 Extinction rebellion is an environmental protection movement that was founded in 2018 in the United Kingdom with the aim of creating awareness for the mass extinction of humans, animals and plants that is going on and through disobedience try to make governments act to my right, to my left actually we have Julien and on the other side Maria on stage someone else will be joining later and it's your stage now Thank you Thank you so much for your interest in our talk I'm Maria and I'm in the local group in Berlin and since February I've been basically doing nothing except talks for extinction rebellion this is my last talk on one hand I see the movement I'm a bit ambivalent about the movement but also I'm personally exhausted resource extorted myself I need a bit of a break and I am from Hamburg I started in February 15 people in the group and now we've brought 6,000 people onto the streets in October it was a crazy year fully packed with all kinds of actions and we try to make the impossible possible and within 40 minutes tell you about everything that's happened and we will also try to enter the meta level somehow and analyze and that's what we'll do alright let's start so first of all 2019 the climate crisis has become the public has become aware of the climate crisis and if you're inside the climate bubble then you're aware of the bad news every day Australia is on fire, other countries and continents are on fire there's basically no day on which you don't hear about severe catastrophes and a permanent frost is melting the Victoria Falls were without water in South Africa lack of water, droughts and the mass extinction many types of animals, plants and humans cannot adapt quickly enough to this drastic climate change and the science has concluded that this is the sixth mass extinction and of course this also affects our chance of survival as humans there is so much that happened but at the same time nothing has happened hashtag never trust a cop 25 the climate conference in Madrid has failed the US has as expected withdrawn from the climate pact of Paris the fossil fuel consumption is even rising as of today this graph shows the carbon dioxide concentration at Mauna lower observatory in Hawaii and also noted here are the different climate meetings like Paris, Kyoto but nevertheless the emissions and the concentration of carbon dioxide is rising meanwhile the German government has agreed on a climate pact which is essentially worthless and there's nothing part of it that might substantially change the path that you've seen on the graph and the next elections are only in two years and only then we might have a chance to get a coalition that might do something about the climate crisis exactly that's why we as extinction rebellion are here the situation has only worsened and power will do nothing without demanding action our first demand is to tell the truth the second demand is to act now to get to net zero emissions until 2025 and our third demand are listen to the science but the third demand is the third demand is citizens assemblies that may act on climate change but at the moment if we don't act we risk severe droughts and food like a food until 2050 if we reach four degrees or warmer average global heating we risk that billions of people risk death so why our first demand is to tell the truth first we need the national declaration of a climate emergency first of all we have to become climate neutral until 2025 what the fuck first of all this sounds very unrealistic but this is what is actually necessary we have to act now and we have to enact drastic change now we have no chance of reaching the two degree goal we already passed the 1.5 degree goal in Germany this year even though there is lots of critique about this we are a movement that wants more democracy citizens assemblies are an already tested tool more direct democracy where people meet and discuss about these topics aiming to create demands together we need trust that a diverse amount of voices no matter with which ethnic background which income class etc these people come from we have three demands how do we want to reach these goals our preferred method of acting is mass civil disobedience non-violent civil disobedience our government is right now not acting in our best interest when it comes to ecological and climate questions and the Paris Agreement is being broken by our government that they agreed on themselves in Paris and because of this non-action we are ready to even risk for example arrest if we we want to get active in a decentralized and autonomous way we want to remain active we have four principles here that are particularly important number ten we depend on self-determination and decentralization and each every person that subscribes to these ten principles is allowed to act in the name of extinction rebellion we are a non-violent network that is principle number nine because we know that these are more effective more successful but also because we need the masses and non-violence is for accessibility it's very important and we overcome hierarchical power structures because we've seen that otherwise things don't work so well and example principle number five reflection and learning are important to us we are at the end of one action cycle we are in a phase of reflection right now and considering what to do next and that's why we want to share something about that with you now extinction rebellion is a bit of a copycat movement it came from the UK and in last year five most important bridges in London were blocked and that created a lot of awareness in an instant what came from there were these exact three demands, the methods and the ten principles and a first event that showed this is how it can be done, this is how it can turn out and what they also delivered was this toolbox, a graphic toolkit with a sign that can be used non-commercially with a font, colors, a color scheme that should be used and woodcut illustrations and that immediately enabled people to become active I'm a graphic designer myself and I could immediately produce materials that for decentralized movements that works locally is a very very important thing and for social media of course but also for a visual identity to create a feeling of identity this principle, this copycat principle of course also applies within the action formats that are forming within the movement we see the red devils here that were very present in the media they are a circus-like performance group, the invisible circus in London they joined and they immediately made a DIY video showing you how to make those costumes and bring them into use in other places as well what we did a whole huge lot was talks we don't have numbers unfortunately, they would be gigantic if we had them we have to build a database for that, we had hundreds of talks which always consisted of two parts, first was a climate science part which simply outlined the current status of climate science in a way that people could understand from person to person that was important, we had talks as an individual organization and universities, schools, institutes, companies on festivals and this is a very important instrument for mobilization it was for us and for the extinction movement but also as an awareness tool something that the state should actually do to inform people about what is currently ongoing, what is the state of the science right now yes, another person anecdote my bandwidth went from the chaos community up to the catholic church, the commission there for preserving creation there was more agreement than I would have suspected at first not many numbers but a few worldwide within 30 months we have become active in 55 countries the most active ones are France, the UK and Germany in that order this means everywhere in this world we estimate that we have a potential of 150,000 people which are ready to become part of actions of mass civil disobedience in Germany we have 124 local branches, the green ones are active and running they have structures and they might have even split into more local branches and they have different working groups for IT, arts and others the yellow ones are still under construction and growing rapidly we have about 23,000 people, last time I checked the newsletter and we have Mademois the program which is similar to Slack and there are also thousands of people registered and that means lots of people involved within Extinction Berlin Germany and many that came to Berlin something important that has only become clear in the months before Berlin are local, are small groups which connect more deeply to go to actions the great thing is that we don't know who all of these people are but they are there which has also developed, this year, our communities so a bit larger circles where people organize there is a world cloud from the UK a few examples, there are interest groups for example like XR army, artists, colleges, workers, pharma so different people like doctors and other workers and there are also other focus groups like Animal Rebellion where the transformation of agriculture is their main interest in the direction of an animal friendly agriculture other groups like the XR Jews or the Christs, Buddhists or atheists this we actually wanted to remove but it's very, very interesting so let's talk about it anyway so these communities are the source of this there are two different models of power the traditional model of power where it's hierarchical it comes from the top down and then there is the Pillars of Support system so the society in which we live is being supported by these pillars like the universities, the arts, the bureaucracy, the churches these communities are a way to gain new access to a more diverse set of people and in these institutions we have to start by saying I will not support this traditional view of power anymore I connect with other teachers, psychologists or others and we organize ourselves and we fight for system change and if we hollow out these traditional power structures then we might actually achieve success so what has happened this year? in November 2018 there was the first meeting of XR Germany the first action was in February together with Ander Gelende protesting against the coal compromise and there have been way too many concessions made to the coal industry and very fast all over Germany local branches have developed they have done smaller actions at first like a dion as you can see here dions are an action where people lie down on the ground as if they were dead to symbolize the death of humans and animals caused by the climate crisis and different actions for example of this kind have been happening all throughout Germany the first larger one was in April for example in Berlin but also in London and other large cities here you can see a picture from Berlin with about 200 activists and we actually declared rebellion in front of the German parliament in Berlin and here you can see how fast we have grown this is a picture from June here in Leipzig here you find there regularly is a Gothic festival here in Leipzig and there have been lots of connections to that scene and there was a successful cooperation between extinction rebellion and the Gothic scene here where during their event many participants came to the city centre and participated in a dion another form of action are swarming which are a kind of smaller block of streets act of blocking streets or bridges one form of this is using bikes which we have done after critical mass meetings and also important is that we don't only interrupt business as usual but also tell them why we are doing it and that we are sorry this is not so cool that you are now interrupted but this is why we do it and sometimes we even bring cookies but always fly this here is an action from XR Youth the youth branch of extinction rebellion one day before the Europe elections a few young activists have locked themselves onto a building to show that the politics which are failing are something they have to suffer from later and that they will not accept this and here we are in front of the Chancellor's office with about 30 activists this was also a copycat action which was done before in the United Kingdom and we have done the same here in summer the national connection has started the action level has increased a little people were interested to volunteer to get arrested and here we were on a bridge in Cologne nobody was actually arrested but we have learned a lot from this action and it was great to see the success of an open and productive street block and later we have decided that we need to have a larger action this year in October here you can see the action a lot of our children which happened during the cruise days in Hamburg which generated a lot of press and this is an action to get the width sand and the gears which was an action to protest the car exhibition in Frankfurt this here is an action in Freising where people are in the window of a clothing shop protesting against fast fashion this is a picture from Stuttgart where plastic is criticised the use of plastic and great costumes you can see there on the 20th of September we were also supporting Fridays for Future for example here in Munich where people were standing on melting ice blocks and in Berlin we tried to motivate people to take part in massive disobedience we call it massive civil disobedience for everyone and we did a similar to the Love Parade an action which looked similar to Love Parade where we also listened to music while we were protesting here in Berlin you can see a video live projection which was part of the closing of the aforementioned action we also published a book in September and it's a translation of the English book this is not a drill but also completed with texts from the German civil society it's similar to the ten principles that we have and it's something that keeps our environment as our movement together and there's also a part that is creative comments which you are allowed to copy it's how to illustrate it with practical tips of how to block streets or how to talk to the police even with example dialogues the book as a promotional action for the book we went to the Warsaw Street in Berlin and now this is the main event this year October we have 15 minutes left so October for months de-centrally all over Germany we were working and in Berlin we opened an office the so-called de-central and the aim was to have large actions in Berlin during the rebellion wave in October this year and we were very positively surprised it was the first time that we achieved a large climate camp directly in front of the German parliament where there were workshops, performances and the main topic was citizens assemblies and you could come there and learn about democracy we also prepared different kinds of actions with other local branches either publicly or secretly this was the first large action locking large intersection in Berlin as you can see here on the photo and the press was also very interested here this is Potsdamer Platz in Berlin Potsdam Square and there were also lots of actions smaller office for children who also could come there to this action we also were on the Marshall Bridge directly in front of the parliament and the first German television capital city studio and for multiple days in front of the environmental office of Germany we were also protesting and they had to listen to our open letter to them but there were also other things like street festivals happening there this is a action symbolizing the sad parts of our potential future and people were even sleeping there on the streets to keep up the block of the streets there were people between 12 and 70 and they only left for short amounts of time to keep up the to keep up locking the street and we also did we created this map with interesting places in Berlin like central offices of parties companies other points of power and the result was that during two days and after there were lots of small decentral actions like swarming or gluons for example here at the Konrad-Adenauer Haus the different German offices governmental offices the largest success was that even though there were lots of people criticizing us as radical ecological terrorists that there were no violent things happening at all during the rebellion in Berlin in October there were no large tomorrows and we managed to have this large program of different actions and Berliners were in solidarity with us helping us with warm blankets or hot tea what didn't go so well was our renewed attempt to get arrested while in the UK about 15,000 people have been arrested by now we only managed to have 15 people in temporary arrest and the reason why is the different political system our protest law or public assembly law is one of the most liberal that we have other states such as Belgium where we have seen water cannons but here police were very friendly yeah go ahead you did tell us what you're going to do and what also went very well was the presence in the media 70,000 media reports within one week around the world were generated many of them only online in Germany we were in the main news though and we also had these nice newspaper reports now bottom line great conclusion bottom line what I want to add is we managed to get civil disobedience ready for the mainstream as it were we had people from Englender some of them are here in the room you started much earlier but we were able to take it into the cities and I hope that we've kind of shifted the debate somewhat that's the positives so that's all very nice but politically we've basically had no success so far at all and it doesn't look like politics is going to change much also we've received a lot of news in the last few weeks generated lots of news in the last weeks that were not really related to the climate crisis and we'd like to sum this up with the headline of challenges imagine that your phone is ringing such as I experienced four weeks ago I wouldn't have I hadn't even had a coffee and then we were asked about an interview that our founder had given about anti-Semitism and we would like to statement on that and I replied I haven't read it yet, I'll bring you back so that was kind of a maximal accident we actually distanced ourselves from these statements and we kind of came through this but it really shook us and the fact that one of our founders simply threw this kind of bomb on us and that we noticed this way that we have lots of structural things and processes structures and processes that we haven't got anymore we don't have an entry process we cannot even manage as a whole movement to communicate what our opinion is on this there was a polarized debate and we noticed that the principles we hadn't really internalized yet and be together we found that we are not very regenerative in the way we deal with each other and this was a very tense situation for us and we saw this of course as an opportunity to stop this copy-paste principle and take everything that comes from the UK but we are ourselves and that is good and we will find our own path and we will look at our strategies and yes I would also say the problem with Roger goes deeper it's not just the fact that back then in November this escalated it touches the foundations of extinction because the strategy to be in the large cities comes from him and even earlier in interviews and his texts there were some very dubious formulations and views and to see the problem from a German perspective was that people said oh wow finally I was doing something against the climate crisis we want to get active and they jumped on the bandwagon but many people including myself hadn't read these texts at all and that now is coming back to us and that created this medial bomb that kind of exploded on us and we lost many people of course due to that and some people are struggling to work through this and clarify and find out how we deal with this in the future and that is on going it will take a while until we just for ourselves will find us and what I can say is that there is a private survey going around and the international networking has very much been activated through this because other countries do it completely in disagreement so there is a worldwide process of reflection right now whether UK deserves to be the center which it isn't really and how we can prevent something like this also the important thing is that we shouldn't get stuck with this we should manage in 2020 we should look ahead towards 2020 that is the year and let's get me on the final straight 2020 will be the last year when we can save the Paris Climate Accord and that will be when the states will renegotiate and unless we have very decisive actions and resolutions then we will be left to our own we cannot spend any more we cannot allow any more funding for fossil fuels by then and there are institutions that want the exact opposite and they are lobbyists equipped with billions of money large corporations plastics meat agrarian industries we have to win public opinion by 2020 and convince them that human made climate change is real and that the time window is now so help us tell the truth wherever you are especially on the platform such as YouTube and Facebook there are far too many deniers out there and these are huge challenges and we can only succeed if we are have people all over society who have an influence and if we network internationally and if we start to become a global movement of movements there are many predecessors there is networking and we are on it we want to network with the climate justice movement we want to work together we are seeking support and we can only manage if we keep growing keep founding alliances find new communities reach new goals and carry civil disobedience everywhere right, hi this is Sina Sina is the co-publisher of I am sure no one wants to die out no one wants to be involved but in the way we all are so if we look towards 2020 or generally we all ask ourselves how can we rebel how can we stop certain things and other things how can we start doing other things what happens what could happen what could all happen we don't have any time no one could enter into disobedience into resistance new networks, communities conform in Europe, local and global best practices for infrastructure and administration should be exchanged infrastructures will be erected newly for everyone in communities and we no longer leave infrastructure to the state or to companies in the water everything will be organized by everyone for everyone a European wide protest of small farmers and small land owners against national bureaucrats bureaucracies and regulations is linking up with the environmental movements with the Fridays a politics for soil preservation will be put into the foreground property is a social obligation and people use their vehicles to enforce change in mobility they block motorways people are roller skating on motorways the oil crisis blockades of roads and airports lead into different networks that every employer of the coal industry in Germany to find a new job immediately coal exit from the grass roots new activists are supported in a solidarity way through basic incomes the rebellious youth doesn't have to enter the system the middle age generations wake up and realize that their own future has already been stolen and that they won't be able to pay out pensions anymore or they would receive pensions anymore there is a strike every Monday a day of solidarity Fridays we keep on striking and the one hour everywhere in kindergarten companies, administrations is used to talk about how it could be what is not okay and that gets the three day week introduced practically in Germany but also to cushion the consequences of transformation now let us really rebel whether it's with extinction rebellion or elsewhere find ways other ways thank you thank you so much to these three women but in order to talk to you constructively you can connect with us on this congress in commona in hall number two today and tomorrow between 19 and 20 o'clock there is a black tower which is called the black tower but we are here for another couple of minutes so just come to the front and this was translated