Welcome to XR Unchained! As much as we’d love to squeeze every action we hear about into the email, it simply can’t be done!

XR Unchained will be a new source of rebel actions, celebrating the efforts of XR from all corners of the world.

If you want to see your action here, please email your story and most exciting photo to xr-newsletter@protonmail.com with ‘Story Contribution’ in the subject line.

Western Australian Rebels declare rebellion

15 AUG | Parliament House, Perth, Australia

XR Western Australia came together for a joyful, bright but solemn day to take their declaration of rebellion to the steps of Parliament House in Perth. Hundreds of rebels from all age groups turned up to show the government how seriously they feel about the emergency. Check out the moving video here: it’s beautifully made, and could well be the most uplifting three minutes of your day.

Falmouth Flags

10 AUG | Falmouth, Cornwall, UK

Rebels can always be counted on to rig up a creative protest. This week, under the cover of darkness and rain, self-described ‘pirate rebels’ from XR Cornwall climbed aboard some 200 boats anchored in Falmouth harbour, and tied a bright pink flag to each mast. The flags were each written with an XR slogan – ‘act now’, ‘your planet needs you’, etc.

The action was timed to fall on Falmouth Week, ten days of boat racing and entertainment for townsfolk and visitors alike.  Letters left by rebels invited boat owners to leave the flags up for the festivities, a chance for them to acknowledge the climate emergency. We hope they do. And XR Cornwall, we admire your stealthy nimbleness! (Photo: Tondryk-Wilde)

Photo by Robin Markland (https://www.instagram.com/robinmarkland/?hl=en) 

In a separate action, Red Rebels celebrate Greta Thunberg sailing across the Atlantic, 15 August, Falmouth

What’s for dinner?

18 AUG | Bondi Beach, Australia

XR Bondi Beach swapped out the menus at a politicians’ dinner attended by their pro-coal/Adani deputy prime minister.

XR India joins Narmada Bachao action

21 AUG | Delhi, India

XR India in solidarity with Narmada Bachao Andolan movement in Delhi. This important social movement began in 1985 and is made up of local people using their voices and activism to stop dams being built across the river Narmanda.

XR in Solidarity with La Liberación de La Madre Tierra, Colombia

Extinction Rebellion Colombia and XR International attended the 3rd international gathering of the Liberation of Mother Earth 2019 in Colombia organised by the Nasa indigenous community. Extracts from https://liberaciondelamadretierra.org blog:

“We started the day with ten workshops born from a great diversity of struggles and seek to share knowledge gathered through concrete action. Workshops such as: cooking from the root (chicha making), education and biodiversity, generation of infinite light and alternative energies, biodigestive composts, narrative practices, care and prevention of gender violence, conscientious objection against mandatory military service, decolonial research, territory of northern Cauca, and alternative water treatment, all of us full of strength in the fight for autonomy and self-determination.

All of the workshops shared the same idea of articulating our energies to make life more valuable, allowing us not to sacrifice it for the sake of a progress that has not been thought up by the people nor for the people. Through them we shared the necessary tools to depend not on the State that only looks to possess land and exploit it in the name of a globalized system of excessive consumption, damaging to our bodies and our territories.”

A Nasa song plays in the background during the evening dances:

“Free the cows, also the bees:

Free the bushes and even the bacteria

Beings of life: I am not your owner:

I am a comunero, a liberator.”

During the workshop, two indigenous guards were murdered on a nearby motorway and a teacher who attended the first day of the workshop was also assassinated the same weekend.

In their memory, we carry on fighting for the liberation of Mother Earth.

´Fuerza, fuerza, Guardia, Guardia´

The Sea Is Rising and So Are We

11 August  | St Ives, Cornwall, UK

The first action by the Ocean Red Rebels took place in front of hundreds of holidaymakers in the seaside town of St Ives. Fourteen Red Rebels entered a choppy sea and stood supporting each other for half an hour as the rising tide threatened to swamp them, symbolising the rise in sea levels which will drown beaches and coastal communities in the UK and worldwide.

Watched by families, surfers, and swimmers, they were part of a larger group of Red Rebels who slowly paraded along the beach to the sombre beat of drums. Described by one onlooker as looking like a ‘wound on the landscape’ they were accompanied by a group of Penitents dressed in sackcloth and ashes atoning for climate catastrophe and other rebels carrying placards saying ‘Act now or sink later’, ‘Feeling Emoceanal’, and ‘If this ocean were a bank it would have been saved by now’. There is a brilliant video of the action and excellent BBC regional news coverage. (Photos: Gavan Goulder)

Zero Time at Zero Longitude

17 Aug | Greenwich, London, UK

South-East London rebels staged a die-in at the Royal Observatory Greenwich next to the prime meridian line – zero degrees longitude – to dramatise that the planet is running out of time to respond to climate breakdown.

The action was part of a two-day Extinction Rebellion festival on Blackheath Common, a historic meeting point of Suffragettes, Chartists, and the Great Rising or Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

Rebels Artwork on Display

August-Feb | V&A + V&A Childhood Museum, London, UK 

Our beautiful rebellious artwork has caught the eye of expert art curators. While the pieces are best seen in their natural habitat – in the midst of a rebel movement on the streets – we suppose they would look pretty good next to the Mona Lisa too.

A fine selection, including one of the first prints of our Declaration of Rebellion, is currently on display in the V&A’s Rapid Response Collection, where they join other artifacts of social and political importance.

The museum’s younger sibling, the V&A Childhood museum, is also hosting a full display about XR children’s activism, complete with posters created by children and our first ever child rebel vests. Both are very worthy of a visit.