I’m in a galaxy far, far away, revisiting the old Star Wars films. As rebellion returns to London, I’m watching it play out while a squat droid shuffles into an escape pod with his glittering nay-saying companion, unsure of what’s ahead but ready to do this impossible act.
‘Impossible’ is the theme of this year’s Extinction Rebellion two-week disruption to business as normal in London. On top of the usual charges brought against the rebels (too privileged, too jobless, too white, too hypocritical, too mangy, too angry) has been added the further crime of threatening a fragile economic recovery. Really rebels, as though we didn’t have enough to contend with getting plastic-wrapped business booming again, without the pesky planet having to be taken into consideration!
In Star Wars, the Taoist paradigm of the force, with its light and dark sides, is made familiar with the binary of the good rebels battling the evil empire. Such a morality-by-numbers must reassure because it conforms to the saga of patriarchy, reminding us that there are only ever two sides and, whether on the football pitch or across opposite ends of a TV talk show desk, they must be fighting.
I threw myself into the rebellion last year high on anger. There was samba, marching, shouting… and often all three at the same time. I channelled the Mistress of Cemetries to introduce BIPOC speakers and led the Walk of Shame around the City of London to highlight the connection between its wealth and the Transatlantic slave trade. I got arrested before the end. The dizziness lasted for five months.
This year, as the rebels take to the streets, I’m calmer and so far away I might as well be in another galaxy. Me and my cat have moved to a radical green planet where people have access to land and are seeding communities, growing food and shelter for themselves and to share with others. It’s alternatively a bit backward or exactly the sort of radical future we need to survive. Actually, binary, it’s both.
It’s a different place but the same planet and just as vulnerable to the climate chaos around us. We’re no safer out here than in the city, just better able to live more simply. At least here my shit can go compost the fruit bushes.
In Star Wars it’s the Death Star that destroys planets. Here, for all the temptation to cosy up to the binary of noble rebels and dead-on-the-inside storm troopers, it’s more sticky. We’re all involved. The massive shifting majority who don’t want the trees to be cut down but must have cheap meat. Who don’t want more pollution but can’t function without a car. Hey binary, look at how it’s both sides who use petrol and supermarkets and single use plastic.
Sitting out here, part of a loose permaculture community in a village surrounded as much by the tractor tanks of agro-culture as by floaty-hatted hippies, I’m reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and thinking about what it means to be indigenous. Some of my ancestors tended land down the coast until the industrial wave of patriarchy swept them up in coal-mines and money and the English language.
There was a time when our ancestors knew how to live well with the Earth. To be indigenous seems to invite us to remember how we do this. That interests me more than fighting over whether rebels are heroes or villains. Something about the binary demanding its next fight feels simultaneously so tired and so exhausting. I don’t want to argue with anyone anymore. I want to adore the trees, offer up my waste and give thanks for the wood that will keep us warm this winter.
We don’t stop decimating woodland by screaming that we’re going to die. We stop decimating woodland because we realise we are one with the trees; that they, like us, are part of the same spirit and that our health is inextricably linked with theirs. We don’t reduce our excess consumption of resources because an inch-thick inter-governmental document tells us to. We stop destroying the planet when we remember we are the planet.
And if governments and the media are not going to help us enact this, then we do what all good rebels do, whether marching in the street or growing herb: we stop obeying them. We have the power to decide to whom we lend our ears. There are plenty of other voices we can listen to. I want to hear more of what Black and Indigenous People of Colour have to say. What the women of the world are whispering. What the Two Spirit and non-binary folx are feeling. What the plant spirits and Tylwyth Teg are trying so patiently to remind us.
Amid the two weeks of upheaval there is a midway point this Sunday, in Finsbury Park, where XR Unify, one of the few parts of XR not to be led and directed by white people, will host a Carnival for Climate Justice. That excites me because it’s naming carnival. Carnival is our ability to gather and celebrate life; to inspire, to cheer, to dress up, to make a song and dance; to act the fool, usurp authority, share ideas, to remember and re-member, to eat and aestivate; to sing the song of life back to itself and to tell stories of how we come to be in these fantastic bodies on a blue green home full of so much life. Right now, carnival feels as close as it gets to a reason for our being alive.
Perhaps a carnival for the planet, for all of us to take one single day off to come together and celebrate the simple fact that we are alive, is what we need now more than anything. Imagine the relief!
At the end of Return of the Jedi, where the debris of the second exploded Death Star rains down on the forest moon of Endor, all life joins together to feast and drum and dance and share stories. The spirit of the dark side is welcomed as much as that of the light. This is how we do it when we stop arguing over whether red or blue is the right colour and come together to celebrate both. We surely know inside out by now how easy it is to pick a side and argue over it for time. Hey Twitter, what you saying?
How about we find a way to see what we have in common with each other and celebrate that? Now that’s the sort of impossible as all hell rebellious thought I’m down to carnival with.
@keone1973
