Speaker 1: Security.
Speaker 2: What is worth more art or life? Is it worth
Speaker 2: more than food? Worth more than justice? Are you more
Speaker 2: concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection
Speaker 2: of our planet and people? The cost of living crisis is.
Speaker 3: Put On October fourteenth, twenty twenty two, two young people
Speaker 3: approached Vangu's famous Sunflowers painting in the National Gallery in London.
Speaker 3: They unzipped their jackets to reveal just stop oil t shirts,
Speaker 3: opened cans of tomato soup and chucked it at the painting.
Speaker 3: You can hear the shock of some of the other
Speaker 3: museum goers in that video. There what security? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: But the immediate response was nothing compared to the onslaught
Speaker 3: of media coverage and commentary that followed. I can't think
Speaker 3: of another protest in recent history that was so immediately
Speaker 3: the central focus of the discourse. It's worth noting that
Speaker 3: the painting itself was not damaged. It was behind glass,
Speaker 3: and the soup only hit that glass display case. The
Speaker 3: National Gallery later reported that the painting's frame had sustained
Speaker 3: minor damage, but that's it. That did not stop many
Speaker 3: commentators from referring to the action as destruction or vandalism.
Speaker 3: It's about the destruction. It is not about a better world.
Speaker 3: They're not going to school to learn how to create
Speaker 3: better tech to care the climate crisis, and not figuring
Speaker 3: out how to geoengineered. Not doing something productive. They're doing
Speaker 3: something destructive because the barbarians are about the destruction. These
Speaker 3: oils stop.
Speaker 4: The oil protesters in the UK started doing more and
Speaker 4: more acts of wanton fadlis, and we've got a little
Speaker 4: matchup of their antics in the last few days.
Speaker 3: Those were conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Peres Morgan, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't just the usual suspects weighing in on this protest.
Speaker 3: People in favor of climate action also chewed on it
Speaker 3: for weeks, debating whether or not the climate movement should
Speaker 3: be engaging in such polarizing protests. Here's leftist commentator Hassan
Speaker 3: Piker weighing in.
Speaker 5: I find a lot of these activists to be you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, they're doing they're right for their anger, their
Speaker 5: frustration is correct. I feel like that kind of protest
Speaker 5: oftentimes is just like very it's almost like self defeating,
Speaker 5: it's performative, it's cringe.
Speaker 3: Even climate scientist Michael Mann got in on the action
Speaker 3: commissioning a survey and pointing to the results of it
Speaker 3: as proof that the action was alienating, a claim that
Speaker 3: lots of social scientists who study protests found rather alienating themselves.
Speaker 3: Soupgate fueled Twitter debates for weeks, and yet just six
Speaker 3: months earlier, right in the middle of Earth Month, another
Speaker 3: big piece of climate news had happened in the UK
Speaker 3: that generated almost no response.
Speaker 4: There's been two rounds of trinalization of protest in the UK.
Speaker 3: Doctor Oscar Bergland is a researcher at the University of Bristol.
Speaker 3: He focuses on social movements and he's spent the last
Speaker 3: few years particularly focused on extinction, rebellion and then it's
Speaker 3: spinoff groups just stop oil and insulate Britain in the UK.
Speaker 3: He's talking there about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts
Speaker 3: Act of twenty twenty two and the Public Order Act
Speaker 3: was just went into effect in May twenty twenty three. Together,
Speaker 3: the two seriously curte protest rights. They give police the
Speaker 3: right to impose time, noise and location restrictions on protests,
Speaker 3: to arrest anyone deemed to be causing a public nuisance,
Speaker 3: and to stop and search anyone they want near a
Speaker 3: protest with no need to justify the stop. They can
Speaker 3: also bar people they suspect will make a serious disruption
Speaker 3: from being in particular places or around particular people. The
Speaker 3: law even curtails how activists are allowed to defend themselves
Speaker 3: in court. Climate activists have not been allowed to explain,
Speaker 3: for example, that it's the urgency of the climate crisis
Speaker 3: that drove them to commit particular acts.
Speaker 4: Judges, in wanting to uphold the law as it is,
Speaker 4: have tried to limit what the jury is allowed to
Speaker 4: hear and let you know, you want allowed to give
Speaker 4: certain kinds of evidence that you want allowed to mention
Speaker 4: climate and so on. That text wasn't allowed to be
Speaker 4: heard in court.
Speaker 3: It's a restriction that could reverberate well beyond the climate movement.
Speaker 4: It's absolutely the case that you know, if you give,
Speaker 4: if you grant certain powers to the states to deal
Speaker 4: with one problem, they will use six to two people
Speaker 4: with other problems, so they seek it.
Speaker 3: The passage of those laws got nowhere near the amount
Speaker 3: of attention as the tomato soup incident, particularly outside the UK.
Speaker 3: We've covered in previous episodes how the framing of climate
Speaker 3: activists as uniquely disruptive or annoying, which is how the
Speaker 3: Lion's share of media painted the Tomato soup stunt helps
Speaker 3: justify laws that criminalize activism. In a future episode, we're
Speaker 3: going to get into the details of how things shifted
Speaker 3: so quickly in the UK, But for today, we're going
Speaker 3: to look at why tactics like the tomato soup protests
Speaker 3: and the many art and sport protests that followed it
Speaker 3: strike a nerve. We're going to talk about what they're
Speaker 3: intended to accomplish, whether they accomplish those goals, and why
Speaker 3: activists have been making a point of annoying people and
Speaker 3: getting arrested for the better part of a century. That's
Speaker 3: coming up after the break I name U Westervelt and
Speaker 3: this is drilled the real free speech threat. There's a
Speaker 3: bit in the UK Policing Bill that you could miss
Speaker 3: the significance of entirely if you didn't happen to be
Speaker 3: obsessively reading everything you possibly could about the criminalization of
Speaker 3: protest over the past few years. It talks about damage
Speaker 3: to memorials and how the sentence for this crime has
Speaker 3: been increased from three months to up to ten years
Speaker 3: in jail. Those cheers you're hearing are from a Black
Speaker 3: Lives Matter protest in Bristol, England in twenty twenty. People
Speaker 3: are celebrating the fact that a statue of the slave
Speaker 3: trader Edward Coulson, had once occupied a prominent position at
Speaker 3: Bristol's Port, has been pulled down and thrown into the harbor.
Speaker 3: The increased criminalization of protests recently is certainly a reaction
Speaker 3: to disruptive climate protests, but it's also a reaction to
Speaker 3: the Black Lives Matter protests, which began in the US
Speaker 3: but quickly spread to other countries. Both movements bring something
Speaker 3: that powerful interests have been fighting against for the better
Speaker 3: part of a century, multi racial, cross class solidarity. Nick
Speaker 3: Estes is an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at
Speaker 3: the University of Minnesota, co founder of the Native Advocacy
Speaker 3: Group with the Red Nation, and an enrolled member of
Speaker 3: the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He says the recent racketeering
Speaker 3: charges against activists protesting the proposed police trading facility known
Speaker 3: as Copp City in Atlanta is a clear example of
Speaker 3: how much various protest movements are being lumped together.
Speaker 6: That's a very kind of clear example that they're seeing,
Speaker 6: you know, the Black Lives Matter movement, Standing Rock, all
Speaker 6: these other sort of social justice movements, climate justice movements
Speaker 6: as connected, and the best way to contain them is
Speaker 6: to basically slap a broad.
Speaker 7: Label on all of it.
Speaker 6: And it never anticipated that happening as Standing Rock. It
Speaker 6: never anticipated exploding the way that it did. In my
Speaker 6: own personal experience in twenty twenty, during the George Floyd summer,
Speaker 6: I saw a water protector, a white kid who I
Speaker 6: sort of knew, get gunned down. He got shot four
Speaker 6: times in the back in broad daylight in front of
Speaker 6: hundreds of people in Albuquerque, New Mexico, during an event
Speaker 6: to take down a really you know, racist monument. And
Speaker 6: I was just thinking that there was this sort of
Speaker 6: demonization not just of Native people and black people, now,
Speaker 6: was a demonization of any white kid who decided to
Speaker 6: stand on the side of history with those very sort
Speaker 6: of marginalized groups, and an active campaign not just by
Speaker 6: law enforcement but by the media to sort of break
Speaker 6: that sense of solidarity.
Speaker 3: Rees and class critiques are consistently levied at the climate movement.
Speaker 3: A recurring theme in conservative commentary about various climate protests
Speaker 3: is that these are spoiled, rich kids, out of touch
Speaker 3: elitists with nothing better to do than throw mashed potatoes
Speaker 3: or soup at fancy paintings or block a road where
Speaker 3: normal people are just trying to get to work. Don't
Speaker 3: get me wrong, sometimes those critiques are absolutely valid. Historically,
Speaker 3: the climate movement has not been great on race. Here's Rev.
Speaker 3: Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus and a
Speaker 3: longtime activist, on that history.
Speaker 1: The modern day climate movement meaning around the creation of
Speaker 1: EPA right around between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 7: Most of the large, the big.
Speaker 1: Green organizations were created within that four year timeframe. Which
Speaker 1: also important is that the people were in the streets.
Speaker 1: So you had the black people with the Black Power
Speaker 1: movement was in the streets and that was.
Speaker 7: The part of the process.
Speaker 1: You had the women's movement that was emerging, the gay
Speaker 1: rights movement that was powerful in New York City. You
Speaker 1: had the anti Vietnam movements. Even young white kids who
Speaker 1: were putting out street heat, they weren't engaging. The climate
Speaker 1: movement literally said at the very beginning, we are not
Speaker 1: going to be a part of that kind of movement.
Speaker 1: So even if it's the anti war movement, or the
Speaker 1: gay rights movement, or the strong Femi this and womanist movement,
Speaker 1: or the black power movement. They immediately pulled back from
Speaker 1: the inception and they coasted along. So then you go
Speaker 1: ten years and then when black folks are saying, don't
Speaker 1: put landfills in our community, that was their moment, and
Speaker 1: even then they pulled back.
Speaker 7: So this is not just the Achilles heel.
Speaker 1: This is who the movement is from its inception. And
Speaker 1: then at some point in time they realized that and
Speaker 1: some have some happen is that we can't do this
Speaker 1: a loon. We're not big enough or strong enough to
Speaker 1: beat the possip industry as a Birkenstock movement that's.
Speaker 7: On the east coast, on the west coast.
Speaker 1: So now they're a point where they're literally try and
Speaker 1: do a crash. Course on racism.
Speaker 3: Class has also been a blind spot for the climate
Speaker 3: movement at various points. Here's Oscar Bergland on how that's
Speaker 3: played out in the UK.
Speaker 4: Working class people will not be protected as the climate
Speaker 4: crisis worsens, And what you have here is actually a
Speaker 4: lot of working class people getting really angry about these
Speaker 4: climate protesters. So that you get actual clashes between them.
Speaker 4: I don't think that that's good for the climate movement.
Speaker 4: That has a potentially long term damaging effect. I think
Speaker 4: if your enemy is the fossil fuel industry, if you're
Speaker 4: being dragged away by shareholders in Michelle shareholders meeting or whatever,
Speaker 4: I think that's a good fight to take. But if
Speaker 4: you're being dragged away by people trying to get to work,
Speaker 4: I don't think that's a good look.
Speaker 3: But researchers and activists agree that these historic weaknesses are
Speaker 3: starting to be addressed, and as that happens, the movement
Speaker 3: is becoming a threat.
Speaker 6: This is the kind of the attitude, you know, that
Speaker 6: we're seeing in general with this attack on you know,
Speaker 6: it's become a culture war sort of tagline for anything
Speaker 6: that is considered liberal or left or something that can
Speaker 6: be dismissed. And I think it's fascinating because in my mind,
Speaker 6: it's actually just trying to create lines of division between people.
Speaker 6: And I think this is, you know, just sort of
Speaker 6: the longer trend of the aftermath of Standing Rock.
Speaker 3: In many ways, some people who would rather not see
Speaker 3: a cross racial, cross class coalition fighting for justice have
Speaker 3: been singling out white allies for critique or punishment, just
Speaker 3: like Nick Estes saw at Standing Rock. It's an extension
Speaker 3: of the outside agitator's accusation that gets thrown at protesters regularly.
Speaker 3: Scientist and activist Rose Abramoff says she got a lot
Speaker 3: of this when she was protesting the Mountain Valley pipeline
Speaker 3: in West Virginia.
Speaker 8: There was a lot of sort of you're nut around here,
Speaker 8: are you, which is interesting because you know, I mean,
Speaker 8: I would argue that the Mountain Valley pipeline is not
Speaker 8: from around here, and that the main resistance against the
Speaker 8: Mountain Valley pipeline is primarily local as locals who don't
Speaker 8: want this pipeline going through their land. So that was
Speaker 8: an interesting line of argumentation.
Speaker 3: When people across the country went to Standing Rock to
Speaker 3: stand with the Lakota and Dakota people defending their land
Speaker 3: and water rights, fossil fuel industry spokespeople and police highlighted
Speaker 3: the number of people from out of state in an
Speaker 3: attempt to delegitimize the protest. Not only was that narrative false,
Speaker 3: it was ignorant.
Speaker 6: The thing about indigenous movements in contrast to modern sort
Speaker 6: of political movements or political parties, is that they're not
Speaker 6: sort of movements of strangers, other movements of relations. A
Speaker 6: lot of people are familiar with each other, or they're
Speaker 6: organizing according to their clan system or the societies that
Speaker 6: are created within traditional governance systems. There's societies, female societies,
Speaker 6: warriors societies, all kinds of different societies that exist.
Speaker 3: In the case of Standing Rock, the Sioux or Ochetti
Speaker 3: shakoyn Oyat people are located in what is today Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska,
Speaker 3: North Dakota, South Dakota, and Manitoba and Saskatchewan and Canada.
Speaker 6: So after the defeat of Keison Excel the Northern Leg,
Speaker 6: there was a lot of people in Standing Rock.
Speaker 7: Was paying attention.
Speaker 6: But it wasn't until I first went up to the
Speaker 6: camps there and a lot of the people back home
Speaker 6: that we had worked with on the Lobural Reservation were
Speaker 6: already there. Members of the Ocheti Shalcoy would have their
Speaker 6: own little camp system set up. It was actually just
Speaker 6: uniting people on the ground, our nation, the Ochetti Shacoi,
Speaker 6: the nation of the Seven Council Fires. It was all
Speaker 6: proof that these things had never gone away.
Speaker 3: If they're hard to get right, and guaranteed, sometimes even
Speaker 3: engineered to piss off the public and ratchet up policing.
Speaker 3: Why engage in more disruptive tactics.
Speaker 9: I did TMC live, they covered the US Open, and
Speaker 9: it was so funny because they both started out being like, Dana,
Speaker 9: can you believe this keeping people from watching tennis?
Speaker 3: This is social scientist Dana Fisher.
Speaker 7: Presor Fisher. Welcome to TMZ lot.
Speaker 9: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 10: So give us your take on what this did for
Speaker 10: the climate other than movement, other than extending the match.
Speaker 9: Yes, the movement is much broader than what we call
Speaker 9: the radical flank, which is people who are engaging in
Speaker 9: civil disobedience like gluing themselves at events and throwing food.
Speaker 9: But the importance of this kind of tactic is that
Speaker 9: it's getting us all talking about the climate.
Speaker 7: Well that makes it sound like you're saying it succeeded.
Speaker 9: Then oh absolutely, I'm on coz line. For the first
Speaker 9: day I were like, oh, I don't support that doing this,
Speaker 9: but I do support doing something on climate. So it
Speaker 9: was just funny because I was like, look, you guys
Speaker 9: are textbook. This is perfect, a perfect example of why
Speaker 9: the radical flank happens. Because you're talking about it, and
Speaker 9: it's actually encouraging sympathizers like you who care about the
Speaker 9: issue to do something about the issue, but not that
Speaker 9: nobody's asking you to glude yourself to anything.
Speaker 3: Fisher heads up the Center for Environment, Community and Equity
Speaker 3: at American University and has spent her entire career researching
Speaker 3: social movements. She says the incident, both the protest itself
Speaker 3: and the reaction after it, not only from the TMZ guys,
Speaker 3: but also from one of the tennis players, Coco Goff,
Speaker 3: who had a similar reaction, is an example of what
Speaker 3: people call the Overton window effect. The idea is that basically,
Speaker 3: if you see someone engaging in a radical, disruptive act
Speaker 3: of civil disobedience, or even suggested a radical idea or policy,
Speaker 3: it's likely that your initial reaction might be shock or
Speaker 3: even dismay. But a lot of people, especially if they're
Speaker 3: already somewhat sympathetic to the cause, we'll think, you know,
Speaker 3: we really do need to do something about that. In
Speaker 3: the context of climate protests, maybe gluing yourself to a
Speaker 3: road or throwing soup but a painting is a bit much.
Speaker 3: But people might think those activists are right, and we
Speaker 3: do need to do something. That's the entire purpose of
Speaker 3: what movement scholars like Fisher called the radical flank, the
Speaker 3: segment of a movement that's willing to risk arrest or
Speaker 3: cultural backlash or even violence to grab attention and rile
Speaker 3: people up. The Suffragettes did it, the civil rights movement
Speaker 3: did it, and the anti war movement did it too,
Speaker 3: and it worked in all three cases. The Overton window
Speaker 3: is referenced a lot by progressives these days, but it's
Speaker 3: actually a term that was conceived of to understand how
Speaker 3: to shift the public towards more conservative views. In many countries,
Speaker 3: you could argue that far right ideas have shifted the
Speaker 3: entire political spectrum to the right much more than civil
Speaker 3: disobedience has shifted things to the left. Particularly in recent
Speaker 3: years in Australia, it's mostly been left leaning labor governments
Speaker 3: that have passed state laws criminalizing protest, which might be unexpected.
Speaker 3: Researcher Liz Hicks says, that's the Overton window at work.
Speaker 11: It's meant to change that framework of what is seeing
Speaker 11: as kind of normal and the middle ground and the
Speaker 11: mainstream by dragging one inge it really far out to
Speaker 11: the other side. But you actually see that a little
Speaker 11: bit with the way these laws have been passed by
Speaker 11: state labor governments. But the conservative position is so extreme
Speaker 11: and ridiculous and also what the mining companies want. But
Speaker 11: suddenly it doesn't look like it's a repression on spaege
Speaker 11: because that is the moderate position between the representatives that
Speaker 11: you have in Parliament and these industry stakeholders.
Speaker 3: It makes sense. The concept of the Overton window was
Speaker 3: introduced by a guy named Joseph P. Overton, who was
Speaker 3: a senior vice president for the Macinaw Center for Public
Speaker 3: Policy in the nineties when he developed this idea, and
Speaker 3: the Macinaw Center is, yep, you guessed it, a longtime
Speaker 3: member of the Atlas network of conservative think tanks. The
Speaker 3: link between the climate movement and previous social justice movements
Speaker 3: is becoming stronger as more people directly experience what Fisher
Speaker 3: calls climate shocks. At the March to End Fossil Fuels
Speaker 3: held in New York during Climate Week in September twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, Fisher surveyed participants to find out what had
Speaker 3: brought them to the protest. She asked whether they had
Speaker 3: engaged in other big climate protests previously, how they felt
Speaker 3: about the activists participating indirect action and about their direct
Speaker 3: experience with climate impacts. She said she was shocked to
Speaker 3: find that a majority had experienced either increased exposure to
Speaker 3: storms and floods, extreme heat, or wildfire smoke.
Speaker 9: We ask people if they had experienced the following items
Speaker 9: in the past six months.
Speaker 4: Extreme heat, eighty.
Speaker 9: Seven percent said they had. We asked them that they
Speaker 9: experienced wildfire or smoke from wildfires, eighty five percent said
Speaker 9: they had, and sixty percent said they had experienced more
Speaker 9: frequent and powerful storms, including hurricanes, typephoons, tornadoes.
Speaker 3: Activists who participate in direct actions aren't necessarily thinking about
Speaker 3: the Overton Window or the radical flank, or civil rights history,
Speaker 3: or with the media or other climate activists will think
Speaker 3: of them. Oftentimes, they just want to feel like they're
Speaker 3: doing something tangible and directly impactful.
Speaker 8: We're trying to stop this pipeline, and this is one
Speaker 8: of the most effective ways to do it, is to
Speaker 8: just get in front of and literally stop work on
Speaker 8: the pipeline.
Speaker 3: That's scientist Rose Abramoff again. She was recently arrested for
Speaker 3: locking herself to a drill at the Mountain Valley pipeline.
Speaker 12: We stopped construction for about half of half a day.
Speaker 3: The vast majority of activists don't start out doing direct action. Instead,
Speaker 3: they show up to organize protests, maybe campaign for a
Speaker 3: politician they like, or call elected officials. In an earlier episode,
Speaker 3: we heard from Joanna Oltman Smith, who was arrested earlier
Speaker 3: this year for smearing fingerpaint on the display case protecting
Speaker 3: a DEGA statue in DC. She walked us through the
Speaker 3: years of activism that she participated in before risking a
Speaker 3: serious charge.
Speaker 12: I've done a lot of on the ground organizing, and
Speaker 12: part of that has been rallying and protesting. I've done
Speaker 12: a fair amount of die ins and picket lines and
Speaker 12: blockading of buildings to raise awareness on different issues. What
Speaker 12: I just did with declare emergency in Washington, that was
Speaker 12: my first time stepping up as an individual, putting myself
Speaker 12: on the line with my partner Tim to really do
Speaker 12: something that we knew would raise the alarm.
Speaker 3: Tim is Tim Martin, a fellow climate activist from North Carolina.
Speaker 3: In May, the two were charged with conspiring against the
Speaker 3: United States government. That's a charge that carries a possible
Speaker 3: sentence of five years in prison and a fine of
Speaker 3: two hundred fifty thousand dollars for each of them. Those
Speaker 3: cases are still pending. If the idea that all attention
Speaker 3: on climate protests isn't necessarily good attention holds any water,
Speaker 3: it may be more in the sense that opponents of
Speaker 3: the movement can and do try to leverage certain moments
Speaker 3: to discredit activists, and that the more disruptive each protest gets,
Speaker 3: the more aggressive police and security are getting in response. Again,
Speaker 3: those who study social movements are not terribly surprised by
Speaker 3: the lockstep escalation of both protest tactics and backlash.
Speaker 9: I think it's worth remembering that, like the radicalization of
Speaker 9: a civil rights movement, for example, happened over a very
Speaker 9: prolonged period of time, and it happened as activists, we
Speaker 9: start out with young people mostly you've led groups basically
Speaker 9: decided to start being more confrontational, and they were confrontational
Speaker 9: but nonviolent cit ins, you know, boycott, And what we
Speaker 9: saw happen was there was this increasing frustration in violence
Speaker 9: from law enforcement and others whom you know, in you know,
Speaker 9: we generally think of as counter movements, but it was
Speaker 9: really you know, white supremacists in that case. But we're
Speaker 9: seeing a similar process happen where the you know, non
Speaker 9: violent civil disobedience is becoming more common and there are
Speaker 9: more people engaging in it, and we're seeing citizens and
Speaker 9: law enforcement getting increasingly confrontational response, which basically is a
Speaker 9: way that this kind of protest escalates from non violent
Speaker 9: to violent, because most of the time the violence starts
Speaker 9: with the response, you know. And I mean we've justin
Speaker 9: you've been watching any of the videos of climate defiance
Speaker 9: where law enforcement or secure we'll call them security folks
Speaker 9: of all sorts are becoming more and more aggressive in
Speaker 9: response to the non violent civil disobedience we see from
Speaker 9: Climate defiance or from you know, the folks in Germany
Speaker 9: who are getting punched and pulled and yelled at, and
Speaker 9: we see videos of that in the UK too. That's
Speaker 9: this is all classic escalation of in response to civil
Speaker 9: disobedience and in response to a social movement that is frustrated,
Speaker 9: and I actually think this is like a necessary next step.
Speaker 3: Fisher has a new book coming out on the climate movement.
Speaker 3: She looks at its place in history, the tactics it's used,
Speaker 3: and how those relate to previous movements and what's probably
Speaker 3: going to be necessary for the movement to succeed.
Speaker 9: As more people are disruptive, even engaging in non violent
Speaker 9: civil disobedience, law enforcement and counter protesters are going to
Speaker 9: emerge who are going to be violent against those protesters.
Speaker 9: It happened very clearly during the Civil rights movement, and
Speaker 9: that was one of the reasons that a number of
Speaker 9: people who wrote about the movements say that the government
Speaker 9: started to respond because sympathizers who were paying attention and
Speaker 9: may have not supported the civil disobedience, but they absolutely
Speaker 9: were repulsed by the violence against these young black Americans
Speaker 9: who are getting beaten up for sitting at a countertop
Speaker 9: and refusing to move, for example. That kind of violence
Speaker 9: initiates what we.
Speaker 7: Call moral shocks.
Speaker 9: Moral shocks are wonderful motivators to get people to do stuff.
Speaker 9: Absent of organizational ties and embeddedness and movements. People who
Speaker 9: care about the climate crisis, all of a sudden, seeing
Speaker 9: these young people being harmed is going to motivate them
Speaker 9: to do something because they are going to feel that
Speaker 9: it is unacceptable, and that is the kind of pressure
Speaker 9: that will be needed to actually get the kind of
Speaker 9: changes that are necessary.
Speaker 3: That's a bitter pill to swallow. This idea that backlash
Speaker 3: to the point of violence is what may ultimately catalyze
Speaker 3: a response, or that anyone might be asked to sign
Speaker 3: up for getting punched in the face to get people
Speaker 3: to care. Meanwhile, the concern voice by climate conscious observers
Speaker 3: over the tomato soup protest, this idea that the action
Speaker 3: could turn off people who would otherwise support climate action
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to be holding up. A year later, Fisher
Speaker 3: and her team surveyed March to End Fossil Fuel protesters
Speaker 3: at random. One hundred and seventy people agreed to answer
Speaker 3: the survey, and Fisher says she found the results really surprising.
Speaker 3: Ninety five percent of the people surveyed supported civil disobedience,
Speaker 3: which she defined as intentionally breaking the law as part
Speaker 3: of a protest. Sixty seven percent said they strongly support it,
Speaker 3: and only five percent said they neither supported it nor
Speaker 3: didn't support it.
Speaker 9: So nobody said they do not support these groups. So
Speaker 9: it was it was absolutely overwhelmingly supporting groups that do
Speaker 9: civil disobedience, even though you know, half of the people
Speaker 9: had never done civil disobedience, and they didn't say they
Speaker 9: were intending to write.
Speaker 3: That's particularly interesting that only one percent of the participants
Speaker 3: who agreed to be surveyed had ever turned out for
Speaker 3: a large scale climate protest before.
Speaker 9: In terms of anybody arguing that people organizations doing civil
Speaker 9: disobedience turn off people who are engaged in the movement
Speaker 9: from participating in the movement, this is absolutely showing that
Speaker 9: it is not true.
Speaker 3: That's it for this week. Thanks for listening. We're going
Speaker 3: to take a quick two week break and be back
Speaker 3: with part two of this season in November. Make sure
Speaker 3: you're subscribed so you won't miss it. Drilled is an
Speaker 3: original Critical Frequency production. Our senior editor for this series
Speaker 3: is Allen Brown. Senior producer is Martin zaltz Ostwick, who
Speaker 3: is also our composer and sound designer. Mixing and mastering
Speaker 3: by Peter Duff, fact.
Speaker 13: Checking by Woudn jan le Go, Review by James. Our
Speaker 13: artwork is by Matt Fleming. Our theme song is but
Speaker 13: in the Hand by four Known.
Speaker 3: The show was created by me Amy Westerbelt. I also
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