As part of the process of looking at how XR can better target disruption, we will be writing up case studies on impacts of past actions and what can be learnt.
In October 2019, Extinction Rebellion held a prolonged protest in London, intended to last from 7th to 19th October. The purpose of a protest is to cause disruption, and we accept disruptive action as necessary to address the Climate Emergency. However, when a protest disproportionately affects a minority group, the onus should be on the protesters to consider the additional burden placed on that group, mitigate in advance where possible, and offer assistance on the day when it is not.
The protest area was around Parliament and the surrounding government buildings on the west bank of the Thames. On the opposite side of the Thames is the St Thomas’ Hospital, and we explore issues arising out of access to the hospital here. As part of our outreach work in assisting ill and disabled people get to the hospital, we were contacted by a number of disabled people living in London to feed back on the wider impact on their lives.
Quotes taken from discussion with multiple users of twitter, from public tweets and private PM. Some have been re-written (while maintaining the original meaning) to avoid identification of user or the area they live/work.
The protest also caused travel difficulties over multiple areas of Central London. These disruptions affected both able bodied and disabled people, but disabled people were often disproportionately affected.
As a practical example: two people were unable to access their usual tube station. One of them, able bodied, could simply walk the 10 minutes to another station and restart their journey - a small delay. However due to the scarcity of wheelchair accessible tube stations the other who was a wheelchair user had to travel 30 minutes on a bus, and then connect to a longer journey - a delay of nearly 2 hours.
Conversations revealed that ambulatory (walking) people with fatigue and pain conditions were also affected heavily, due to the increased need to travel unexpectedly long distances.
Other examples given of how people were affected:
increased stress around travel
having to take time off work due to being unable to travel (reducing income)
having to cancel their sole socialising option for the month due to inability to travel
The above would affect abled people, but have a disproportionate impact on disabled people both because the impact on travel times may be more severe and because they are more likely to be in low waged or precarious employment, more likely to have to limit social opportunities for reasons of energy conservation.
Case-study: Angela
Angela lives and works in London. Due to the protests, TFL closed her local step-free station and also closed the escalator at the nearest alternative station. "I've had to walk much longer distances and climb a lot more steps than usual.". Usually Angela doesn't need painkillers to manage her conditions, but the constant daily increase in distance on her commute caused cumulative problems. "My pain has increased pretty much day by day to the point where today it's almost unbearable". By the end of the protest, she had had to take time off work and even strong painkillers weren't sufficient to give pain relief. On the last day she did work, she was scared she would not be able to make it home. "I wasn't sure I could have managed another step because of the pain. I called and spoke to my Dr who said it was ok to combine Naproxen with Co-Codamol so that's what I did before bed because I wasn't sure I was going to get any sleep". Prior to this incident, she had not needed to take pain relief for over a month.
The increased pain and difficulty travelling impacted her mental health. She mentioned increased stress levels, and being reduced to tears multiple times.
The protest also caused a significant financial impact. The time off work cost her multiple days income; and she had to spend money on taxis on other days to get home. Note: It is worth recalling that disabled people on average earn less, so financial impact is can be particularly hard even at low amounts.
Angela noted that a different style of protest would have been much less destructive to her health. "[Protesting only on alternative days] would certainly have less of a cumulative effect in terms of pain and knowing it was going to be like that would allow people to plan ahead - I've had to do that for a number of months this year because of the black cab protests every Wednesday. I adapted my journey on those days to avoid getting caught up in it. Of course that was only the homeward journey as they weren't out in the mornings."
On the one hand this disruption might not seem much compared with the destructive potential climate change has to disrupt our lives. But the key point is that this was not happening to the majority of the people held up by XR - most people will be able to manage a slightly longer commute, and be merely annoyed by the loss of a couple of hours over the course of a week. Causing a pain flare-up might take weeks to recover, with on-going impact to quality of life and financial well-being.
Potential mitigations to consider:
advance notice of disruption sites
people to give door to door lifts or lifts over protest sites
hardship funds
staggered protests (e.g. every Monday for 3 months, rather than 2 continuous weeks)
Conclusion:
Consideration of the severity that even small delays may have to non-emergency conditions is essential. All XR disruptions should check the routes to local hospitals; ensure that accurate, up-to-date information on impact to hospital routes is easily available to people searching both online and on exit from the hospital; be prepared to move, adjust or cancel actions when high-impact is identified to hospital travel (see also: conclusions on Case Study 1: St Thomas)
XR also needs to be aware that disabled people don't only travel to hospitals, and consider how actions might disproportionately affect the disabled community in their commuting, working and leisure activities. Again, consultation with disabled people and willingness to adjust plans are essential components to a compassionate action.