Protestors climb on train

[omikron]

What on earth to ER hope to achieve this morning?! Such arseholes

This is absurd. I work in central London. Commuters are delayed every single day by people driving into London, one person to a car, when they don't need to. (Usual MN disclaimer: yes, there are people that need to. These are not those people.) Commuters are also delayed every single day by a million other things: roadworks, cancellations, short staff on TLR, and half the roads being blocked because some high-end bloody shop is having yet another refit and has paid a bazillion pounds to the
council for the privilege of blocking half the bloody street to put their building works gubbins on.

This - absolutely. At first I thought it was ill advised to block trains but now I think these people are on the right side of history. I would draw some comparisons with what the general public must have said about the suffragette movement at the time. Also I am very disappointed by what Sadiq Khan has said today.
Unfortunately whether you approve of what XR has done or not the climate emergency is still there.

They won't fizzle out they will rebrand, the founders have done so already.

They will need to start having some hard and realistic proposals backed by science and understanding of the globalised world we are now part of. It's going to go through a lot of infighting before it can be taken seriously, as i mentioned upthread you have you some who think that shareholders do nothing for a company and the opposite of thinking if we drop shares in the likes of BP it will put a significant dent into fossil fuel usage.

Add on top of that the anti science stance of a large proportion with there anti nuclear and thinking the nimby issue against new transport links/housing/wind farms is just old white men is already showing its full of shite with todays example.

People supporting them because of 'their overall message' only read the headlines and are easily led, there will be support for the next revolutionary twitter hashtag.

Oh it'll fizzle out.

Remember the Occupy movement?

Anyway, why is 'middle class' being used as an insult? Are the middle classes not allowed to hold opinions? To express them, albeit in a silly, half arsed way?

I side with the commuters trying to get to work over the twats standing on the trains. Idiots. They lost all respect today.

I imagine it’s the same people. Looking for something...

It is the same people- I know quite a few (though none in any of this footage).

They do have jobs (quite good ones, lots of academics) and they do wash. The worst thing they're guilty of generally is naivety.

This incident was stupid however.

They’re a bunch of knobs and the anger caused by the disruption is drowning out the message. They should stop disrupting public transport and start disrupting the people who can actually change things. How much energy and money is being spent dealing with them which could be much better directed to a million other things?

Honestly, getting on top of a train (environmentally friendly public transport) and disrupting thousands of people just trying to get to work, I can’t feel sorry for him getting a couple of kicks, especially since he also gave some kicks himself!

Remember the Occupy movement?

Yeah, a lot of them have become XR

Anyway, why is 'middle class' being used as an insult? Are the middle classes not allowed to hold opinions? To express them, albeit in a silly, half arsed way?

Why invent a straw man, of course the middle class can have an opinion, it's just the a large majority think they speak for the working class, look at the blow back from brexit, step out of line or vote the wrong way in an election and it's considered turkeys voting for christmas.

XR is full to the brim with middle class trust fund kids, it's evident on their channels. It's ivory tower activism, the globalised stereotype could be if you squint hard enough be blamed onto right wing media or with an even more squinting believe everyone else is just climate change deniers.

I earn over 100K a year and travel the world, classism is rife on MN, XR being full of trust fund out of touch middle class is a worldwide criticism. It's not the straw man of middle class having no opinions thats the issue as to why its being brought up.

The usual has happened. A hard working group of committed protesters with a good, solid ideology have been taken over by rent a mob idiots with nothing better to do that ‘smash shit up’. I feel sorry for the people who have put their lives on hold to genuinely try and campaign for a better planet for all of us.

See also, gilets jaunes now often completely taken over by black bloc, who need slapping into oblivion.
I saw some of the black bloc arseholes get smacked by a water cannon, right outside my front door at one point. I was pretty happy about it, considering what BB did to my quartier (wreck it).

Most of the Extinction Rebellion members were massively against that idea and tried to stop those idiots from going ahead! Few twats letting the side down and doing more harm than good!

They should stop disrupting public transport and start disrupting the people who can actually change things.

Problem is that they don't have a coherent argument against who can actually change things.

Targeting MOD for weapons whilst lapping up the latest iphone is showing they have been infiltrated by idiots who think the world economy and climate crisis is a simple black and white switch.

The uneducated, anti science/globalised economy doesn't sit neatly one side or the other in this debate.

Its full to the brim of larpers at this point with those who chase twitter likes giving them a pass, if people really wanted to make a difference then they wouldn't be pretending they are part of a movement that will be remembered in years to come, it's just tankie anti capitalist larping

Penners99 had a good point.

The root cause of climate change (if you believe or not) is overpopulation of the planet. So how do we reduce the population by, say, 4 billion by 2050?

A good start would be for Stanley Johnson, who addressed an Extinction Rebellion demonstration earlier in the week, to persuade his son to get a long overdue vasectomy.

Most of the Extinction Rebellion members were massively against that idea and tried to stop those idiots from going ahead!

Retrospectively yes they was, if you actually followed or where involved in the official communication channels it was knife edge but leaning towards supporting it, the situation could have been different this morning to paint it as everyone being in full support from the get go.

There was a lot of votes waiting for the reaction as to how the would vote, trying to broad brush this off retrospectively isn't a good tactic

Yeah. Their politics is in no way intersectional.

I’m genuinely interested from MNetters in the know whether there are any statistics to show that this type of protest has had any level of success. I agree with the general aims of XR but I think the millions in donations they received could be better utilised funding research or buying a chunk of the amazon or other virgin forest.

situation could have been different this morning to paint it as everyone being in full support from the get go.

Point out that it wasn't everyone nor was it a majority. It's why they are fumbling around wondering why the official channels don't reflect reality. Bearing in mind it was widely accepted that twitter shouldn't be used because of the 'alt-right trolls'
.

Last night it was at just above 50% support for these actions. Any disenter was not considered pure enough.It's a comical 1984 in action but with the brain age of a 10 year old

I agree with the general aims of XR but I think the millions in donations they received could be better utilised funding research or buying a chunk of the amazon or other virgin forest.

Maybe you should research yourself as your advocating a form of feudalism, that could show why your in support of XR and asking for pointers as to make the 'correct argument'.

Critical thinking at its best on display.

@tumbleisatwat

'Anyway, why is 'middle class' being used as an insult?'

It it not being used as an insult, the point is that as middle class affluent people with the financial safety net to take 3 weeks off 'work' preventing those less fortunate from earning money is insulting.

It is taking a position of power through financials, and life options, and holding those less fortunate to ransom...

'If you do not listen to my messages I will stop your train, and prevent you from earning money'

Surely you can see why people fought back, some people, hard for XR to understand, literally live pay day to pay day. One hours wages could mean the difference between bills being paid or not.

So, when the class word is thrown about, it is not an insult, it is highlighting the ironic dis proportionate power this movement has

They could (given that many of them appear to have disposable income) invest in sustainable energy, get solar panels for their houses, plant trees, organise and participate in things like litter picking. They could educate themselves about the current best scientific options for slowing down, reversing or adapting to climate change and spread this information as widely as they can.
At the moment it's all just attention-seeking tantrums and this odd idea that pissing off ordinary people is some sort of holy victory.

At the moment it's all just attention-seeking tantrums and this odd idea that pissing off ordinary people is some sort of holy victory.

It's chasing twitter likes and looking to be 'on the right side of history'

They lack nuance in geopolitics, economics and just look for simplistic black and white answers whilst pretending everything can be boiled down to IDPOL stats is why they are being shunned globally.

CatherineOfAragonsPrayerBook Thu 17-Oct-19 20:02:46
Actively preventing people from getting hospital treatment, attending job interviews to improve their lives, arriving on time to get benefits, and getting to work in order to put food on the table IS a form of violence.

Don't tell me, a woman of colour with children who faces both racial, sexual and class economic disadvantage that your actions directly adding to that disadvantage isn't violent. And the irony of it! The people with the most advantage pontificating to those with the least.

THIS From the thread on the Chat board.

I sympathise with their concerns, always have done - but, when I sat on a train seat surrounded by them in the summer following one of their big protests (shortly after a funeral, so I wasn't particularly wanting to be party to anybody's conversation, but they were so bloody loud, I had no choice), it became very clear that they were campaigning as a career move - they were talking about what x and y act was doing for so and so's career and what doing this will lead to in terms of employment opportunities. They were very loud, overconfident and very, very middleclass. And obviously too stupid to consider that they were discussing very detailed plans in a way that demonstrated absolutely zero awareness of maintaining security and secrecy.

It's noticeable that they picked places frequented by poor people. Because they can afford to take time off work/not be paid for a day. They won't lose their job or a week's pay and then risk being sanctioned by UC for not turning up until 10.30am and getting fired.

It's all a bit White Saviour to think that disrupting the travel and incomes of poor and poor BAME travellers will open their eyes to the urgency of environmental action. Like somebody poor needs a posh white bloke to twat about on top a tube train to educate them.

It turns out that one of the protestors is an ex Buddhist monk who ‘found himself’ whilst in India (presumably he made the journey from Devon to India by bike or some other non polluting form of transport) he gave up working last year to become a full time protestor.

So in a nutshell, posh twat travels the world racking up carbon emissions & then tries to stop normal not posh people getting to work despite needing their tax contribution to pay his dole money.

We need to degrow the economy. That involves ordinary people doing less work and different work (producing food instead of working in offices).

Even if the train is electric (and even if that electricity was produced sustainably) we need to travel and work less.

That is the point of this specific protest.