On Wednesday, a group of unlikely protesters joined Extinction Rebellion’s blockade of central London. Over one hundred mothers and babies – some of them as young as four months old – closed up the streets leading down to Whitehall, having moved over from the QEII conference centre nearby. Police swarmed around them, while chants from other groups, drums and the buzz of conversation from Trafalgar Square drifted over. No cars or buses were in sight.
Since Extinction Rebellion’s first bout of large scale demonstrations in April – where protestors occupied bridges, roads and buildings in central London – the movement has grown in size, with thousands of people around the world starting their own branches.
Extinction Rebellion’s language, messaging and tactics are built on a sense of relentless urgency, which has driven home the message that the climate crisis will come to affect everyone. Within Extinction Rebellion (also known as XR), many subdivisions, often called community groups, have emerged: from Doctors for XR, Lawyers for XR, to XR Families, to XR Druids, Witches and Pagans. In addition to location-based groups, which try to bring together activists in a certain city or a town, these groups are crucial to XR’s ability to mobilise on such an immense scale. They offer people another way to get involved, which speaks directly to their interests or professions – and in doing so, it gives people a sense of stronger identity within the movement.
“It’s almost like being unionised,” says Leo, who works with the XR Connecting Communities Group. “If you’re a teacher who gets arrested, compared to if ten teachers get arrested – [the latter] then becomes a news story. If your school starts taking action against you, then you can say, this teacher is a part of a group of people who are being punished for trying to save future children’s lives.” Leo was arrested in the XR Rebellion in April, and upon his return to Bristol, sat down and tried to work out a strategy for connecting some of the community groups that he had seen mobilising. Then the national team called to ask him to give them a hand with the Connecting Communities group – while the XR Connecting Communities group was formed centrally, those involved mostly help facilitate meetups between people and groups that aren’t based on location.
Setting up a community group is straightforward: all that’s necessary is a handful of interested people, and a Facebook or Whatsapp group so that people can coordinate across cities. It’s effective as an organising tactic because it’s simple and it ensures that professionals in those industries might have more of an incentive to join in. “You don’t have to be a vegan hippy in order to rebel,” says Sarah, who is involved with XR Farmers. “Farmers are feeling the effects of climate change: we know what the consequences are going to be in terms of water, in terms of crop failure.”
Joining an XR community group is potentially less intimidating than simply showing up to a movement in your city, particularly for people who might not think of themselves as typical activists. One of the notable aspects of XR is that many of the people involved have never protested before. “Looking on the Extinction Rebellion protests from the outside, they can look quite scary and confusing,” says Holly-Anne, a member of Christian Climate Action (a Christian group under the XR umbrella). “Having people who you identify with adds that extra layer of comfort or reassurance that some people might need to get involved.”
Jo, a parent in London, has become involved with XR Families after going to the first XR rebellion announcement last year with her child, who was three at the time. “I embarked on two parallel journeys at the same time – one was the journey as a mother, and the other has been about waking up to the climate crisis at the same time,” she says. “With XR Families we’re creating these playgroup settings: the parents are engaged in something meaningful – designing an action, making banners, strategising about outreach, and the children are all there.”
There are also practical reasons why people might choose to join XR through a community group. If you join a group based around your professional skills, it also means that you can keep agitating for change even after the protests are over. Iona, who is a doctor in Brighton, was always anxious about climate change, but was never certain of how it crossed over with her profession. “It was difficult to know how to engage with that in a meaningful way,” says Iona. “Then XR came along, and there was a sense that people were actually acting upon the worries that many of us had for a while.”
“I decided it was time to act within my professional sphere, and then some of my good friends started Doctors for XR,” she adds. Similarly, Lawyers for XR, which formed in a Wetherspoons on Chancery Lane, is planning to draft an oath for the bar society that addresses climate change within the legal system. “Even if XR collapsed tomorrow, the groups which have been established would leave behind a massive legacy,” says Paul, who helped found Lawyers for XR. “After seeing so many other groups, I just started thinking, why isn’t there one for lawyers? So many of the issues here are related to the law, both in terms of how we respond to XR, but also how we, as a society, respond to climate change.”
The presence of groups like lawyers, doctors and other professionals can also help convert the sceptics, particularly those who have been dismissive of XR’s aims. “It signals to the wider population that these people are not, to borrow from Boris Johnson[‘s recent comments], ‘uncooperative crusties',” says Christopher Rootes, a professor of environmental politics and political sociology at the University of Kent. “They are a wide variety of people who, in other circumstances, people take seriously as well. That has more longevity than a recruiting campaign.”
Affinity groups, as they’re often called within the study of social movements, have been a common feature of grassroots political organising in recent years. “We have seen this developing over time, in many contemporary movements – where people are valued for their expertise and what they can bring within the larger movement,” says Bart Cammaerts, a professor of politics and communication at the London School of Economics. The model has traditionally emerged around elections – think of groups like Students for Remain and Students for Leave in the UK, popping up ahead of the 2016 EU referendum– but, Cammaerts says, “we see this in other mobilisations, particularly where direct action is being used.”
For XR itself, the model seems to have worked, if anything from a numerical standpoint. As academics Douglas McAdams and Ronnelle Paulsenfound in 1993, knowing someone who is involved in social movements is one of the strongest predictors of recruitment into that same movement.
But activists say that creating communities extends simply beyond winning more people over to XR’s cause. For example, XR has faced criticism for its method of getting as many people arrested as possible, and community groups may be able to offer support in a way that the larger movement cannot. They can function as a secondary support system for protestors – if they get arrested, they might be able to crowdfund for legal fees from other members of their smaller communities (XR itself has said it doesn’t pay legal fees for those arrested). “Building communities is more than just a campaigning technique,” says Leo. “The root of XR is getting people to stand up for each other, give a shit about each other – we need to do that to deal with this climate emergency.”
More great stories from WIRED
💰 Meet the economist with a brilliant plan to fix capitalism
🎮 Long Read: Inside Google Stadia
🎧 Expand your mind with the WIRED guide to the best podcasts
🤕 No-deal Brexit would trigger a huge data problem
