If you’re just joining our narrative, or looking for a little refresher and clarification of what happened and why, this interview with Daniel Yildirim on The Climate Minute sums up the facts and figures of what happened on February 4th, and what is coming soon, all in just under 30 minutes.
You’ll also hear the following wisdom:
“Symbolism has this spiritual component to it. The enormity of the situation that we are facing, I think, requires our engagement with spirit in an unprecedented way. And also, in order to transform ourselves. You know, we are trying to not perpetuate this “us-and-them” mentality but looking within ourselves, recognizing the violence that is dwelling within our own selves. Through this symbolic action, it is also an act of atonement for ourselves.” (7:45)
“We are doing this for everyone, we are doing this for your children as well, when we are talking to the police officer. This is rooted in non-violent theory … Kingian strategy says that one of the differences between violence and nonviolence is, at the end of non-violent conflict, when you win, everybody wins. You are not dominating the opposing side, but the opposing side will actually be celebrating with you.” (9:15)
“All over the country we are seeing legislatures escalating the stakes here, trying to turn activists into people who are really dangerous threats to society when of course this is a gross projection and by far the biggest threat to our well being is corporate misuse of power.” (13:55)
“Part of our strategy is to create a human-sized drama because climate change is such a vast issue that it’s really hard to wrap your arms around or contain inside of a story because it’s vast both in physical and time scale … our hope is that when people see us risking serious prison time, that some questions will arise in their head. First, maybe they will think we are crazy, and hopefully if they hear us speak or read our writing a little bit they’ll say, “well, it doesn’t seem like they are crazy, so why did they do this, why are they putting all of this at risk?” And hopefully that will be an opening into some kind of learning or transformation.” (15:15)
“There is a lesser-known third option, and that is to plead necessity. And that would be our ideal. That is kind of known as the holy grail of climate activism. If we could get a jury trial, or to get a jury to see it the way we see it, that we are acting out of necessity to prevent a greater harm from occurring.” (7:23)
“The political, legal and judicial routes have been employed for decades now, and every year our fossil fuel consumption increases, it’s not even that it’s not decreasing, it’s increasing. As we continue to vote for democrats and sign petitions, and do all of these legal strategies, we are watching our children’s future grow more tenuous and unsafe. If we are taking the science of climate change seriously, we have got to do something drastic. As we are deeply committed to nonviolence, we ask ourselves, what must we do?” (19:00)
