Just Stop Oil

[LDC]

...but specifically aiming to create inconvenience and disruption ... because the inconvenience and disruption when climate change really starts to bite will make a few blocked roads seem like a picnic. And you can't fight the weather, so lol what then?

But how does this disruption actually translate into change then? What's the link bit between disruption and then a reduction in carbon emissions?

 

[Pickman's model]

It’s a new tactic for JSO, but Reclaim the Streets were doing that way back when.

Not to mention critical mass

 

[platinumsage]

RTS and critical mass didn't use disruption as a tactic, as LDC said it was incidental to their aim which was to assert their own use of that road space.

JSO's use of that road space is entirely irrelevant to their aims, rather than literally being their aim. The two forms of protest are complete opposites in that respect.

 

[LDC]

It's still very different to JSO.

Critical Mass caused disruption, but the major points was create a car free space, empower cyclists, and also show/argue that a car dominated city was detrimental for a whole host of reasons. The JSO stuff has nothing like that with their walking slow protests, they're solely to cause disruption to draw attention to climate change/cause problems for people with some ill-defined plan that this then leads into a reduction in carbon emissions.

 

[mojo pixy]

But how does this disruption actually translate into change then? What's the link bit between disruption and then a reduction in carbon emissions?

I don't know, but I don't think I have to. What did RTS achieve, looked at from here? More importantly, what should JSO do instead of what they're doing? I don't have an answer btw, but I think what they're doing is basically good stuff so IMO if anything they should probably just escalate.

 

[LDC]

I don't know, but I don't think I have to. What did RTS achieve, looked at from here?

I think it's a good question, but it would need to be judged alongside the wider ecological and anti-roads stuff happening at the same time as well, which then morphed into lots of anti-GM stuff and much of the anti-summit protests later, as well as influencing more recent things like the anti-HS2 protests etc. including probably XR, IB and JSO via the climate camp threads.

What JSO and other climate activity should be that's better is a bigger question, but people have been discussing that in plenty of places.

 

[LDC]

I was chatting to someone yesterday about the role of the unions in this, and the danger that they're going to be very reactionary over any plans to cut oil and gas production, as has happened recently with the Labour announcement of no new oil or gas development and the GMB coming out with 'concerns' over this. So I think any decent strategy is going to have to deal with that kind of thing.

 

[mojo pixy]

There are definitely people involved with XR and JSO, who were there with RTS, who rode along with Critical Mass and have been doing all kinds of other stuff alongside that. Someone ought to write a book about it tbh. From Twyford Down to Shutdown, catchy title

 

[Pickman's model]

RTS and critical mass didn't use disruption as a tactic, as LDC said it was incidental to their aim which was to assert their own use of that road space.

JSO's use of that road space is entirely irrelevant to their aims, rather than literally being their aim. The two forms of protest are complete opposites in that respect.

fuck me you never miss an opportunity to show how fuckwitted you are.

critical mass used slow cycling as a tactic. the slow cycling is the tactic. the disruption is a possible result from the use of the tactic. you confuse the tactic with the aim.

 

[Pickman's model]

There are definitely people involved with XR and JSO, who were there with RTS, who rode along with Critical Mass and have been doing all kinds of other stuff alongside that. Someone ought to write a book about it tbh. From Twyford Down to Shutdown, catchy title

sure some of them were on the other side from rts, cm etc. there seem to be an unusually large number of former cops in the ranks of xr

 

[Rob Ray]

it would need to be judged alongside the wider ecological and anti-roads stuff happening at the same time as well

Yes, it would. And in fact the JSO slow road walks will need to be as well.

I think making out the the RTS road protests were qualitatively different in terms of their public impact because of their general philosophies is a bit of a red herring tbh. It's not like the right-wing argument of "this is disrupting people getting to work" etc made any more or less sense at the time. What they had in their favour was a different general outlook that was more tolerant towards civil dissent (which was happening more often and had way more out-there examples of direct action from recent memory for quick comparison), and they had more critical mass to push back against hang-em-and-flog-em right/crotchety left types.

 

[platinumsage]

critical mass used slow cycling as a tactic. the slow cycling is the tactic. the disruption is a possible result from the use of the tactic. you confuse the tactic with the aim.

Yes exactly, they didn't use disruption as a tactic, they just cycled normally using the road space, their tactic was to demonstrate mass cycle use of that space instead of mass motor vehicle use. Disruption resulted but that wasn't their tactic. They would have been equally happy if there had been no disruption from their actions, in fact that was kind of their aim.

JSO on the other hand are using disruption as a tactic. They are entering the road not because they have any particular point to make about road use, but because their tactic is to disrupt the road traffic and cause disruption.

 

[Rob Ray]

they just cycled normally using the road space,

Lol did you ever actually attend one? They absolutely were deliberately disruptive of the road space, were pilloried in the press for such and faced mass arrest. This is an absolutely bizarre rewriting of history you're trying – the opposite is archived on this very site ffs.



Honestly I feel like a lot of this conversation is basically just "oh it wasn't a shit idea back in my day, we were much more clever." I was around, and no we fucking weren't, there were just more of us and the Daily Mail types didn't have social media echo chambers to persuade each other than it's their civic duty to run over and assault protesters. Plus we committed the far more obnoxious sin of normalising samba bands.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

critical mass used slow cycling as a tactic. the slow cycling is the tactic. the disruption is a possible result from the use of the tactic. you confuse the tactic with the aim.

It’s really not that difficult is it.

Blocking a road however it’s blocked, it will cause DISRUPTION!

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes exactly, they didn't use disruption as a tactic, they just cycled normally using the road space, their tactic was to demonstrate mass cycle use of that space instead of mass motor vehicle use. Disruption resulted but that wasn't their tactic. They would have been equally happy if there had been no disruption from their actions, in fact that was kind of their aim.

JSO on the other hand are using disruption as a tactic. They are entering the road not because they have any particular point to make about road use, but because their tactic is to disrupt the road traffic and cause disruption.

You're still very confused

 

[Dystopiary]

Lol did you ever actually attend one? They absolutely were deliberately disruptive of the road space, were pilloried in the press for such and faced mass arrest. This is an absolutely bizarre rewriting of history you're trying – the opposite is archived on this very site ffs.

View attachment 378716

Honestly I feel like a lot of this conversation is basically just "oh it wasn't a shit idea back in my day, we were much more clever." I was around, and no we fucking weren't, there were just more of us and the Daily Mail types didn't have social media echo chambers to persuade each other than it's their civic duty to run over and assault protesters. Plus we committed the far more obnoxious sin of normalising samba bands.

It's hard to get too nostalgic about all the off-key penny whistle playing.

 

[LDC]

Honestly I feel like a lot of this conversation is basically just "oh it wasn't a shit idea back in my day, we were much more clever." I was around, and no we fucking weren't, there were just more of us and the Daily Mail types didn't have social media echo chambers to persuade each other than it's their civic duty to run over and assault protesters. Plus we committed the far more obnoxious sin of normalising samba bands.

Sorry but that's bollocks. I was about then and we spent days and days discussing (and writing about) the impact and point of our actions and coming up with strategies and tactics to try and make the best of our aims. It was often wrong, naive and had confused politics but it's crap just to say the only difference is that there were more of us and the cultural & political context was different.

 

[Rob Ray]

It was often wrong, naive and had confused politics

Ah so entirely unlike JSO then . They do have planning and even training meetings you know – some of theirs got kicked out of LARC not so long ago when some poorly-hidden prep work got the place raided.

 

[LDC]

Lol did you ever actually attend one? They absolutely were deliberately disruptive of the road space, were pilloried in the press for such and faced mass arrest. This is an absolutely bizarre rewriting of history you're trying – the opposite is archived on this very site ffs.

Nowhere on the CM link does it suggest that the sole (or even main) point was to disrupt traffic. It actally says something that it was very much not a demonstration but a celebration of cycling and the loss of public space to the car.

 

[pug]

Yes exactly, they didn't use disruption as a tactic, they just cycled normally using the road space, their tactic was to demonstrate mass cycle use of that space instead of mass motor vehicle use. Disruption resulted but that wasn't their tactic. They would have been equally happy if there had been no disruption from their actions, in fact that was kind of their aim.

That's just not true, you're talking bollocks.

 

[Rob Ray]

Nowhere on the CM link does it suggest that the sole (or even main) point was to disrupt traffic. It actally says something that it was very much not a demonstration but a celebration of cycling and the loss of public space to the car.

Oh come on the photo itself acknowledges that very outcome as being intrinsic to what they were doing. The framing of it as "we are traffic" is a justification of an outcome they know is going to happen. It's all well in the past now, I don't think we need to keep the pretence up.

 

[LDC]

Ah so entirely unlike JSO then

I think what's so difficult is that at least with the RTS and critical mass type stuff was to do with cars, public space, pollution, etc. and there's clearly a very direct connection to the form of the events. With JSO the connection to climate change and how the event impacts or addresses that is much less clear. Infact I think they say that the demo itself doesn't have a direct connection to climate change, but that the aim is to create disruption to put pressure on the government to take action.

I think this discussion of disruption as point of the event or a result of the event is a bit of red herring tbh. What organisers of events think is often very different to what some the people attending an event thing. I guarentee plenty of people at RTS or CM events did likely think the point was causing disruption.

I stopped going to CM quite quickly as I found them counterproductive due to the antagonism between drivers and cyclists tbh.

 

[edcraw]

I think RTS have help shift the Overton window as they say and help people realise how vehicles destroy cities which has help to bring in LTNs which all right thinking people agree with.

 

[Orang Utan]

I wonder if eco-terrorism will become a thing, the more desperate things get, or have I been reading too much dystopian sci-fi?

 

[LDC]

I wonder if eco-terrorism will become a thing, the more desperate things get, or have I been reading too much dystopian sci-fi?

Guess you've read The Ministry for the Future then?!

Do you mean UK/Europe/North America generally, as there's some stuff elsewhere can could broadly come under that banner, Niger delta MEND stuff for example. Plus there's been some isolated incidences of that in Europe and North America already - although not specifically climate related.

I do think it's a good and interesting question though, my quick answer is yes, I think it's entirely possible or even likely to become something we see in the next decades.

 

[Dystopiary]

I wonder if eco-terrorism will become a thing, the more desperate things get, or have I been reading too much dystopian sci-fi?

I think it's inevitable.

 

[chilango]

I wonder if eco-terrorism will become a thing, the more desperate things get, or have I been reading too much dystopian sci-fi?

It already has. And has been for 30+ years (ELF etc. was the FBI"s biggest concern for a while back pre 9/11). See also the Unabomber thread.

Andreas Malm's book is flawed, but readable, proposition for it's contemporary manifestation and the trashing of SUVs etc seems to be quite a "common" thing.

I think we'll see more. Both positive stuff and of the ecofascist type too.

The climate crisis is here, now. Of course people will react.

 

[Orang Utan]

What’s the Andreas Malm book?

 

[LDC]

What’s the Andreas Malm book?

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With...

www.versobooks.com

Not an instruction manual but a look at climate strategy more generally.

 

[Orang Utan]

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With...

www.versobooks.com

Not an instruction manual but a look at climate strategy more generally.

There’s a recent film out called that - think it’s fictional though
And I have read that Ministry For The Future book - was impressed with the idea of drone strikes on CEOs of oil companies