#extinctionrebellion #metpolice #speakerscorner Extinction Rebellion (abbreviated as XR) is a global environmental movement[5][6] with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse.[3][7][8] Extinction Rebellion was established in the United Kingdom in May 2018[9][10] by Gail Bradbrook,[11] Simon Bramwell[2] and Roger Hallam, along with 8 other co-founders[9] from the campaign group Rising Up![12]
Its first major action was to occupy the London Greenpeace offices on 17 October 2018,[13] which was followed by the public launch at the "Declaration of Rebellion" on 31 October 2018 outside the UK Parliament.[14][9] Earlier that month, about one hundred academics signed a call to action in their support.[15] In November 2018, five bridges across the River Thames in London were blockaded as a protest.[16] In April 2019, Extinction Rebellion occupied five prominent sites in central London: Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus, Marble Arch, Waterloo Bridge, and the area around Parliament Square. In August 2021, the Impossible Rebellion targeted London.
Citing inspiration from grassroots movements such as Occupy, the suffragettes,[16] and the civil rights movement,[16] Extinction Rebellion aims to instill a sense of urgency for preventing further "climate breakdown"[16][17] and the ongoing sixth mass extinction.[18] A number of activists in the movement accept arrest and imprisonment,[19] similar to the mass arrest tactics of the Committee of 100 in 1961.
The movement uses a stylised, circled hourglass, known as the extinction symbol, to serve as a warning that time is rapidly running out for many species.[20][21]
Extinction Rebellion has been criticised as "environmental fanatics" who plan to ruin thousands of holidays and risk alienating thousands of potential supporters.[citation needed] Its 2019 protests cost the Metropolitan police an extra £7.5 million. Activists identifying with the movement have also defended causing property damage, such as smashing windows.[22][23] They say such tactics are sometimes necessary and that they were careful not to put anyone at risk.[24] In a YouGov poll of 3,482 British adults conducted on 15 October 2019, 54% "strongly opposed" or "somewhat opposed" Extinction Rebellion's actions of disrupting roads and public transport to "shut down London" in order to bring attention to their cause, while 36% "strongly supported" or "somewhat supported" these actions.[25][26]
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD2XjUtzWg4
Speakers here may talk on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful, although this right is not restricted to Speakers' Corner only. Contrary to popular belief, there is no immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police intervene only when they receive a complaint.[1] On some occasions in the past, they have intervened on grounds of profanity.[2]
Though Hyde Park Speakers' Corner is considered the paved area closest to Marble Arch,[3] legally the public speaking area extends beyond the Reform Tree and covers a large area from Marble Arch to Victoria Gate, then along the Serpentine to Hyde Park Corner and the Broad Walk running from Hyde Park Corner to Marble Arch.[4]
Public riots broke out in the park in 1855, in protest over the Sunday Trading Bill, which forbade buying and selling on a Sunday, the only day working people had off. The riots were rather optimistically described by Karl Marx as "the beginning of the English revolution".[5]
The Chartist movement used Hyde Park as a point of assembly for popular protests, but no permanent speaking location was established. The Reform League organised a massive demonstration in 1866 and then again in 1867, which compelled the government to extend the franchise to include most working-class men.[citation needed]
Speakers' Corner is often held up to demonstrate freedom of speech, as anyone can turn up unannounced and talk on almost any subject, although always at the risk of being heckled by regulars. The corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin,[6] George Orwell, C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, Ben Tillett, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, and William Morris.[7]
In June 1972 three men, Joseph Callinan, Louis Marcantonio, and Thomas Quinn, all Irish republican activists, were arrested and charged under the Treason Felony Act 1848 which saw them face the prospect of life imprisonment. They also faced numerous other charges including conspiring to fight against Her Majesty's forces and incitement.[8] The three had given inflammatory speeches at Speakers' Corner in response to the shooting dead of 13 civil rights demonstrators in Derry by the British Military in an event known as Bloody Sunday. Most of the charges were eventually dropped and the three were convicted of seditious utterances and given sentences of between nine and eighteen months in prison.[9]
Lord Justice Sedley, in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999), described Speakers' Corner as demonstrating "the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear." The ruling famously established in English case law that freedom of speech could not be lim
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdAvUZDvbhc