Compassionate Revolution
Compassionate Revolution was a precursor to Extinction Rebellion based in the United Kingdom.
Gail Bradbrook, Simon Bramwell and Roger Hallam are co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, which started as Compassionate Revolution with George Barda in 2015, which became Rising Up! and then to Extinction Rebellion.
2015 Launch
Speakers include Gail Bradbrook, George Barda, Sarah Lunnon and Polly Higgins, with music from Michael Dinesh.[1]
As reported verbatim:[2]
- "The Stroud News and Journal reported the launch and quote Dr Gail Bradbrook, one of the founders of the Compassionate Revolution, saying: “66 people now own more wealth that the poorest half of the world. The rich and powerful have far too big a say in what happens and information is often kept out of reach from ordinary people. Our democracy has been captured by vested interests.By coming together online and pledging to undertake specific actions, such as refusing to pay small amounts of tax, ordinary people are given a tool whereby they can assert collective power.”
- "Fellow organiser, climate change and Occupy democracy activist George Barda, said: “Social change has always involved periods of confrontation, when people are willing to undertake acts of civil disobedience. “Most of the things we take for granted these days, from weekends, to the welfare state, the right to roam and voting, have been hard won by ordinary people fighting for justice.”
- "Organiser and musician Michael Dinesh said at the event that issues such as inequality, austerity, climate change, the power of big multi-nationals, billionaire owned media and tax avoidance are some of the concerns of the Compassionate Revolution. As noted in this film he said: “This is as much about inner change as outer. Without addressing how we relate to ourselves and to one another on an individual level we cannot expect real change to happen in wider society. It will be just more of the same otherwise.”
"Compassionate Revolutionary"
In a Q&A article posted on February 28 2012 at The Guardian, George Barda referred to himself as a "compassionate revolutionary".[3]
Excerpt:
Quotes from George Barda [typos included]:
- "...Personally I don't think aggressive is the answer, given the level of trasnsformation we need to see pretty damn quickly if we're to avoid irreversible ecological catastrophe - not to mention the almost inifinte capacity of modern informational power players to manipulate any violence to their own ends.
- "I'm a compassionate rovolutionary so I would say that, but the kind of reimagining we need to realise in practice means we need to cloud the waters as little as possible with the bluntness of aggression - highly functional though it may be as a tactic when it comes to something like opposong the poll tax.
The highly inconvenient truth here though is that we need a hell of a lot more people to get involved to have a cat's chance in hell of the kind of transformations we need to effect. With most of us framed as busy consumers, taught to see ourselves as one individual among 7 billion, we need to inspire a sea change in each other that recovers the collective agancy of earlier struggles.."
- Question: "Do you continue to believe you represent 99% of the population?"
- George Barda replies:
- The '99%' idea is very much an aspiration rather than an arrogation, and is based for me on the fact that 99% of people around the world believe in principle, that if it were up to them the world would be a much nicer place. The problem for me lies chiefly in the cognitive mapping of mainstream media that constructs a highly disempowered sense of agency - see Gillian Tett among others on this..