Climate protesters are getting ready for a year to remember - New Statesmanhttps://www.newstatesman.com/environment/climate/2022/01/climate-protesters-are-getting-ready-for-a-year-to-remember-2022Nearly 5 per cent of Americans also say they would willingly participate in civil disobedience to demand action on global warming, according to research published last week. That may sound like a small number but it is higher than the 3.5 per cent of a population that Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, argues is needed if nonviolent protest is to achieve political change.
The finding is a further sign that concern about climate change has reached a tipping point. In the UK environmental issues topped a poll of public worries last November for the first time since 1989. Extinction Rebellion will probably take heart from that, and recent acquittals of climate activists in British courts, as it announces its latest strategy for mass mobilisation and nonviolent civil resistance in April.
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This month the House of Lords threw out all of the last-minute amendments to the Policing Bill. These included attempts to criminalise the standard tactic of protesters locking themselves on to something, used as far back as the Suffragettes, and additions that would have broadened police powers to stop and search.
The bill continues to pose a threat as it returns to the House of Commons, warns the human rights group Liberty, which has been calling for its damaging proposals to be scrapped in their entirety. Roma, gypsy and traveller people are particularly targeted, and it could still introduce harsh sentences for anyone unknowingly breaching police conditions imposed on peaceful protests.
In its wake, however, the legislation is also creating an increasingly diverse coalition of pro-environment and pro-rights opposition. “We are starting to see new relationships forming through this campaign, between racial, social and climate justice activists,” says Bhavini Patel, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion Unify, which has been campaigning against the legislation. “It’s brilliant this bridge is emerging.”
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“In the past few months, we’ve definitely grown as an organisation,” says Jon Bonifacio of Youth Advocates for Climate Action in the Philippines, where the devastating Typhoon Rai struck in December and an election is planned for May. “We need to see a change of leadership into something more sustainable and just.”