In recent months, hundreds of people from coast to coast have confronted politicians in their offices and asked them to take action on climate change. Activists with the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led organization whose mission is to halt climate change and "create millions of good jobs in the process" swarmed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office on Capitol Hill in February, urging him to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey's Green New Deal, which McConnell was planning to torpedo by holding a premature vote. Days before that, a group of young children had done the same at Senator Dianne Feinstein's San Francisco office. In December, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco and D.C. offices were both occupied, and before that . . . well, you get the picture.
Few of these political leaders seem to be listening, however, and it's become clear that a form of climate denialism—or at least, in Ocasio-Cortez's recent parlance, climate delay—remains a bipartisan consensus. When all is said and done, neither party seems interested in enacting bold, transformative policies within the timeframe scientists warn is necessary to avert climate apocalypse. So, in the face of this inaction, and with a renewed sense of urgency, people of all ages and backgrounds have begun taking directly to the streets and participating in mass disruption events in the United States and beyond. One notable event was coordinated late last year by the relatively new group Extinction Rebellion; on November 17, they successfully shut down five major bridges in London through a series of swarms, flash mobs, roadblocks, and other forms of direct action.
Extinction Rebellion was launched by activists from the organization Rising Up! at the end of October 2018, shortly after the publication of the groundbreaking UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which outlined the mere twelve years we have left to radically transform all aspects of the global economy in order to avoid full-blown climate apocalypse. On October 31, the group held their first action, convening an assembly of more than a thousand people at Parliament Square, where they formally declared rebellion against the UK government and performed a sit-in on the roadway which resulted in fifteen arrests. Extinction Rebellion continued coordinating relatively small disruptions during the first two weeks of November, all of which lead up to November 17. These smaller actions included road blocks, a banner drop over Westminster Bridge which read "Climate Change: We're Fucked," and a gathering where protesters glued themselves to fencing outside Downing Street.
Since that November action threw Extinction Rebellion into the international spotlight, they've been launching chapters all over the globe, including dozens across the United States. Building on the already existing activist networks of groups like the Climate Mobilization—and with help from people like Zack Exley, an organizer who played a key role in the Bernie Sanders's 2016 Democratic Primary campaign—Extinction Rebellion U.S. is growing quickly.
On December 2 of last year, about a hundred people gathered in Washington D.C. and blocked an intersection just outside of Capitol Hill in what became the first action by Extinction Rebellion in the United States, convening what they called the "First People's Climate Emergency Congress." Following the lead of Extinction Rebellion in the United Kingdom, the protestors passed a declaration of non-violent rebellion against the United States government, then broke out into committees to write up a list of measures which were presented back to the group.
Russell Gray, a recent college graduate who had just quit his job at the Treasury Department, was one of the lead coordinators of the D.C. event and serves as a national coordinator for Extinction Rebellion U.S. "I found [the whole process] really empowering," Gray said of the First People's Climate Emergency Congress. "We put together such a radical list of policies, but it was constructed in a very peaceful way. It gave me a lot of hope that the American people know what needs to take place and they're ready to make those changes. If the power of the United States can be returned to their hands, I think they would be able to implement the necessary solutions." Among Extinction Rebellion's demands were an end to all governmental policies contributing to fossil fuel emissions, a World War II-scale mobilization to reach carbon neutrality by 2025, the prioritization of vulnerable communities and indigenous sovereignty throughout this transition, and the establishment of representative democratic bodies to oversee it all.
Extinction Rebellion U.S. doesn't yet have the numbers necessary to achieve their most ambitious goals, but they are growing quickly, and they hope to soon reach a point where they might be able to seriously disrupt the flow of the capitalist economy in a way that would draw mainstream attention. As a wave of teachers' strikes continues to spread across the country, alongside growing calls from labor leaders and commentators for a general strike, it's no longer impossible to imagine mass climate mobilization spilling over from Capitol Hill out into the streets—not simply permitted marches and demonstrations with well-known headliners, but massive acts of civil disobedience aimed at shutting entire cities down. After all, it was less than two weeks ago that more than a million students worldwide participated in climate strikes inspired by sixteen-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
"We're just starting, but we are definitely off to a great start," Ruiz said.
I think Extinction Rebellion as a whole has really succeeded in beginning to break through a different kind of climate denial. It's a climate change denial that exists even among people and more mainstream organizations that care deeply for and work on climate change. The climate change denial among these good folks is that we can keep on lobbying Congress or doing electoral work alone and be able to defeat the fossil fuel industry and those in power who protect them. Extinction Rebellion's message is tapping into a need that is clearly not being filled enough—a feeling among many people that the world is dying around us, and yet there doesn't seem to be an emergency. That the house is on fire, and there's no serious action to put it out.
But when what is needed is such unprecedented and all-encompassing transformation, belief in the success of radical groups like Extinction Rebellion can itself seem like a form of denialism. Are we really going to completely change the most foundational elements of our economy within a decade, let alone dismantle the structures of concentrated power that seem hellbent on maintaining the status quo and crushing all opposition? The fact is that this may not really be the most helpful way to frame the climate change question. As Gray puts it, "It doesn't really matter whether I think that we can succeed or not. It doesn't change the fact that I need to be involved in this fight." Rather than thinking in binaries of failure or success, hope or hopelessness, members of Extinction Rebellion have found that it's more productive (and psychologically sustaining) to think about the task at hand as inextricably part of what it means to be alive right now.
As sea levels rapidly rise, so too do international solidarity movements determined to save what's not yet been lost. Thanks in part to the work of radical climate activists, the suicidal nature of our economic system is becoming more widely understood. A long societal slumber is slowly ending. The question remains: Will we wake up in time?