🤯 High-risk Actions and Media Stunts

[rhinolouis (Louis)]

Unless there was heaps of related art made around gassing parliament, it isn’t actually that good of a fit for Paint the Streets necessarily. And there probably doesn’t need to be that work involved for it to be successful, so I might move that idea out of PTS and refocus on the paint and the streets.

I’m in accord with your last paragraph Jay, sounds like what is basically already happening hopefully. Do you mean we write plans for actions and then pass them out to different groups to perform in their local area?

[rhinolouis (Louis)]

How about we rewild the faces of parliament, with light projections and chalk (paint and dry) pictures of native species (water and land) and natural formations. We could invite everyone to participate on it, only the worst offenders would realistically be risking arrest(?). High risk people could do the top steps/pillars and hold the space for the low risk supporters to join in on the lower steps and the footpath. Beautify that shit!

[sam_clarke (Sam)]

A “Blood of Our Children” type action may not be a high risk arrestable action with some solid communication with the Police beforehand. If we make it clear that it’s not disruptive to the general public, purely symbolic and that we’ll clean up after we’ve got all the media stuff done, they may agree to not make any arrests.

[JaneM (Jane Morton)]

I think you will find that there are some rebels who aren’t comfortable with billboards either. That’s the trouble with planning things this way. Any poster design you come up with there will be someone who doesn’t like it and any action you suggest there will be someone who doesn’t feel comfortable with it.

I have no problem with billboard actions but I think finding a relevant billboard to re-message will be hard. Most coal, gas and oil companies don’t do billboards -possibly for this very reason - and nor do Vic Forests. It’s hard to find a government billboard to target - except ones with health warnings and let’s not go there. So any billboard campaign is likely to target individual companies rather than governments.

I think billboards are potentially a higher risk (large fines) lower return action. But still okay - if (and it’s a big if) we can find a suitable billboard advertisement and come up with a suitable (and powerful) message.

[extinction1234567 (Jaytodaro)]

We could suggest ideas, but they can do whatever they want of course. I unfortunately doubt decentralized actions are happening widely with high-risk actions. I’ve been doing calls to rebels over the last two weeks, many of them who have active involvement in their groups, and the majority don’t know what PTS is.

I also agree with Jane about the billboards idea, that’s it’s high risk low return.

I think the best way to get around some people not being comfortable with a particular action is to vote on which high-risk actions we should do. Perhaps at the next PTS meeting?

[ManicMax (Max)]

I think you will find that there are some rebels who aren’t comfortable with billboards either. That’s the trouble with planning things this way. Any poster design you come up with there will be someone who doesn’t like it and any action you suggest there will be someone who doesn’t feel comfortable with it.

Well right in this moment, there is nobody seriously proposing to paint-bomb a billboard, but at least in this case we have previous experience from someone vandalizing a Clive Palmer billboard with XR slogans and a logo during the election season last year - it went down very well. In any case, I don’t believe that taking feedback and trying to integrate concerns is “trouble with planning things this way”. If there are people with serious concerns about targeting billboards, we should try to integrate those concerns as much as possible within the DNA and P’s and V’s of XR. If we have a group gearing up to vandalize billboards, we should take feedback on that, and do our best to act in accordance with an approach that integrates the feedback.

In the case of blood of our children actions there is a significant amount of pushback coming from within the movement to say that now is not a good time for this action. This hinges actually on several factors:

1. It’s been very contentious with indigenous groups with whom we are trying to build solidarity. While we’ve so far failed to integrate much indigenous presence within the movement, an action that provokes indigenous people is not going to be helpful to doing so. Dealing with the social fallout that could follow this is probably not worth it at this time, especially when we’ve seen so many organizing rebels “deactivated” in the last few months. This should be a time when we’re trying to reactivate rebels.
2. Actions involving blood are very likely to evoke the pandemic, even if we have a big ol’ “climate emergency” banner in the middle of every shot. This action, however, is not about the pandemic. UK M&M guidelines “Be sensitive to our shared global experiences and support the expanded space to reflect upon what we have learned.”

These main points push me to think that Blood of our Children should be kept on the shelf until a bit later on. I’m also thinking that a big second wave in Australia, while possible, is not highly likely in the next couple of months, and so there’s no urgency to carry out this action in particular, when we have so many other options in development. The public health response seems to have it under control. Case numbers are going down in the midst of a vigilant surveillance system.

[jess]

I actually love this idea.(not as a paint the streets thing - but more in alignment with the naked rebels drawing attention to the elephant in the room at Westminster over a year ago)

What if a whole bunch of well dressed rebels snuck whoopie coushions into parliament. And one by one let them rip … with long pauses in-between, so it took a while to work out what was going on… This would be an excellent one for Grey Power! Imagine “brrrrrrrrrrup”…“Oh! excuse me!” etc… It would need to be well filmed and very well recorded - It’s success would be in it’s coverage. Some good editing and maybe a bit of a post production sound mix to ham up those farts.
#a gas-led recovery is an oxymoron

[rhinolouis (Louis)]

bahaha yes!!! Whoopie cushions would work really well! I think a stink bomb still brings it up a notch because it would force them into physical evacuation. Plus, the ‘sensory overload’ of stink bombs is pretty visceral. Just using whoopie cushions mean we would get kicked out, but with the right amount of fart smell as well, we could take them out with us…

[jess]

I was wondering about that thing where you spill paint in an intersection and the cars spread it about making a fantastic colourful mess… I wonder if you could drop charcoal - like you use for a BBQ - and the cars would crush and spread it… The location would be important… Trouble is you need soooo much of it.
keep chucking ideas out there… this is great…

[jess]

An oldie but a goodie: A big pile of poo dumped at parliament
“We know the truth - a gas-led recovery is bullshit”

We’re half way there!
Who’s got poo?

[the-river-jordan (Jordan)]

Reinserting a messaging idea that I feel attached to:

Overthrow Bullshit

[rhinolouis (Louis)]

The Adelaide group, on the back of the ‘maybe not blood, maybe ash and charcoal’ idea suggested 4 business days with 4 focuses: one day brings ash for bushfires, the next day is a water dump for floods, one is a sand dump for drought, and one is (leaf blowers??) for cyclones. The fifth could be blood.

[jess]

This is John @strageplanet 's handy work.
This at an ambitious scale would be awesome.
Imagine the entire length of Royal Parade and Elizebeth Street

Bicycle Victoria might have a radical wing that might like to form an NVDA Affinity Group.

[jess]

What made the Westminster naked action so successful and was that it was funny.
It was so funny that it disrupted parliament because, try though they might, they couldn’t keep a strait face and ignore what was going on - so they started integrating puns about bottom’s into their business-as-usual speeches. Some times with no-pun intended someone might say “the bottom line is…” and everyone would start giggling. Which made a great media story and the rebels got the message out there that the elephant in the room is the climate emergency
Although it was disruptive, there was a lot of goodwill and respect.
Fart sounds are funny but fart smells are gross.

[extinction1234567 (Jaytodaro)]

Agree with all of this @jess

[rhinolouis (Louis)]

I’m not convinced that whoopie cushions are enough by themselves, I’m sorry. People stripping naked is a lot more disruptive than some fart noises. Giggles are great but can’t the joke be on the MPs, not between them? How does the media get a big story out of some in-jokes the parliament made after XR set off some fart noises and left? There also isn’t really the element of sacrifice on behalf of the rebels? I’m not sure if the offenders could even be arrested for it, it really needs to be bigger and bolder. Whoopie cushions in my opinion are a gag more than a stunt.

[rhinolouis (Louis)]

Soooo should we body paint people and then have them run through parliament?
Does anyone have any good sites in mind for an action that could be replicated in other cities?

[jess]

WANTED: 3 rebels to do one of these somewhere in Melbourne.

[ebxroz (EB - XRTV)]

Keep XRTV in the loop please folks!

Video or it didn’t happen…

[JaneM (Jane Morton)]

Here are links to some detailed info on the vast number of fossil fuel projects in the pipeline from our friends at Market Forces:

Today we released analysis showing how Australia’s big four banks measure up against their Paris Agreement pledges, and what planned fossil fuel projects in Australia they could potentially fund next. Please find our media release here, as well as stories in the Guardian and the AFR.

We’re putting a big focus on their lending to projects and companies expanding the fossil fuel industry, as this is the type of lending most incompatible with their Paris Agreement commitments.

We’re planning to use this to push the banks to stop funding projects that expand the fossil fuel industry and to align their finance with the Paris Agreement (exit thermal coal by 2030, phase out oil & gas exposure consistent with 1.5°C).