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Why do both Public Disruption Actions and Actions to Disrupt the Destruction

Where we come from

Climáximo engineered a giant leap this year and tried something new. We have existed and been part of the climate justice movement since 2015. For years, we have organized demonstrations, campaigns, small civil disobedience actions, mass civil disobedience actions and, since 2022, actions that directly attack private property (like companies headquarters and gas pipelines).

But this year Climáximo did something completely we brought about four big action cycles accomplishing dozens of actions in each (we carried out around 50 actions since September 2023). We did roadblocks and slow marches, we painted and smashed windows of fossil fuel companies and banks, we interrupted events and disrupted electoral events, and attacked the aviation industry and the ultra-rich luxuries.1 Why this change?

Our choices were the result of two main sets of analysis: 1) the climate crisis is a war declared by the companies and governments, against society and the planet; 2) what we are doing isn’t leading us closer to stopping this war and achieving climate justice. The first statement means that the climate crisis is a result of a conscious choice made by governments and companies to murder the people and destroy the planet for profit, and although they are to blame, we, the people, are the ones responsible to stop them and the war they are waging against life. The second statement means that Climáximo had to draw forth a more favorable context climate and social justice to be won and secured by the movement. This meant making sure that, not only the climate crisis becomes a top priority for the general public, but also that there is a recognition that it is a problem that we, as the people, need to collectively solve, not an isolated issue that some other groups should be addressing (being the governments, companies, or other specific groups of people).

The actions that Climáximo chooses to do are always a consequence of our strategy2, never an end in itself. Our analysis and consequential strategy told us this year we needed to:

    1. Make the climate crisis a top priority and a main issue on public agenda, because the only way society can start to address the issue is if it’s visible;

    2. Break the false sensation of peace: although world governments and companies are killing 9 million of people every year due to the climate crisis3, not only maintaining an arsenal of weapons to kill us, but actually building new
      1. weapons, society isn’t acting upon this brutal act of violence against us. The people continue on with their normal lives, conforming to and normalizing these attacks. Society needs to stop consenting with this war;

      2. Make this problem everyone’s problem: it’s not the common person’s fault that governments and companies are killing the people and the planet, but if they (governments and companies) are doing it knowingly, there’s no point in asking them to “please” stop. This makes it our responsibility as a society, to stop them.

    3. Collectively act and stop this war, meaning attacking the war criminals, stopping new weapons of mass destruction, disarming the existing weapons, and ensuring the necessary measures for social peace after we stop this war. In effect, Climáximo has a political plan (for Portugal) that details the logistics of this war and what needs to be done to stop it (we call this the “disarmament plan”), as well as some guiding principles about what society needs to do and be like, to rebuild, after the war (the “peace plan”).


Climáximo then planned action cycles with frequent public disruption actions and actions to disrupt the destruction that aimed at achieving these goals.

 

Why public disruption actions

Public disruption is Climáximo’s main tool to break the false sensation of peace and create public engagement. The actions we did that fit into this category were mainly roadblocks, later slow marches, and some actions to interrupt cultural events. The goals of our public disruption actions are to stop normality (this normality that in Portugal is the equivalent to the sentencing to death of a full class of students every day – approximately 40 people), and start a conversation: How will we (society) stop this?

A conflict cannot be won if it is not acknowledged to exist. Society needs to accept we are in a state of war and that it is our responsibility to build peace. This isn’t new to the climate justice movement. Other social movements in the past have used public disruption as a tool to bring up a hidden conflict in society. The suffragettes stormed public events, the civil rights movement went on freedom rides and marches. Racism and sexism have long existed before these movements, but before the freedom rides and the suffragettes interruptions of public events, these were not social problems, they were a part of normal life in society. These conflicts could only be resolved if they became widely recognized by society. This does not mean that these actions alone could ever end segregation or sexism, but in order for that to happen, the problem needs to be acknowledged, made salient and acted upon.

Returning to our current context, for the climate crisis to be solved, there’s the need to break with its normalization, society needs to stop consenting with this violence. The climate crisis also needs to be accepted as a war, that has two sides: one side that is to blame (governments and companies), and another side (civil society) that is responsible to stop the climate war within a very tight timeframe.

By targeting the normal functioning of society we communicate who is responsible to stop the war against humanity: society itself. Public disruption actions like road blockades are a form of radical democracy that involves all parties, even the ones claiming to not be involved in the conflict. It also sparks the debate within society, because the people (even the ones who just saw it on the news) feel personally affected by the action: People ask “Why are you talking with me?”, and we answer “Because we (you and I) have a problem to solve and it can’t be ignored”. We know this interaction can be abrupt and uncomfortable, but at this stage we cannot be neutral or silent about this mass murder. We need to talk and have honest conversations: There is a war going on. The ones killing us won’t stop it. Knowing what you know, what will you do? Will you continue to consent with the destruction of everything around us or enter in resistance?

Actions to disrupt the destruction

Accepting that we are living under a state of war and that we, the people, are the ones responsible to stop it isn’t enough. People have to take action to stop this war. Actions that disrupt the destruction target the war criminals (companies, the ultra-rich, governments) and their weapons of mass destruction (fossil fuel infrastructure, the ultra-rich deadly private property and/or luxorious activities, etc.). As we’ve said in the beginning, Climáximo has a political plan that describes what needs to be done to stop this war, so there are plenty of targets to choose from. Climáximo has done different actions with different levels of confrontation, from painting the headquarters of polluting companies to smashing their windows, from delaying flights to painting and blocking private jets, from filling with cement holes of golf courses to deflating SUVs.4

There are three main things we are trying to achieve with these actions. First, bring our plan to life by showing what are the weapons pointed at the people and who is behind them, while creating a narrative shift from “pipeline”/“private jet”/“refinery” to “weapons” and from “X company”/“ultra-rich” to “war criminals”. Second, showcase what the movement will need to do to stop this war. Thirdly, open the debate about what is the appropriate and acceptable response to have when they (governments, companies, ultra-rich) have declared war upon society and the planet and are pointing weapons of mass destruction at us (society), as well as showing that these weapons are not untouchable, in fact, in order for society to defend itself, they need to be dismantled

Why both

As we’ve pointed out, since September 2023 Climáximo’s done almost 50 actions, and we have done both public disruption actions as well as actions to disrupt the destruction5

Public disruption actions grant visibility to the climate crisis6; allow us to break the false sensation of peace and communicate directly to the people that the climate crisis is an act of war; and show that although governments and companies are to blame, we, the people, are responsible to act. Nevertheless, if we only did public disruption actions it would seem we were only targeting common people, and not that we actually want to talk with people, to join efforts in order to, together, stop the weapons and war criminals that are killing us all. It would also not show what actually needs to happen and the scale of the social-economical transformations needed to stop this war and achieve climate and social justice.

Actions that disrupt the destruction allow us to communicate directly and honestly just how, where and who is executing this war. By attacking this death infrastructure we showcase what our political plan, in particular our Disarmament Plan, looks like, through the targets of these actions. Nonetheless, from our experience, these actions are less visible to the public (actually, public disruption actions allow us to communicate about these actions as well). To have several people or groups engaging and doing this kind of disrupting the destruction actions, they first need to see the climate crisis as a violence, caused by governments and companies that are threatening and already killing thousands and thousands of people. If we only did these kinds of actions it would seem that Climáximo is the one who will stop this war. We don’t believe, under our current context, that Climáximo will be able to defeat this war alone. We, as Climáximo, want to contribute to the visibility of a mass popular movement that engages in this conflict using different tactics and strategies to win. And for that we need general public engagement that only public disruption is currently giving rise to. We also want to illustrate through our disrupt the destruction actions, the plan the climate movement needs to avoid climate and social breakdown and achieve climate and social justice.

In addition, one type of action doesn’t provoke the same response in all groups of people. In Portugal, only 10% of the population have been at some protest in the last 5 years7, including protests not called by the progressive forces. In the Portuguese context, in 2019, around 20 thousand people went out on the streets for climate justice, but since 2020, the biggest climate justice protest had only one thousand participants.

This means that there are people who currently still need to accept and recognize the seriousness of the climate crisis; others that still need to accept that it is a premeditated and coordinated act of violence against society and life and that this makes us (the people) the ones responsible to resist to this war; and others that still need to enter into resistance. Our actions will communicate different things to people according to their level of connection with the climate crisis and, accordingly, spark different responses.

There is a balance that needs to exist between these two types of actions and the information we are communicating through them. We are using action-investigation based approach strategies, having critical consciousness, and we are attentive to the reactions we are getting.

Now what?

We are far from a general understanding that the climate crisis is a war declared by governments and companies against society and the planet. We are far from the movement we need in order to stop this war. At the same time, we may be closer. Through our actions, Climáximo has been able to open public debate about the climate crisis and about what is or isn’t the appropriate action to stop it. We have also been able to directly link some companies, infrastructures, activities, etc. to the climate crisis. We will continue to push for climate and social justice, experimenting and taking risks, and we will continue to be adaptive to our changing context.

  1. You can read a wrap-up of all the actions we’ve done this year here.

  2. You can read Climáximo’s current grand strategy here.

  3. These calculations are drawn upon this scientific study.

  4. We are of course not saying these are the only examples of these types of actions, and some are not even that disruptive – we can even see some of them (like painting headquarters) as having the function to start a normalization of more radical future actions (like smashing windows). We must also add that more disruptive actions to disrupt the destruction are more complex to prepare and we weren’t as ready as we would have wished to pull them off within very intense action cycles.

  5. We have also done actions that are harder to fit under these categories, namely actions during the national elections to show that stopping climate collapse wasn’t on the ballot.

  6. They are more likely to appear on the news than actions that disrupt the destruction because they happen in the city center and more people get directly involved in the action; because they create more debate/indignation; and because the capitalist system resists to communicate to the public that someone was able to affect their infrastructures or companies.

  7. This conclusion comes from a study of the Portuguese chapter of Amnesty International, released in March of 2024 about the right to protest in Portugal

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