On 12 October, climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion returned to Nottingham city centre to promote their campaign and raise awareness of the risks of extinction.
Fresh from their protest outside of Nottingham’s city council house, Extinction Rebellion took part in another staged ‘die-in’ in Old Market Square, where all those in attendance lie on the ground and pretend to be dead, hinting at the possible effects of climate change.
Their staged die-in was also accompanied by the Clarion choir, a choir group in Nottingham that specialises in singing songs for campaigns to fight for justice and freedom.
The choir sang their environment based songs like ‘The Anti-fracking song’ and ‘Bella Ciao’ with protesters, both spreading a message of building a better future and preventing an extinction.
We spoke to a number of protesters during the die-in who are active members of Extinction Rebellion Nottingham to find out why their protests are so important.
Colin, 71, originally from Scotland, first started campaigning for climate change in the 1970s, and is devoted to getting a response from the government.
“One of our problems is that the government is ruled by someone who’s not actually an expert, no scientific qualifications at all, who says the science is totally nonsense.”
“We’ve managed to convince some people that their argument really isn’t balanced and blatantly said that climate change isn’t an opinion, it’s a fact,” Colin added.
Their other two aims are the ones that they believe will be harder to obtain.
“We want the government to declare a climate emergency and to start active legislation to do something about it and we’re saying we need a people’s assembly, which is selected in the same way we select juries, completely randomly.”
However, Colin believes the government is one of the biggest problems Extinction Rebellion face.
“With politicians, it’s a career, they’re looking for how they can get promoted, and you don’t get promoted for doing things that are unpopular and some of these things will initially be unpopular with a lot of people.”
Heather, 32, from Manchester, also believes that the government plays a big part in the climate emergency.
“I’m annoyed that successive governments and corporations haven’t been listening to the science for the past 30 years and have now taken us to a point where the future looks pretty uncertain.”
“I joined Extinction Rebellion because it looked like the biggest existing movement pushing for huge social change and I can’t not do everything within my power to try and help sort this out,” Heather adds.
Fuelled by their lack of confidence in the government, Extinction Rebellion has become one of the largest and fastest growing protest groups in history within two years of its conception.
Extinction Rebellion was first launched by activists Roger Hallam and Gail Bradbrook in October 2018 in the UK, and has since catapulted around the globe to include places like the United States of America and Australia.
“It started in the UK, it’s now international. This rebellion that is going on at the moment is in at least 60 different cities around the world, I mean they don’t even count places like Nottingham,” he added.
Despite Extinction Rebellion’s efforts, many people on social media are still accusing the protest group of being too chaotic and causing too much disruption.
“It’s very hard to do an effective demonstration without upsetting people, and now I’ve been an environmentalist since the 1970s and we tried to be polite,” Colin admits.
“The situation now is so desperate that we feel that this is the only thing we can do, disruption gets attention, we are completely non-violent but we will be disruptive, but we will not be violent.”
However, despite accusations on social media, Extinction Rebellion has never claimed to know what the solution to the climate change problem is.
“Extinction Rebellion don’t claim to know what the best solutions are, they want the government to listen to the experts and get acting, they’re just saying do something,” Heather says.
Since the start of the Extinction Rebellion protests, images of protesters and demonstrations have flooded the media, but protesters still believe the media is incorrect in their reporting.
“I think the media are slowly starting to improve in their coverage of the protests, that’s our first aim, for the government and the media to tell the truth, which they aren’t,” Colin claims.
Another protester, Rosemarie Harvey, 51, from Stapleford, also believes that the media is partly to blame for a lack of transparency in their protests.
“I think the problem is that the coverage in the media is very slanted, with the blind paralympian, he glued himself to the plane in London airport, and he got very little coverage.”
“I think some of the negativity [towards Extinction Rebellion] is the slanted media coverage and a lot of people find it hard to change their mindset because it will come across badly,” she added.
Colin also believes that the criticism Extinction Rebellion face for appearing to have fun during demonstrations is unfair.
“Demonstrations are a form of street theatre, to get noticed you have to do something noticeable, people dress up and put make-up on in the theatre, we are using theatre to get a message across.”
“I went to London in April and I was only there over the weekend and I was absolutely exhausted so you need to do something to keep spirits up,” Colin added.
Rosemarie and Colin both believe that the Extinction Rebellion protests are one of the only ways to get their point across effectively and to achieve their aims.
“If Extinction Rebellion hadn’t done their protests in London in April, a climate emergency would never have been on the agenda, and now we’re putting the pressure on,” Rosemarie said.
“Roger Hallam, who has really kind of started Extinction Rebellion, he looked into the best way of impacting change, and made Extinction Rebellion.”
“It’s tiny here today in Nottingham, but if you think about London, and all the other countries, they’re all doing the same,” Rosemarie claims.
Most recently, Metropolitan police forces operating in Trafalgar Square have banned Extinction Rebellion protesters from London.
In a statement on social media, Extinction Rebellion declared that the “international rebellion continues”.
By Faith Pring
All images credit: Faith Pring