{"id":198482,"date":"2019-11-27T06:47:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T06:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=198482"},"modified":"2019-11-30T07:10:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-30T07:10:45","slug":"climate-extremists-extinction-rebellion-hit-for-being-too-white-too-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=198482","title":{"rendered":"Climate Extremists \u2018Extinction Rebellion\u2019 Hit For Being Too White, Too Rich"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not Woke Enough<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Post News \u2013 Nov 26, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Mainly white and middle-class, Extiction Rebellion protesters in London this year. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s impossible to be woke enough \u2014 and that\u2019s a lesson extremist climate activists \u201cExtinction Rebellion,\u201d best known for disrupting traffic in major cities with \u201cclimate strikes,\u201d grinding urban transit to a complete halt, is learning the hard way.<\/span><\/p>\n

The organization, which aims to prevent the world from collapsing in an firey apocalypse in just over a decade by demonstrating with parades, puppets, and contemporary art installations, has been around for just over a year, but it\u2019s now fallen afoul of woker critics who contend that \u201cExtinction Rebellion\u201d or \u201cXR\u201d for short, is just too white, too educated, too middle class, too privileged, and too \u201cfirst world\u201d to be adequate spokespeople for radical environmentalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a CNN article<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>published Sunday, reporter Aimee Lewis asked the all important question: is Extinction Rebellion just not woke enough?<\/span><\/p>\n

The criticism stem, most pointedly, from a protest XR held last month in a working class neighborhood of London. Privileged white, upper crust youth and XR\u2019s established elderly jumped on trains and chained themselves to the public transit cars in London\u2019s subway, disrupting the morning commute of many people who told organizers that they could hardly afford to miss a day of work. The demonstrators could not have cared less, telling the commuters that saving the planet was more important than getting to work on time, even if that job was the only way those commuters could afford the basic necessities.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTheir protest \u2014 which disrupted thousands of people\u2019s journeys to work \u2014 was rapidly criticized as wrongheaded and out of touch by members of the public, across social media and in the press,\u201d CNN reported. \u201cWhile it\u2019s not clear who made the decision to protest at Canning Town on October 17, the negative response has helped to spark change and self-reflection within one of the world\u2019s highest-profile environmental movements.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

CNN points out that XR considers itself \u201cdecentralized,\u201d meaning that anyone can act in its name. But the organization\u2019s heirarchy expressed support for the commute disruptors.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he disruptive nature of the actions are supported by the overwhelming majority of us,\u201d XR\u2019s spokemsan told reporters in a statement at the time. \u201cThis is a rebellion and this an attempt to make people aware of the far worse lethal disruptions that are going to happen when there is societal collapse. We have no apologies to offer for the disruptions, but it is how these disruptions are organized and the lack of local community involvement, because of the gross inadequacies within XR, to doing local community work properly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The lack of empathy for working class people is endemic, apparently, within the entire environmentalist movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA 2014\u00a0University of Michigan study<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>that looked into 293 mainstream NGOs, foundations and government agencies found that the \u2018current state of racial diversity in environmental organizations is troubling,’\u201d CNN says. \u201cIt concluded that the percentage of minorities employed as staff or on the boards of the organizations studied did not exceed 16%.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Worse still, if ethnic minorities work for environmental organizations, they tend not to move up, leaving the upper eschelons of management overwhelmingly white.<\/span><\/p>\n

XR tries to explain the problem away on its website, adding, in its \u201cfrequently asked questions,\u201d that it\u2019s \u201cmade up of people of all ages and backgrounds from all over the world. From under 18 to over 80 year olds \u2014 there are thousands of people willing to put their liberty on the line to fight the climate and ecological emergency and protect biodiversity and atmospheric health.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working to improve diversity in our movement,\u201d it claims.<\/span><\/p>\n

It may not get the chance. CNN is far from the only outlet that\u2019s notice XR\u2019s wokeness problem.\u00a0The Guardian published<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0an account by a young minority environmentalist that critiqued the movement for its lack of diversity, but also for its \u201cglorification of arrest,\u201d pointing out that upper-class, educated, white youth can be arrested and jailed and not face long-term consequences, whereas ethnic minorities may end up in jail for the rest of their lives, thanks to inequalities within the criminal justice system.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe tactics of Extinction Rebellion are designed by and for middle-class, white Britain. Their central rhetoric about a dystopian future fails to cut through for those of us already faced with a nightmarish present, surrounded by poverty and austerity,\u201d Athian Akec wrote, adding that \u201c[t]he tactic of being purposely arrested strikes an uncomfortable note for many people of colour, given the adverse experiences people in my community have had with the police,\u201d and then blames XR for failing to be as intersectional as possible \u2014 a key element of modern wokeness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe climate movement\u2019s failure to stand in solidarity with our political struggles adds to this sense of disconnect,\u201d Akec says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Grist<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, an environmental outlet at the forefront of anti-climate change activism, recognized the problem, as did the New Statemen, both of which commented on XR\u2019s seeming inability to adapt to progressivism.<\/span><\/p>\n

XR, of course, doesn\u2019t seem to mind. More protests are planned and it doesn\u2019t much matter who is in the way.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stung by criticism that it was too white and middle-class, a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion said, \u201cWe are working to improve diversity in our movement,\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=198482"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198513,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198482\/revisions\/198513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=198482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=198482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=198482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}