LDC
On est tous des pangolins
'Campaigners' says it all really. And the start of what do you think?
Extinction Rebellion
- Thread starter Jeremiah18.17
- Start date
'Campaigners' says it all really. And the start of what do you think?
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Think you might be onto something here. I've also been puzzled by the apparent police tolerance of the protests. People being peaceful has never stopped them being cunts before. Maybe the protests are a bargaining chip with govt at this point. The police just play the game of saying 'we don't have enough resources to stop this' until the govt ups their budget.
A bit conspiracy-theory maybe, but I simply can't buy the line that the police can't use their usual tactics because the protesters are being peaceful.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
There's a sign up at the park entrance saying "protestors will be asked to vacate @ 1700hrs", by which I think they mean the weed protestors rather than the XR lot. Good luck with that then. At half two people were still streaming in on the tube.I saw there's a 420 gathering today. At 12 noon
Flavour
hang the bankers
The start of something...The government paying more lip service to climate change while continuing to prioritize the health of the stock market over the planet. I don't think it would take much from the gov to satisfy the majority of XR protesters in the short term, buying themselves time would be cheap
rowan
Well-Known Member
Apologies for jumping in at page 30 and possibly repeating what's already been posted, haven't got time to read the whole lot!
I'm all for protest, it's often the only way to get anyone to take any notice, but I simply can't understand why ER have chosen to protest while Parliament is closed for Easter? They say they'll stay there till the govt listens, so why not protest when the MPs will actually be affected and not when they're swanning off around the world on holiday?
Instead they're affecting ordinary London commuters (which I was unfortunate enough to be for years before making my escape!), the very people whose support they need!
And why aren't they targeting the most polluting countries? We keep being told that China is the biggest polluter, but that's only because they're the most populated, and they rank only just above us.
Per capita it's the USA, Australia and Canada who are the top 3, why not target their Embassies, there's more point to that than targeting Corbyn's garden fence!
I'm all for protest, it's often the only way to get anyone to take any notice, but I simply can't understand why ER have chosen to protest while Parliament is closed for Easter? They say they'll stay there till the govt listens, so why not protest when the MPs will actually be affected and not when they're swanning off around the world on holiday?
Instead they're affecting ordinary London commuters (which I was unfortunate enough to be for years before making my escape!), the very people whose support they need!
And why aren't they targeting the most polluting countries? We keep being told that China is the biggest polluter, but that's only because they're the most populated, and they rank only just above us.
Per capita it's the USA, Australia and Canada who are the top 3, why not target their Embassies, there's more point to that than targeting Corbyn's garden fence!
newtoprotest
New Member
New to here, and apart from two protest marches over the last 60 years new to protesting, especially civil disobedience. I spent two days in London, had to come home for grandchild-sitting duties and because I was knackered, but I'm glad I was part of it. Parliament may be in recess but government goes on. The amount of media coverage Extinction Rebellion has got is tremendous - I've never heard climate change being discussed so much. And it's an international movement, so XR here is targeting here; there's XR movements in many, many other countries doing their bit.
Treacle Toes
Time
It isn't nonsense and of course people are often righteously angry enough to riot. Nobody has suggested anything of the sort so that isn't what was being discussed.
The point is that protests don't only turn violent because of a few drunk twats goading police as was being suggested. Myself and others here have experience of unprovoked heavy handed policing at peaceful protests as well as obvious AP rabble rousing to give plod an excuse. We are musing on why that isn't happening with this protest.
newtoprotest
New Member
I've been wondering about that. A few thoughts - lack of resources, or wanting to make clear to government that they need more resources; large numbers of Legal Observers and world media; the avowedly non-violent stance has to play a part; and an outside chance that some of them actually sympathise with the cause. I suspect it's about to change though - the video of them dragging a couple of passive protesters along the pavement wasn't playing nicely.
kenny g
Sheeple Awake!
For the most part, the police are genuinely pissed off, tired and worn out. Dont forget that they are also in the main relatively new recruits who have been trained on the human rights act, lawful arrest, limits of powers etc. The miners strike is no longer seen by many officers as something to take pride in and in any case it was over a generation ago. The collective police memory is that they were used and then shafted. If your day job is dealing with drunks and the fall out from austerity a few thousand polite well behaved obstructers of the highway dont appear like the enemy.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
More horseshit.
Police 'used sexualised violence against fracking protesters'
These lot were polite, well behaved highway obstructers and they were repeatedly and consistently beaten, sexually assaulted, fitted up and slandered by police.
The police have not cleaned up their act since the miner's strike or Hillsborough or the troubles, they've cleaned up their image. They've done this with the help of tame media and a broad culture of PR turd-polishing.
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LDC
On est tous des pangolins
In some years of organizing and going on demos and actions I have never once seen anything resembling agent provocateurs, and I know of no proved (unmasked/exposed) cases at all in the UK. Doesn't mean they haven't happened, but if they have it's much much rarer than people go on about, and IME all the calls of 'provocateurs' were usually directed at people not toeing the non-violence line.
Hasn't the spycops case unmasked/exposed absolutely shitloads of them?
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
They were long term, deep cover types and so unlikely to risk exposure by openly encouraging violent/aggressive tactics.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
No, it exposed undercover cops. That's very different to saying some people are agent provocateurs on demos/actions.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Some did engage a bit more like that on certain demos, but as part of creating a convincing cover, not to engineer a situation to justify the cops wading in.
Some of the accounts I've read said they did exactly this.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
It's not horseshit - the cops at all of the sites have been generally pretty uninterested in doing anything beyond their direct orders. I'm sure there is an old school segment who treat protestors as the enemy - I overheard a conversation where one older copper was talking about how they could put your head through a window if you didn't keep an eye on them at all times during arrests - but generally they don't seem to take any personal joy in it all. I heard a younger copper giving actually quite a fair description of what was going on to some children who were at OC this afternoon.
Of course the issue is how much this matters given that whatever they might feel personally they're still going to do what they're told. We're hardly at the point of police rebellion. I wouldn't trust them any more than if they clearly hated the folk there.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Policing in the UK is fairly well advanced in terms on controlling and containing crowds without overt violence, especially in London and in full view of the media and with such a culturally timely and unchallenging message from ER. It's rare to need to wade into demos, especially nice peaceful ones that aren't currently likely to cause too much trouble. If their potential changes, and especially if the type of person that makes up the demo changes, they'll wade in whatever if it's 'needed'.
Apart from stuff like this that is.
Police spy accused of urging anti-racist activists to commit arson
I think it's very naive to think that there aren't potentially agent provocateurs, especially as it's way easier to turn up at a demo or whatever than be embedded long term somewhere and the latter was certainly rife so...
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
I don't know or care what they take joy in, I only know what they do. And what they do is treat people like you wouldn't treat a dog. Just because they're behaving themselves in this one place at this moment in time doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to what they actually are as an organisation.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
Not really. For a start, I've never come across anyone who openly felt pride in what they did during the Miners Strike, but I have met a lot who managed to achieve financial stability as the result of all the money that the then government threw at them during that time. Almost all of them have retired now, and we will soon get to the point where almost everyone who qualified for and got a full pension will have retired too. Where there are morale issues with the rest, a lot of it is to how the Met has implemented change at least as much as the cuts - some of the change (the move away from borough-based policing to the larger BCUs especially) was brought in with very little consultation with the public and even less with the staff who would be affected by it.
With regards to "the collective police memory is that they were used and then shafted" - that has been the collective police memory since 1829.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
I said that in my second paragraph; in practice it doesn't really matter, if they're told to treat people badly they still will, and I see no change in the people who give the orders. The cops might not casually beat people up for a laugh but then they wouldn't anyway here because of all the cameras on all of these actions, it's not like being out in the country somewhere.
But there is a noticeable difference in attitude. How to build on that is left as an exercise for the keen student I guess. I wouldn't even say it was necessarily a long term difference either.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Like I said, it might happen, but not ever seen it proved or even anywhere close.
And have seen plenty of hippies and idiots screaming provocateur at anyone doing anything they don't like on a demo. And again, Carlo encouraging people to do that is very different to people doing it on a demo.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
This.
Once them at the top decide it is time then the smiling, dancing and ollie-ing will stop, the gear will go on and heads will be smashed. The press has been asking for this and the state media will play it down as ever. My bet is anyone left sat around by dusk on Monday is in for a rude awakening.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
We're not that far away in time from the student protests are we? The ones where the cops used vast kettles of hundreds of cops, baton charges, horse charges, and finally intimidated the protests out of existence by lining the routes of every protest with thousands of cops in riot gear. I don't think a cultural shift has occured in police ranks since then.
ETA: or UKuncut, which was non-violent. The police decided to interpret handing out leaflets in shops as an act of aggression and carried out mass arrests, then flooded the following protests with so many police they basically couldn't happen.
Whatever the reason the police haven't cleared the protests, it isn't that they don't have the ability, and it isn't that their footsoldiers don't have the will.
ETA: or UKuncut, which was non-violent. The police decided to interpret handing out leaflets in shops as an act of aggression and carried out mass arrests, then flooded the following protests with so many police they basically couldn't happen.
Whatever the reason the police haven't cleared the protests, it isn't that they don't have the ability, and it isn't that their footsoldiers don't have the will.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
The radicalizing power of a truncheon.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
No, I'm not saying they're all kombucha drinking touchy feeling types now, only musing on the possibility of a subtle change in conjunction with the other factors that have been mentioned.
