Rebel Reader: Global Climate Strike, QLD museum die-in, Interview with a rebel
XR Aus, 29 May 2019
Since the Australian Federal election, Extinction Rebellion Australia has been continuing to grow, organise, and take direct action to draw attention to the climate crisis we find ourselves in, and XR’s proposed solutions.
From showing up in the thousands across Australia in solidarity with school kids for the Global Strike for Climate on May 24, to ramped up die-in actions, and the continuation of group formation, and subsequent planning (in anticipation of a week of actions in September) – XR Rebels are not quieting down, they’re revving up.
Here are some inspiring stories about what XR rebels have been up to:
Students From 1,600 Cities Just Walked Out of School to Protest Climate Change. It Could Be Greta Thunberg’s Biggest Strike Yet
“As well as strikes in Sydney, around 1000 activists staged a die-in in the heart of Melbourne’s business district just after lunchtime, “acting as physical reminders of Earth’s sixth mass extinction which scientists have attributed to anthropogenic climate change,” organizers Extinction Rebellion Australia told TIME.
Young people also gathered outside Parliament House in Perth, Western Australia, a state where mining accounted for 85% of exports in 2017-2018. Land rights are also a contentious issue in Australia, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have struggled to reclaim colonized land that had historically belonged to them. Currently in Western Australia, Tjiwarl traditional owners of land are part of an ongoing battle in the state’s Supreme Court against the opening of a controversial uranium mine.”
Climate protesters stage ‘die-in’ at Quee’sland Museum’s dinosaur exhibit
“Around 250 environmental activists have laid down among the dinosaurs at the Queensland Museum on Sunday, in the first large Extinction Rebellion event in Brisbane.
Protesters, many dressed as endangered animals, laid on the floor of the museum’s Lost Creatures exhibit amid fossils and dinosaur reconstructions, including the state’s famous Muttaburrasaurus.
“This is a symbolic action to show that if we continue killing the planet we will die as well,” Alice Wicks from Extinction Rebellion said.”
Civil Disobedience Required: An Interview With Extinction Rebellion’s Miriam Robinson
Miriam is a rebel with XR Victoria. She was recently interviewed by Sydney Criminal Lawyers who were interested in XR as a movement, how it self organises, and why the movement is growing so rapidly:
“It’s absolutely desperate. People don’t realise quite how bad it is. Having 12 years left is the figure that’s being bandied about. It’s wrong. We’ve got closer to 3 or 4 years.
Emissions have to start going down drastically. And we have to start drawing down carbon by repairing forests and doing everything we can possibly think of in the next few years.
If we let this situation go on for another 12 years, it’s game over. In fact, we don’t even know. We may have already passed tipping point. So, we’re just having to hope against hope that we haven’t yet.
It’s that drastic. It’s the end of human civilisation, and possibly the extinction of 90 percent of life on Earth.”