I am surprised at the nervousness in the pit of my stomach. I’m facing a tree-shaded track descending alongside the remains of an old quarry. Every single fibre of my being is screaming at me to plunder its unknown treasures. Yet I durstn’t. I durstn’t because whilst I know it is a path, it is […]
You’re an environmental activist, as well as an author of speculative fiction. Tell us a bit about these two aspects of your life, and how they feed each other. At university I studied Economics which might sound counter-intuitive for an environmental activist. I guess the theories of demand-led growth, markets and so on which […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A with Rajat ChaudhuriRajat Chaudhuri
My conversion road to Extinction Rebellion began at Waterloo Bridge, during its April 2019 occupation by rebels. I was literally stopped in my tracks by the bold way Extinction Rebellion had claimed the bridge, by the carnival atmosphere and the potted plants hauled in to create an impromptu garden. But above all by the […]
Sharks are at the crucial apex of our ocean ecosystems, maintaining balance among species below them on the food chain. Already a quarter of the populations of over a thousand species of sharks and their related skates and rays are threatened with extinction. Shark fins, considered a delicacy in Asian cuisine, are a lucrative trade […]
Read More… from Read: Sharks – Victims of the Race for a COVID vaccine?Dick Russell
Some thoughts on art, direct action, and addiction The opinions in this article are mine and don’t represent those of Extinction Rebellion Scotland or anyone else. You might have seen that last week, three XR activists climbed onto the roof of the Scottish Parliament building and dropped a banner reading “Choose Oil or […]
Each morning, I file my vlog. The leaves rustle round me and the squirrels curse at me but I hold up my phone and talk loudly at it. Yesterday, for the first time, I didn’t feel like it. Not much had changed so it seemed a shame to disturb the tree top talking about […]
To James ‘Iggy’ Fox We are nature. We are science. We turn grief into action. We protest and we sing and we play and we dance. We do so for life. We are mourning the earth. We are mourning us. We are re-inventing the city. We are the grief-stricken carnival spirit that marks […]
José Gualinga is a leader of the Native People of Sarayaku, an indigenous Kichwa group with 1400 inhabitants living in a remote part of Ecuador’s southern Amazon. Known for their defence of the rights of nature and indigenous peoples, the Sarayaku call themselves the People of Noon, referring to an ancient prophecy of their ancestors […]
José Gualinga es un líder del Pueblo Originario de Sarayaku, un pueblo indígena Kichwa de 1400 habitantes situado en una parte remota de la Amazonía ecuatoriana. Conocidos por su defensa a favor de los derechos de la naturaleza y de los pueblos indígenas, los Sarayaku se llaman a sí mismos “el Pueblo del Medio Día”, […]
Writers Rebel interviews Nayra Chalán, an indigenous leader from Ecuador who played a key role in the October 2019 indigenous uprising. […]
Read More… from Read: Nayra Chalán on the Anniversary of Ecuador’s Indigenous Rebellion
Writers Rebel entrevista a Nayra Chalán, una líder indígena de Ecuador que tuvo un papel clave en el levantamiento indígena de octubre de 2019. […]
Read More… from Leer: Nayra Chalán en el aniversario de la rebelión indígena de Ecuador
Feathers & Bones There are many carcasses, hundreds of thousands falling out of the sky in a two-mile stretch inland, just in front of my house. Over a dozen flycatchers, swallows and warblers, a volume of deaths both common and sensitive, inexplicable. Before dying to reach winter grounds three billion […]
During the recent Rebellion we lost an inspirational friend and ally, David Graeber. This Sunday, 11 October 2020, sees an Intergalactic Memorial Carnival take place in over 100 (and counting) locations around the world – and everyone from XR is invited. Rebels in London can head to Portobello Road, and there are events planned […]
Read More… from Read: We Celebrate the Life of David GraeberDavid Graeber
Diana McCaulay, Jamaican environmentalist and author of Daylight Come, (Peepal Tree Press), spoke with Trinidadian author and Writers Rebel co-founder, Monique Roffey. They talked about about ‘Goatillas’, a carbon Neutral Caribbean, deadly heat, and Climate Change as bedfellow with our Colonial past. Diana, congratulations on publishing such a relevant book for our […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A with Diana McCaulayDiana McCaulay and Monique Roffey
The day before the sky swallowed us, I sat in my car in the parking lot of one of the island’s crowded supermarkets and listened to the radio for storm updates. The 11 o’clock was late, gospel music blared hope on the AM channels and an aimless circle spun blindly on my phone. Bobby’s […]
Read More… from Read: In the Shadow of the StormRichard Georges
Sakura Not Yoshino in April when blossom-fringed branches bow towards the ground in prayer beneath an early moon illuminating the frailty of white clouds where friends gather to sip sake and petals flutter to the ground pale as moths but deep January in Islington’s Highbury Fields where these tender buds this early […]
Liz Jensen gave this speech at the XR event Forfattere gør oprør, which was held in front of Danmarks Radio (DR), the national broadcaster, on the afternoon of 18 September 2020. Grief can do two things. It can shrink your soul – or it can expand it. Most of us here know grief. And if […]
What do you think might be the role of writers in the Anthropocene? I’m not sure writers have much of a role in the world we inhabit now, or that we ever did: literature is wildly overrated; remember Auden’s ‘Poetry makes nothing happen’? I say this with sorrow and anger and disillusionment, not triumph. […]
The next revolution – World War III – will be waged inside your head. It will be a guerrilla information war fought not in the sky or on the streets, not in the forests or even around scarce resources of the earth, but in newspapers and magazines, on the radio, on TV and in […]
Read More… from Read: Tufton Street – Fiery Words Under a Police HelicopterCharlotte Du Cann
I first got involved with Extinction Rebellion when I was researching a novel set in 2030. As I read the science, waves of emotion crashed over me: anger, dismay, grief. I had a lot of questions: why hadn’t I heard any of this before? Why wasn’t the crisis on the front pages? Why, too, […]
What do you think might be the role of writers in the Anthropocene? X: the implications of the anthropocene are huge. We writers should help to provide a change of vision about our place in the world, on this planet. But if we are reaching the final stretch of anthropocene, then the writers are […]