On whiteness and Extinction Rebellion

This is the tweet that encapsulated for many what is wrong with Extinction Rebellion. Someone who was arrested sent flowers to Brixton Police Station, where they had been held, and then released. And someone pointed out that this is a station where black men have died in the cells. But this lovely, we presume white, person was treated well enough at the police station to make them send flowers.

I must admit I didn't know about deaths in Brixton Police station. The fact I don't live in London is probably not a good enough reason for this. If I'm brutally honest, I could imagine being the type of person who sent those flowers. I would have been totally ignorant of the wider issues around this.

A lot of people I respect are very on board with Extinction Rebellion. A lot of people I respect are very heavily critical of Extinction Rebellion. So I'm writing this, not because I particularly think I have a clever analysis of all this, but because I think it's a pressing question, and I want to try to work on this. I know as a white person I need to work to become more aware of my whiteness, and how it shapes how I, and others, do this kind of thing.

This is a really good article and worth reading to start with. The following thoughts are less thought-through, but this is what I'm thinking at the moment.

I don't think the problem is with Extinction Rebellion as such. It's with whiteness. We talk about Extinction Rebellion as if it's a thing, a tight organisation, when the fact is it's extremely decentralised, perhaps even disorganised. If I want to do an action tomorrow, and I can get two people who want to do it with me, and we do it non-violently, we can say we're doing it as "Extinction Rebellion". There's no induction, there's no training. I mean these things exist, but you can choose to ignore them.

Extinction Rebellion is very young and it's grown very fast. That means that well meaning white people, with no experience whatsoever with activism, no thought-processes around power and privilege, can rock up and start "being Extinction Rebellion". Of course you could see in many ways this is a good thing, but it inevitably means people will bring in all their cultural assumptions and baggage.

So what are the solutions? This is a work-in-progress, but here's what I'm thinking as some things Extinction Rebellion needs to be doing:

• Talk about the present tense, not just the future tense. People are dying now. Constantly talk about the deaths that are increasing in the world right now because of climate change. It's happening right now in the global South. 
• Local groups should concentrate on education and consciousness-raising rather than lots of small actions. In a city like Cardiff there's a lot of busyness in the XR group. There's lots of things being organised all the time, lots of things going on. There is an argument that as the capital city of Wales there is particular work to do, but the main target of the protests must continue to be London. Between big London actions I don't think we should be concentrating on lots of little actions here and there, but on growing community, on educating ourselves, on grounding ourselves spiritually, on doing the deep work that leads up to the London actions.
• Be clearer that the target is government and not our fellow citizens. I need to write more about this. It's not been clear enough that government is the target of our actions. That needs to be clear and we need to not look like we're attacking people, especially working class people and people of colour. It has sometimes looked like that. 
• Don't pretend being arrested is fun. Don't downplay it. It's serious and not something to make jokes about. Recognise and constantly talk about how our white privilege makes it less dangerous for white people to get arrested than people of colour. 
• Be a follower, not a leader all the time. Keep listening to and supporting organisations like Wretched of the Earth and War on Want.  Keep learning. Keep trying to work out how we can support other peoples and organisations working on climate justice, not assuming that they should join us. 
• We are not the Messiah. Accept that an organisation can have well-meaning goals while also failing in some ways. It's not black and white that we are the good guys and everyone against us is the bad guys. We can have a moral aim while at the same time morally failing in some ways. It's called being human. 
• Start looking into whether we should have a fourth aim of Extinction Rebellion demanding a just transition that prioritises colonised peoples.

None of this is original to me. This is just some stuff I'm thinking through right now.