DECLARE EMERGENCYNEWSLETTER #1
By Declare Emergency on January 6, 2022
A warm welcome to our first newsletter!
Declare Emergency is an inclusive group operating out of Washington DC that welcomes all those willing to engage in non-violent civil disobedience to mitigate climate and ecological collapse.
On December 8, 9 and 10, 2021, activists with the group sat on the road and blocked traffic at one of Washington DC’s busiest intersections to urge the Government to take immediate action on the climate crisis. On each occasion, they were dragged off the road by Metropolitan Police and several were arrested and sent to jail.
Declare Emergency is presently engaged in a focused mobilization effort to gather as many Americans as possible to join us in the next series of day-by-day road blockades beginning on January 20, 2022. This is the one-year anniversary of President Biden’s inauguration - one more year of broken promises and inaction. Time is more valuable than the rarest of minerals, and it’s slipping through our fingers quickly. Sir David Attenborough estimates we have 3-5 years to act.
We plan to follow up these actions with an even larger series of actions in late March, 2022. We will continue blockades until our campaign demand is met; that President Biden tell the truth to the American people about the climate crisis by using his authority under the National Emergencies Act to declare a climate emergency.
While activists are sorry for the disruption their actions caused commuters, they are nonetheless designed to disrupt business as usual so as to force awareness of the immediate threat posed by climate breakdown to all life on earth and the urgent need for decisive action by the government on the crisis. These actions follow in the footsteps of many historical nonviolent civil disobedience movements for change - such as the suffragettes, the activist group Act Up, the Freedom Riders, and in countless other resistance movements around the world, such as the more recent Insulate Britain in the UK - that use/d non-violent civil disobedience to instigate large-scale political change.
A beautiful video compilation of our December action can be found here.
WE NEED YOU: WAYS TO GET INVOLVED
TALKS AND TRAININGS
Every Sunday and Thursday at 6:00pm EST we are providing a presentation on zoom about Declare Emergency and why we have chosen to use direct action and civil disobedience to persuade our government to tell the truth and act now on the climate emergency. Join us!
You can sign up here:
MEET A REBEL - JON
“My name is Jonathan, I'm 26, and I am prepared to sacrifice everything for meaningful climate action.
I was born and raised in Northern California – a small city called Redding - and grew up loving to hike through the forests and mountains nearby, and swim in the lakes and waterfalls dotted throughout NorCal. I would sometimes visit the city of Paradise not far from my hometown, smelling the fresh scent of pine in the air.
In 2018, the Camp fire burned the city of Paradise to the ground. I remember driving back through several times for work, and being filled with anger and sadness. The only recognizable objects along the sides of the road were melted cars and chimneys standing solemnly in the rubble.
In 2020, after finding an XR talk online and realizing that the climate situation was far worse than I ever imagined, that I and hundreds of millions of other young people and children might have no future, I became very depressed. I stopped going out. I didn’t leave my room for weeks, only to get food and to drive to and from work. And then one day, I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that I would act.
I learned about a campaign called Walk With Nick in Florida in the Summer of last year, and watching live streams of two guys on the campaign sitting in roads and being arrested to push for awareness and action on the climate crisis inspired me, and let me see a shaft of lightness through the darkness for the first time. I came out to Florida and started participating in nonviolent civil disobedience with them. I’ve since been arrested 6 times, have spent over a week in jail, and I feel I’m just getting started.
Action creates mobilization. I’ve seen it happen in my own life. Witnessing the courage of others in action roused me to do the same. I am not a fearless person - I live each day with fears old and new bubbling up inside of me. Social anxiety creeps up on me with regularity, and each time I’m about to go on an action, I feel a heady nausea. But I do it anyway. Since taking the leap into action, I’ve been able to see that courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is deciding that there’s something more important than fear.”
Jon Tijerina
HELP NEEDED
Whatever your comfort level - from off-site support/promo to a road-blocker willing to sacrifice the risk of arrest - there’s a role for you in our rebellion. Email declareemergency@protonmail.com and someone from our Mobilizations team will call or email you for a chat.
CALL TO ACTION
We really appreciate, and need, donations - whatever you can afford - to help us provide resources, mass mobilization and pay legal costs for rebels in the legal system.
Share this link with your friends: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/declare-emergency-civil-resistance-2022
MUST READ/WATCH
Climate Change is Our Greatest Existential Threat
Let’s make 2022 the year we get angry about climate inaction
WHERE CAN I FIND MORE INFORMATION?
Declare Emergency is an affinity group of Extinction Rebellion America. Their website is here.
For more on how Declare Emergency is structured and how we organize, see here.
THANK YOU
Thanks for reading. If you have any questions or queries, please get in touch at declareemergency@protonmail.com :)
With love and rage,
Declare Emergency Mobilization Team