Are public disruption and (infra)structural disruption opposing or complementary ways forward for the climate justice movement?
The fight for a better world, and more particularly, the fight for an habitable on, where the climate crisis is held at bay, is being fought by different kinds of people with different ideas on how this should be done. The ecosystem of Climate Movement, of which the Climate Justice movement is a part of, is so diverse because this seems to be a precondition for success, as any struggle that is too narrow, and focuses too strongly on a specific way of fight seems doomed to not be able to completely change the world.
The diversity of background, ideas and tactics is welcomed in the Climate Justice movement, but this inevitably leads to moments of tension, specially when the way that some groups do their action is so radically different from the way that other groups see the way forward is that they assume that it is actually done against the benefit of the whole movement. One such recent example is the infamous soup throwing of the UK based group “Just Stop Oil”, which lead to many public discussions, on whether this type of protest should be ignored or if they were doing any favors to the climate movement. During the following weeks, active members and participants in climate justice organizing were discussing internally exactly the same points which comes to show the effectiveness of this actions that has now been reproduced in other countries like Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
In a pre-pandemic world the same had happened with the continued public disruption brought forward by Extinction Rebellion (XR) on their first mass actions. The question of whether it was justified to breakout from regular climate protests and not only disrupt public live in a legal and controlled manner, but organized marches and strikes, but to go the step beyond to block streets, bridges, trains and highways, as to make people completely unable to ignore what you are doing while at the same time be ready to get arrested was very controversial. Antagonizing the general public seemed to be the opposite of what the climate marches had in mind, to become more broad and to involve more and more different sector of society, and these “radical” actions of XR where shun upon by some, less radical, circles in the climate movement.
These moments have come and gone, and as the movement allowed for more radical ideas, so did more radical questions emerge. In “How to blow up a pipeline” Andreas Malm questions the fact that the climate movement is even radical at all, arguing for the fact that the “non-violence” aspect, touted by XR and Fridays for Future, were an exception to the rule, and that one should expect that, if action to stop climate change is not taken, other more direct acts, like sabotage, will spontaneously occur with or without the climate justice movement avail.
The idea of a more militant wing of the climate movement is embraced by some member of the climate movement, like the french group Les Soulèvements de la Terre, which organize mass “disarmament” actions targeting machinery in construction and mass agriculture sites, or the German group Ende Gelände, which started as an action camp to block a massive open air coal mine, and has recently changed their action consensus, to include “deliberately taking climate-damaging infrastructure out of operation, even beyond our presence.” and “We will not let ourselves be stopped by structural obstacles”, where previously a non-violence approach was taken, even against objects. Other groups, like Climate Defense, argue for coordinated action to actively “stop harm”.
Two major routes for climate justice movement seemed to have emerged. One argues for the need to make public disruption, in such a way as to force all actors to not ignore the climate crisis and to stand on one side of the fence, deciding wether or not to believe that the climate crisis is an important enough issue to completely stop business-as-usual and do something about it, shutting down public life until a solution isn’t found. The other argues for (infra)structural disruption, claiming that to actually stop the runaway train of Capitalism one needs to remove the tracks that allow it to speed forward, targeting vital infrastructure at the center of core countries, tacking with their hands the power to blow things up and disarm the bomb that is fossil capitalism.
Public disruption brings to the forefront the question what is the world we want to live in. It breaks the routine of alienation and allows people to interact with an uncomfortable situation: the way our lives are being lived is a destructive force in the planet and not enough is being done to change this fact. Being stuck in a traffic jam because some activists are glued to the road may make you mad, but it will also make you question why would someone have that kind of attitude. Public disruption is effective at making people discuss topics that are not being discussed and it is probably one of the reasons the climate movement grew so much in the last years. At the same time, these kinds of actions sometimes lack the strategic vision of change. Nothing is offered except the opportunity to rebel, while at the same time asking to the power structures people are rebelling against to change by themselves.
On the other hand, infrastructural distruption proposed to effectively tackle the power structures of capitalism, disrupting its harm-doing by targeting the (infra)structure that allows it to sustain itself. These types of actions help to dispel the impassivity of fossil capitalism, targeting its Achilles heel, and pushing people into a more militant path. Sustained escalation helps the movement keep its pace up by upping the ante at every action while at the same time causing actual, measurable, damage to the machines that keep destroying the planet. At the same time, these militant actions are easily dismissed. If one is not involved, it is easy to like a post and keep scrolling. It is easier to ignore the disruption of critical oil facilities than it is of highways.
To win this fight we must employ all our strengths. Without a radical flank, public disruption is doomed to stifle and to stale. People will get frustrated with their inability to change things and give up. Without a base of support the radical flank will be isolated, easy to ignore and ineffective. When asking ourselves, how to arrive what world we want to live in, the only certainty we must have is that we need to try everything.