It took less than three hours for the police to cut the bike lock from around my neck and drag me away from the only structure left standing on Westminster Bridge - the base of a 16-meter lighthouse made entirely of bamboo that I and other XR protestors were trying to put up on the 7th of October 2019. It was to be both a warning light and a guide.
After weeks of building, I was more than just physically attached. When the police released me at 5am the next morning, I learnt that they had cleared us from the rest of the bridge just a few hours earlier. Cycling back into Westminster, the heart of Extinction Rebellion’s second International Rebellion, the sadness of our failure was overwhelmed by the sight and sound of ten other roaring occupations.
I couldn’t know then that this was the start of a fortnight of the same emotional journey, repeated many times over: loss, grief, defiance, joy, loss. After April’s rebellion, the UK Parliament had declared a climate and ecological emergency, and suddenly, millions more people across the country cared. This time around we were a much larger movement, organizing in a much more empowering, decentralized way. Expectations were high.
