I remember walking along a street on an #Extinction #Rebellion #march in 2019 and people were cheering from their windows.
A big part of all the early protests was #outreach, with protesters talking to people on the streets, in communities and workplaces, and finding eager responses.
This hopeful sense of #engagement is hard to find now.
Its disappearance is often blamed on the protesters themselves.
Aren’t they too disruptive?
Too white? Too young? Too old?
Too disconnected from politics? Too political?
You can put the blame with them, and, for sure, protesters make mistakes,
but you also have to recognise the impact of the #backlash.
Because where many of us saw great hope for change, others saw only a #threat.
And because they saw only a threat, they acted quickly to undermine and marginalise it.
The legal response to protest in the UK has been transformed at an astonishing pace.
Actions have been newly #criminalised;
locking on, carrying glue to protests, walking slowly in the road.
The growth in the use of #private #injunctions has enabled corporations to impose #crippling #fines for, say, blocking certain roads or sitting down at oil terminals.
Existing crimes have been escalated, so that what once might have attracted a small fine,
such as sitting down in a road,
can now lead quickly to #prison.
Defences are being stripped away; 🌟some protesters have been told by judges that they may not even mention the climate emergency in court, 🌟
and are imprisoned if they do so.
Long custodial sentences are becoming normalised.
While many people are happily going along with this repression, thinking that it’s necessary to stop disruption,
or that it only affects a few extremists,
the direction of travel is fast and frightening and its repercussions are growing.
@Natasha_Walter
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/13/climate-crisis-protest-activism-repression