“Environmental activists are not the sort of people who enjoy breaking the law,” says Sam Knights, an organizer of Extinction Rebellion, the group that shut down London during rush hour on Wednesday morning. “But we have no choice.”
Through mass civil disobedience, Extinction Rebellion hopes to force the U.K. government to do what no world power has yet to do: to treat climate change as a crisis that requires drastic social and economic change. In a letter announcing the group’s mission last month, organizers promised that hundreds of concerned citizens—scientists and academics, students, parents, artists, teachers, lawyers—had pledged to risk arrest in nonviolent direct action. In the face of government stagnation, despite the future described by the latest IPCC report (which gives the planet less than two decades to take action in order to avert disaster), “it is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty and to rebel to defend life itself,” the letter read.
Unlike marching, a collective protest method that has now become more familiar than ever in post-Trump America, Extinction Rebellion’s “swarming” of the streets around Parliament on Wednesday involved just small numbers disrupting business-as-usual in the capital. The group believes that its tactics are newly effective: Entering an intersection on a red light, activists blocked traffic for seven minutes at a time, interacting with motorists and cyclists and distributing their message as cars stack up behind them. Then they let a group of cars go ahead, wait for another red light and begin again. As the effects of the swarming began to shut down the city on Wednesday morning, they sent a letter to U.K. business secretary Greg Clark with demands: “We would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to work out ways in which you can exercise your responsibility as secretary of state to protect the ecosystems and people of this country.”
Photographer Matt Stuart embedded with Extinction Rebellion on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, capturing the swarming at Lambeth Bridge near the Houses of Parliament, Vauxhall Bridge, and on a main access road in West Kensington. The actions felt distinctly British: cordial with police and in the face of angry motorists, the environmentalists’ signs had messages like “Sorry, we won’t be long” and “Thank you for your patience.” But make no mistake: Traffic snarled the busy city. Over the course of the days, 82 people were arrested and five bridges were temporarily shut down. The Metropolitan Police has advised Londoners to avoid driving. After a month of swarming and gluing themselves to the gates of Downing Street, Extinction Rebellion could usher in a new era of mobilization in cities around the world. “We have published reports, carried out studies, signed petitions, gone on marches . . . and nothing has worked,” Knights told Vogue. “We are now trying to disrupt the economy. Perhaps then they will listen.”
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