and regenerative spaces where we’ve engaged directly with the general public about why we must act now. We’ve seen Waterloo Bridge transformed into a temporary garden with trees lining the grubby, diesel stained road, with children free to play games and dance to nearby music. Commuters have stopped by the sites to share food and solidarity. We’ve even seen a boost in air quality around the sites where these protests have been taking place, where “NO2 concentrations were 18% lower than normal while hourly pollution levels were cut by as much as 45% by mid-afternoon.”
Now we look forward with love and hope and continue to take action across the UK and the world, as more groups sprout up in local areas and self-organise. In fact, already this weekend in the UK we’ve seen a sit-in at a supermarket at London’s Kings Cross to highlight the threat of future food shortages, a swarm of bikes rode from Waterloo Bridge to Tate Modern for a mass “die-in”, and Extinction Rebellion activists joined the Save Colne Valley Campaign to protect the water of 3.2million residents yesterday, where activists occupied surrounding trees.
We will also build relationships with our international community and work on how we can support each other in order to create global change. This movement is not about symbolic actions, but about building the necessary resilient and regenerative culture that the world needs. This movement must be accessible to everyone and we encourage all who share our concerns to join us in the next phase of our campaign.
We may have left the physical sites but the rebellion continues. A space for truth-telling has been opened and now we turn our focus to putting pressure on the government and demanding they too tell the truth about this crisis. We will not allow them to go back to “business as usual,” as suggested by Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. It is they who must treat this as an emergency and implement swift, radical changes to our broken system in order to save us from the threat of human extinction. We hope they further engage in this conversation that’s now in the public sphere and ask themselves, if we do not act now to secure a future for our children, then when?
As the sun came up on the final day of protest at Marble Arch a photograph of a new artwork by Banksy began to circulate among activists and in the media. The piece displayed a young girl placing a small white flag on a sandcastle with the words “from this moment despair ends and tactics begin” written next to it. This feels like a perfect end to this phase as we regroup and move forward with this rapidly growing movement. We have created something transformative, powerful and deeply human which has touched the hearts and minds of many. All involved should be immensely proud of what we’ve achieved so far, and ready to continue the momentum that’s been built.
Because the truth is out. Now the real work begins.
Alanna Byrne works on the Extinction Rebellion press team, and with young people in the charity sector