Why protest about protest
A personal testimony from Green Christian member, Judith Russenberger
I’m a Franciscan tertiary, a Green Christian and part of Christian Climate Action. My faith informs and shapes the way I live. Around me I see many things that I feel are at odds with the values of the Kingdom of God. I try to highlight these, to speak truth to power, as a way of effecting change.
When it comes to taking a stand – or sitting down – I think about what Jesus did in his ministry. One story that particularly resonates is Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. A visible action that drew a crowd. I can imagine the slow moving column of people filling the streets and effectively blocking the regular flow of business. I can imagine how it captured the attention of the ordinary people as well as those in power. And I hear clearly Jesus’s response, “If they [my disciples] are silenced, then the very stones themselves will shout aloud” Luke 19:40.
On 30 January over a thousand people sat in the road outside the Royal Courts of Justice to protest at the deliberate diminution of the right to protest in the UK. Inside the Courts an appeal was being heard brought by 16 climate protesters challenging the severity of the sentences they had been given.
As we sat in silence on the road in three orderly lines back to back, police offices walked up and down the lines, stopping to address individuals asking them to move. “We recognise your right to protest but this is a live road”. “What can we do to make you move?” “Please move to the designated protest area in between the church of St Clement Dane and the court house”. “A section 14 notice may be imposed on this section of road and then we may arrest you”. “You might spend hours in a police cell.”
This was a silent vigil so most chose not to respond to the police. Instead maintaining the silence with eyes downcast, we resolutely continued to sit in the road.
Yes we were blocking the road. Yes we were preventing vehicles from using that section. Why? Because – yes – this was a protest. And what is a protest if it does not cause some degree of disruption?
The reason for any protest is to raise awareness – to draw people’s attention – to an issue in order to effect change. This the protest was about the failure of the system to allow justifiable and reasonable protest.
Over the last few years the right to protest has been has been crushed and demonised by the government through new laws, by judges through punitive interpretation of laws and sentencing guidelines, and by corporate interests through their ability to drop quiet words into significant ears, and their ability to afford the cost of legal actions and injunctions.
Where once walking peacefully along a street was considered a valid means of protest, it is now designated as “public nuisance”. Where once sitting and blocking a road was considered a valid means of protest, it is now designated as a “disruption of national infrastructure”. Have we reached a situation where you can only protest by staying quietly on the pavement, well away from anyone or anything you might disrupt?
Protest is meant to disrupt. It is meant to irritate. It is there to draw attention to a situation that needs to change. Yes, protest has to be proportionate. Yes, protest has to target the appropriate audiences. Yes, protest has to be based on valid claims.
The climate crisis is the biggest existential crisis that we humans have ever faced. A delayed car journey diminishes into insignificance compared with the potential loss of life of millions of people.
The climate crisis has no favourites, it can and will continue to affect us all. There is no audience that can argue that it doesn’t threaten them.
The climate crisis is a scientifically hypothesised, modelled and proven crisis. There is no valid data that proves otherwise.
And yet since the rise of Extinction Rebellion in 2018, and subsequent groups such as Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, governments, judges and the Criminal Prosecution Service have gone out of their way in refuting that the actions being taking by these groups represents genuine protest.
Protesting about the right to protest is vitally important in an era when we face not only the existential crisis of climate change but also the threat of oppressive right wing politics that is beginning to dominate the world.
Judith Russenberger writes a blog, The Green Tau
Next: No Faith in Fossil Fuels – article for parish magazine
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Comments on "Why protest about protest"
Edward Gildea:
Well said, Judith. Powerfully and gently written. I was there too, and was shocked by the excessive police presence. So many gentle, loving people being treated as if we posed a terrible threat! We've got it all so wrong!
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