Source: De-fund the Tone Police
…On Protest and “Civility”
Amy Westervelt in Drilled
Over the past two years, there’s been a sudden and severe backlash to climate protest, both legally and socially. I have to say, the social bit surprised me. Not that people on the street might start to get annoyed with protestors and harass them, as they have been, but that so many in the climate movement itself would turn on protestors in lock step with the state. It’s been shocking in recent weeks, for example, to see so many climate advocates so callously shrug off the extreme sentences received by Just Stop Oil protestors in the U.K. as something expected and, worse, deserved.
We’ve of course been covering the increased criminalization of climate protest at Drilled for going on two years now, but let me re-state for the record: none of the art protests have caused any actual damage. We’re talking about soup and water-based finger paint being smeared on or thrown at glass, which requires about $15 and 20 minutes to clean. The protests are shocking, yes, they make people think a priceless work of art is at risk, yes, and that is the point: everything is at risk, shouldn’t we be shocked? But these protests are not causing damage. Nor are they particularly radical in the context of social movements and civil disobedience (follow and read Dana Fisher for more, including her excellent book Saving Ourselves). So why are they making climate people so mad?
Leave a Reply