27 Nov 2018

Does #XR have specific, winnable demands?


Does #XR have specific, winnable demands?
Extinction Rebellion has posted a Declaration at rebellion.earth/declaration and Demands at rebellion.earth/demands.

The Declaration states what #XR is asking for as:
"We demand to be heard, to apply informed solutions to these ecological crises and to create a national assembly by which to initiate those solutions needed to change our present cataclysmic course."
In the latest Peace News - what-do-we-need-do-make-social-change - George Lakey and Matthew Bolton say a successful campaign needs specific, achievable demands:
...Occupy did not make specific, winnable demands. You can have a vision, like ‘Make Poverty History’, Bolton writes, but you need specific proposals within that vision. Make Poverty History had a target for governments to commit to spending 0.7 percent of gross national income on international aid... Bolton writes: ‘despite huge media attention, there was no discernible impact from the Occupy London protests on tax, equality or sustainability’, three of the core concerns of Occupy London. ... George Lakey doesn't say much in How We Win about Occupy, but he makes the same point as Bolton about needing specific, achievable demands – and a ‘target’, a decision-maker you focus on – in each campaign you're running:

I wonder if what #XR's demand is sufficiently specific and winnable. After all, we already have national assemblies in this and other countries. It's just that they don't work for the common good (to coin a phrase) and instead work in the interests of concentrations of wealth and power.

The Demands are more specific, including:
  • legally-binding policies to reduce carbon emissions in the UK to net zero by 2025
  • [that] the global economy runs on no more than half a planet’s worth of resources per year

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