Hey Jane, Iâve had some feedback while trying to get blood of our children going that it doesnât âsit rightâ with people around covid. Last night we came up with an idea of using charcoal and ash instead of blood. If we can come up with something dynamic enough, I would be really keen if different capital cities could all work to pull off their stunt on the same day. Would you be happy to work with ash instead of blood?
I think blood is much better. Ash would be quite confusing and much less emotional. The essence of XR messaging is to break taboos and âblood of our childrenâ will be controversial no matter when we do it. Thatâs the point! If there were hundreds of people per day dying in Australia then maybe not, but there arenât.
And there are millions at risk of dying from drought and locust related famine in Africa right now that no one is talking about. About twenty cities in India are due to run out of water this year. Tens of thousands of heat deaths in Europe and Asia are likely this year. Activists protecting forests in South America are being shot. We could pass the point of no return for billions of deaths any time now.
The same argument was made in 2016 when Adam Bandt started making the link between worsening bushfires and global warming. He was relentlessly attacked for being insensitive and the big climate groups stood by saying nothing. In 2020 a large range of voices was heard making the link and it was those who said not to talk about the climate emergency during the fire emergency that were now seen as out of step. Someone has to be brave enough to take the flak for speaking out first. That is what shifts the Overton window.
If XR doesnât speak up for the dead and dying - and act to prevent the billions of deaths that are to come - then who will? Unless we hurry, trillions will be spent on propping up the industries that are killing us instead of funding the emergency transition we need to save ourselves. Letâs get going!
How will we feel if it turns out we passed the point of no return while XR stood by worrying about being too controversial?
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Agree with Jane. I also think charcoal or ash wouldnât have as high of a chance of getting media attention.
The original blood of our children action was an arrestable dilemma action - so high risk.
But the police decided not to arrest.
There are ways of speaking out and making strong arguments while avoiding actions that would demoralize and drive away our own rebels. We could be doing high-risk stuff like painting over advertisements in broad daylight with stark, clear messages about the urgency of the situation weâre in. Blood of our children can be saved for later.
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Keith is hella keen to get compressed air and make âash cannonsâ as he put it, so itâs up to your imagination in terms of impressing the media with it. We could even cover a crowd of volunteers in it. Bringing the bushfires to the steps of parliament. Ash might not be considered vandalism either. Smoke bombs?
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@rhinolouis if rebels in SA are uncomfortable doing blood during covid, perhaps we should as Max suggests, save it until later, when we can use the blood. Which as Jane says, I think is much more emotional, and perhaps visceral. What do you think?
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So you donât like the ash idea? There can be 2 actions
yeah, i was just thinking that. could even have a combination of ash and other ideas. for example, paint bombing. weâll also have projection equipment to play with from evolens. I think we should try to come with a few more ideas and see whatâs the most popular for a high-risk/media stunt action, while doing things like what andy and max have suggested.
How hard is it to get evolens stuff in other cities? Iâm also wondering if the compressed air is going to be easy to replicate for other groups who donât have someone who knows what they are doing. Red paint bombs with ash?? Red and black are very visceral together.
Another idea I posted yesterday that I am genuinely keen on is a comparison between the governmentâs gas deals and farty gas. I pictured a comic strip where Scomo farts a gas explosion and extincts everything. The gov is passing gas, right? That lead to thinking about fart bombs. Setting off a whole bunch in parliament with appropriate, easy messaging? Itâs cheeky, toilet homor stuff, that has high risk consequences, and would definitely disrupt parliament. Fart bombs are pretty obtainable, and there is no skill or physical danger required for people sitting in on parliament to release them. They might get arrested, and honestly if most parliaments all had to stop for an hour one friday because XR had farted the place out pointing out their gas shit, that should surely make the news.
no idea about the compression and evolens.
the gas idea sounds pretty good. i think we should add it to the list and let people vote in the pts working group.
as a general framework for pts high risk actions, i think we can think of them as local and central. rebels can do them with their local groups, or form groups from multiple local groups to do them around a specific area or areas. we could perhaps accomplish this by sending out an email to all local groups that explains this. and then we can have more central high-risk actions and media stunts at locations like parliament. what do people think?
Unless there was heaps of related art made around gassing parliament, it isnât actually that good of a fit for Paint the Streets necessarily. And there probably doesnât 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.
Iâm 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?
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!
A âBlood of Our Childrenâ type action may not be a high risk arrestable action with some solid communication with the Police beforehand. If we make it clear that itâs not disruptive to the general public, purely symbolic and that weâll clean up after weâve got all the media stuff done, they may agree to not make any arrests.
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I think you will find that there are some rebels who arenât comfortable with billboards either. Thatâs the trouble with planning things this way. Any poster design you come up with there will be someone who doesnât like it and any action you suggest there will be someone who doesnât 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 donât do billboards -possibly for this very reason - and nor do Vic Forests. Itâs hard to find a government billboard to target - except ones with health warnings and letâs 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 itâs a big if) we can find a suitable billboard advertisement and come up with a suitable (and powerful) message.
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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. Iâve been doing calls to rebels over the last two weeks, many of them who have active involvement in their groups, and the majority donât know what PTS is.
I also agree with Jane about the billboards idea, thatâs itâs 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?
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 donât believe that taking feedback and trying to integrate concerns is âtrouble with planning things this wayâ. 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 Pâs and Vâs 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:
- Itâs been very contentious with indigenous groups with whom we are trying to build solidarity. While weâve 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 weâve seen so many organizing rebels âdeactivatedâ in the last few months. This should be a time when weâre trying to reactivate rebels.
- Actions involving blood are very likely to evoke the pandemic, even if we have a big olâ âclimate emergencyâ banner in the middle of every shot. This action, however, is not about the pandemic. UK M&M guidelines âBe sensitive to our shared global experiences and support the expanded space to reflect upon what we have learned.â
These main points push me to think that Blood of our Children should be kept on the shelf until a bit later on. Iâm also thinking that a big second wave in Australia, while possible, is not highly likely in the next couple of months, and so thereâs 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.
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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 âbrrrrrrrrrrupââŚâOh! excuse me!â etc⌠It would need to be well filmed and very well recorded - Itâs success would be in itâs 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
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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 âsensory overloadâ 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 usâŚ
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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 greatâŚ
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