Dear XRUK,

Strategy team here, we wanted to send you love and gratitude for your hard efforts in the recent rebellion in London. An update from us, we have elected a replacement IC from Political Circle and we have refreshed the team to replace some people who have decided to take time off to recover from burnout, or who simply can’t attend for a few months for other reasons.  

Our debrief with the hive went well, and we will have a follow-up session to update regional reps on what we are thinking and planning in the near and more distant future. With new coordinators in Action Circle and a change of ECs and ICs in Media & Messaging and Operations, there is a coordinator refresh going on across many of the national working groups. 

As ever, the context is changing around us and we have to be adaptive, resilient and inspired. We have just had the new policing bill and multiple other deeply undemocratic, racist and discriminatory bills through parliament. Some are saying this is the greatest assault on civil liberties in generations. The political direction of travel is scary, and such dereliction of democracy endangers many of the most marginalised people in Britain. But, we must not be put off or scared by these bills, because we have a right to rebel for life on Earth, and when the laws get tougher, the people pull together. 

To help with the new conditions we find ourselves in we encourage leaning into gratitude practices. If we can all make a conscious effort to thank those people around us, to appreciate the good things about the folks we are working with, and make sure that the quiet jobs are shown deep gratitude, we think that will help, so we are starting it off here. Yes, that means we love the court support, police station support, the budget teams, the legal teams, the back office temps, the flag and banner printers, the food suppliers, samba players, the wellbeing crews, and the people you can’t recognise cos they are so far up the side of a building! We love the social media, livestream and content making crews, the protest liaisons for always being there with the legal observers and de-escalators, the folks glued to the road, the weavers that made the rebellion a reality, and the press team at desks fending off tabloid haters. 

We are especially thankful for all those that bravely stepped up into resistance for the first time and the young people in our movement who showed courage and resilience. There are so many more people to thank, we can’t list everyone but you get the idea! If you can think of someone who has not been thanked by you yet, but you have thought, shit, they do a lot of work that people don’t see, then ping them a message or give them a call. Tell them they are loved and appreciated. Together we are strong and we have to get stronger. Time is short. 

If you have friends in other movements or sister groups, thank them for doing what they do too as part of the wider movement of movements driving change. We are on the same side and support is growing.

We will send another update soon (after we reflect more and hear from a tonne of debriefs!), which will contain more details on where we go throughout the rest of 2022, and a schedule for our work so you will know what to expect. 

Love from the strategy team xxx

Read the XR UK 2022 Strategy here: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2022/01/23/xr-uk-strategy-2022/