fight your own battles to see lasting change

I am trying my hardest to stay quiet about Extinction Rebellion.

I am trying not to upset people I care dearly about who are engaging with the movement.

I am trying not to upset myself by thinking about all the underlying issues the movement (and it's success) represent.

I am trying not to be a negative factor that gives fuel to those who would argue against action on climate and environmental protection.

But this is my sandbox, my personal echo-chamber. So I am about to shout.

1 - The movement is a sign of white middle class privilege in full effect
2 - actually everything else is basically a consequence of #1.

Time to devote to protest

OK. Let's imagine you are going to glue yourself to a bridge for a month. What does that say about your income level and community support network. Who will pay your rent? Keep your job open?

Treatment by the police

The behaviour of the police toward lovely, innocent, well meaning members of the community coming together to voice a collective opinion about a valid political or social injustice is very different if you are a large mass of white people than if you are a large mass of ethnic minorities. The consequence of having a previous conviction for your employment or in the case of any future offense is also not the same.

Your biggest threat being the climate

We have many issues which threaten our safety and security as a community. Poverty and racial inequality among them. When Grenfell burned we tweeted a bit and discussed it at dinner parties and the school gates. If the biggest threat to you daily wellbeing is climate change, well... 

Status to fight on behalf of others

And yet there are those who are dying daily because of climate change. Protesters are demanding 'someone over there' acts differently to protect 'someone else over there'. What is their motivation? What do they want to change in their own daily life? What threat do climate issues present to them? Fighting on behalf of others is a demonstration of privilege, or your own position of power. And it precludes personal responsibility. Every one else needs to change.

This one needs two paragraphs. Why fight climate change? Because Bangladeshi children are drowning (for example). What are we fighting for? Large corporations to stop producing oil (for example). But now it is halloween and I will continue to buy plastic wrapped sweets and toys for my kids and drink almond milk from a tetrapak.

Maybe three. If you are expecting radical change, you need to be willing to radically change. The act of just saying "yes that is a good idea" is just alignment, not change. Fight for what you want - A total ban on plastic packaging in the UK so you have an alternative purchasing option, A local glass recycling scheme and nut milk dairy so you can drink almond milk without TetraPak. If these types of immediate local changes are not in your demands, then you aren't really personally affected by the issue, you are to protected by your privilege and wealth.

A need for a common enemy

So why is it happening at all? Why are large numbers of people across the world rallying to the rather vague cry of 'make it better' and 'stop making it worse' all of a sudden? People need community, they need to align and have purpose. In at risk communities this is often easy to do - there is a common enemy that we need to fight against, we are at risk and need to work together to protect ourselves.

But today white middle class privilege has become so extreme that there is no tangible risk in daily life. We are well fed. Few of us will go without food for more than a day except through choice and if we were to find our cupboards empty we could go to another person and they would have plenty of surplus. I know this because I have done it.

We are well protected. Individuals may cause us harm but we have well financed police forces that can respond to and deter most threats to our personal safety so in truth the threat to the individual is not a significant daily issue. We may not feel safe, but mostly we are and can walk most streets alone and come back in one piece.

We have work, we have social structures, we have leisure, we have health. We basically have everything. Except a reason to cooperate and work alongside each other for a cause.

Why is this a problem?

Why do I care? ER has successfully pushed environmentalism into the public agenda and it's nice that people get to come together and feel part of something? So why not just welcome it with open arms. Us white middle class people are people too, right, why shouldn't we have something to rally around?

Because I am afraid.

When I look at the coverage all I see is a large mob of wealthy, entitled, resourced white people. All I see is people with no clear feasible agenda with the ability to steer public policy on a whim and to shut down governments and services until they get themselves satisfied.

I see ambulances blocked, I see poorer people preventing from attending their jobs, I see government work and public services stalled and underfunded by diverted agendas to please the ER movement.

But more than that I see resentment. That's the big fear. If I'm angry about this discourse and it's dominance of the public agenda, about it's ability to divert funding and attention away from the important things that support people who need it in their daily lives, and I am a middle class white person, and I have the privilege, then I fear the sentiment it is rousing in those who don't.

What do ER want? What do they expect to happen? And do they really understand what they are asking for?

Environmental degradation is the consequence of individualistic approaches in modern life - of a failure of modern society to work for a common good over personal comfort. I don't see ER as anything but an extension of that behaviour. The people involved in the movement have demonstrated exactly how much energy and activity they are capable of putting in to something they care about. And in doing so they have shown that they never cared about the troubles less well-off neighbours in their own communities enough to fight this hard.They prioritise the rainforest over racism, the ice caps over immigration and green house gases over homelessness. There have been many chances to rally around a cause. The fact that the only cause that hits the heart of the ER demographic is ephemeral is an illustration of how disconnected from the truth of many people's challenges that group has become.

When we don't see the suffering of those around us as our own suffering, when we consider others to be separate from ourselves, we aren't motivated to fight for those causes. We sympathise but we don't empathise. If those in the ER movement felt themselves to be part o the same group as those suffering other issues - such as those contributing to the Grenfell tragedy - those issues would be primary. No one who feels the threat of homelessness, of prejudice, of a lack of opportunity for employment, of safety would demand a reduction in greenhouse gases before a right to, say, a place to sleep.

But they don't. They don't fear, or feel aligned with the fear, or the things people in today's world, in their own towns and cities, do. Poverty, prejudice, violence, hunger, enslavement etc. are not threats to them.