“I refuse to be sidelined and overlooked as a weak-minded sentimentalist. I am vegan for justice. I am vegan as a rejection of violence. I am vegan because what we are doing as a species is wrong. I am vegan with my heart and my soul, but also with my mind, my intellect and my intelligence.” Linda Clark, There's An Elephant In the Room
The environmental movement Extinction Rebellion (XR) burst into public consciousness on 31 October 2018 with a “Declaration of Rebellion” against the UK government, delivered in Parliament Square in London. Responding to the “climate emergency” and advancing behind a narrative calling for systems-level change through nonviolent direct action, XR grew into a global movement that catalyzed worldwide mass civil disobedience demonstrations in April and October of 2019.
The April actions were widely regarded to have been successful; the October actions less so, as acknowledged by Extinction Rebellion national spokesperson Rupert Read in a speech to the Sheffield XR group in December. In his talk Read shared a thoughtful and considered analysis of these actions, and in doing so articulated his belief that XR’s demands and associated values and principles can and must be actualized from “necessity, not ideology.”
