[FelicityR]

In a previous post on The Water Cooler I wrote

For the past few months I have been following the mainly peaceful protests of Extinction Rebellion, a group highlighting the destruction that humans have caused already to Earth. Brexit or staying in the EU isn't going to kill the human race, but if we carry on wreaking the environment as we are currently doing there won't be a planet to live on in a hundred years time.

Surely that should take priority over anything else, including Brexit.

However...

Personally I am becoming appalled at some of the dangerous 'tactics' (for want of a better word) demonstrators are adopting to make 'their point'. The police are overstretched in this country (especially London) already without needing to deal with people who are doing idiotic acts and are probably now alienating people like me from their cause.

Peaceful demonstration is fine by me: anarchy or anarchic acts are on a different level. And if their acts are alienating me, surely by the same token they will alienate the people who they are trying to influence: the government departments and politicians.

What do you think? And, as always, thank you for your replies.

[sfi]

Today four 77 year-olds were among nine people arrested in protests in Tasmania - these are ordinary people who are saying that the world has to change. Surely an issue that leads someone of that age to care deeply enough to be arrested is worth at least discussing by the people who can effect change. Instead we have seen nothing substantive for decades.

The evidence shows that the inconvenience caused by their actions pales in comparison to the inconvenience that will be experienced by not listening to them. The message is that society cannot continue on its current path without disruption, and the underlying reasons need to be addressed.

[Winstonm]

Being American, I probably have a different perspective. I have seen in my lifetime the non-violent demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King, watched while those civil rights marchers were clubbed and beaten by the police (aka "the establishment"), watched live on tv while the Chicago police clubbed and beat protesters outside the Democratic Convention in 1968, lived through the murder by the National Guard of 4 student demonstrators at Kent State, yet know that the very country I live in came about by violent revolution.

Perhaps the answer is not in the demonstrators but in the response. Instead of suppressing dissent perhaps acknowledge it as valid is a better.

[y66]

Peaceful demonstration has some potential to be constructive. Non peaceful acts are counter productive. Is there a case for optimism? No, I don't think so. It looks like a bumpy road ahead for the inhabitants of our planet.

[Vampyr]

There is a company in London called Client Earth. The staff are lawyers who sue those who are damaging the environment.

Perhaps instead of demonstrating... do something?

[FelicityR]

Vampyr, on 2019-October-12, 18:16, said:

There is a company in London called Client Earth. The staff are lawyers who sue those who are damaging the environment.

Perhaps instead of demonstrating... do something?

Inspiring. Perhaps if all lawyers adopted this stance I might actually like them. Sadly, from where I sit, there's far too many lawyers and ex-lawyers meddling in politics, both in the UK, Europe and America.

https://www.vox.com/...awyers-politics

When lawyers use laws, the minutiae of the law, and every conceivable trick in the book to defend human rights when the people they are defending have evidently committed human wrongs is beyond me.

I wonder what the Legal Aid bill will be once all the dust has settled from the Extinction Rebellion protests. Peaceful demonstrators wouldn't have been arrested. Many of the protestors chose civil disobedience of their own freewill. They are adults. Maybe they should be held to account for their actions which has paralysed parts of London for the past week.