Steven Vogel

Fellow earth-dwellers,

The Worldwide Rebellion has begun.

Can you feel it?

It spells the death of idleness — and the beginning of a vital new stand for the future of humanity. For two weeks, from October 7th to 21st and maybe beyond, cities around the world will experience disruption and upheaval on a scale never seen before. Multitudes, united under the banner of Extinction Rebellion (XR), will rise up, day after day, from morning till dusk, risking their arrest in the name of life on earth. They will occupy streets, bridges, roadways, and thoroughfares — not begging, but demanding of government what it has not done, and will not do, without being upbraided by the rage of millions:

To act with justice on the Climate Emergency.

But we cannot let XR and its affiliates act alone. We cannot let Greta, Autumn Peltier, or others speak or march for us on their own. The mortal gravity of this self-created beast — the Sixth Extinction — requires every single able and available body to do what it can to make at least this much clear:

We will not go down with this sinking ship in silence.

Yes, it's true — not everyone is able to leave school or work to block traffic and occupy their nearest city's center. Not everyone, for the sake of their family's or their own safety, can afford to risk arrest. But everyone can contribute, in their own sweet way, to the battle for a future that computes.

And to those who travel not by mainstreets, but by backstreets — who fly not by day, but by night — who go not with, but against the grain, we offer you this: an alternative, a curveball, a new addition to the activist playbook, a spark to rekindle the flame of indignation . . .

. . . a new paradigm of protest: The way of the outsider activist.

Outsider activism is a radical new form of non-violent disobedience — protest, guerrilla style — modeled on the organization of wolves on the hunt: united by the pack, but discrete in their individual pursuit. It is predicated on an ethos of solo subversion. It requires neither the organization nor mobilization of groups larger than a handful of committed comrades. It is comprised of secret acts, clandestine deeds, covert feats of defiance in the face of fossilized and spurious authority.

With this new form of dissent — guerrilla disobedience carried out alone or in small groups — let’s stir mayhem in the back streets. Let’s send a chill down the spine of an apathetic world leadership. Let’s stir up a revolutionary feeling of radical transformation in cities everywhere.

"Because time is running out. We’re on the brink of extinction. The governments are doing nothing. Businesses are doing nothing." But we can, and will, do something. All that is needed is a sense of personal urgency; a global tsunami of sudden, spontaneous gestures of dissent. Such gestures have their own way of making history, and they can be made any day, at any time, anywhere.

Spread the word.

Over the next few weeks while roads are being blocked and people are marching in protest, we guerrilla activists commit myriad acts of revolutionary vandalism in cities around the world.

We disable the flow of noxious petroleum. Make the mark of the Blackspot known worldwide as the symbol of our refusal to succumb to global heat-death — the mark of the new, habitable world to come.

There is no Plan(et) B. So let's screw up our courage and do all we can to save the one we're on.

For the Wild,

The Blackspot Collective

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