Our Strategy

At the core of Extinction Rebellion's philosophy is nonviolent civil disobedience. We promote civil disobedience and rebellion because we think it is necessary- we are asking people to find their courage and to collectively do what is necessary to bring about change.

We aren't focussed on traditional systems like petitions or writing to our MPs and more likely to take risks (e.g. arrest / jail time). We don't want or need everyone to get arrested - for some this is not a good idea - but we do want everyone involved to support civil disobedience as a tool.

We are promoting mass "above the ground" civil disobedience - in full public view. This means economic disruption to shake the current political system and civil disruption to raise awareness. We are deeply sorry for any inconvenience that this causes.

We have made some decisions about security and our interactions with the police. We have made a strategic decision to communicate with the police about what we are doing when we believe that is more likely to enable things to go well (which we can't always be sure of). Except for the case where a small group is trying to do a specific action that needs the element of surprise, we generally don't try to be secure in our communications about plans. We expect that we have been infiltrated by those without our best interests at heart and suggest people bear this in mind.

We are about political change, not personal change (though we welcome the latter).

We are completely nonviolent, our actions are done in full public view and we take responsibility for them. We have an Action Consensus which outlines how we work together on actions.