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| Screen grab from a video by Freedom News TV appears to show a ranger drawing a weapon on climate protestors at an ill-fated demonstration on the road to Burning Man in Nevada. |
Social media and the news to some extent is all abuzz about a coalition of climate activist known as Seven Circles who recently blocked a road leaning to the annual Burning Man festival in the middle of nowhere, Nevada.
Burning Man is a quirky (to say the least!) annual gathering that draws tens of thousands of people to a remote Nevada desert for arts, events and such. As organizers explain: "Our intention is to generate society (sic) that connects each individual to his or her creative powers to participation in community, to the larger realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond society."
Of course, like so many idealistic things, lots of other people want to join the fun without actually participating in the idea. As The Guardian succinctly put it: "In recent years Burning Man has drifted from its hippy roots and has become better known for luxury RVs, wild orgies and Silicon Valley bros."
Touché.
This year's Burning Man event is going on now, and if past years are any indication, at least 80,000 people are showing up for this thing.
That brings us to the road blockade, which pretty much shut down the only route to the Burning Man bacchanal. (A full video of it is at the bottom of this post).
A coalition of activists blocked the road to Burning Man, some of them chaining themselves to a 28-foot long metal trailer they placed across the road. Their demands on Burning Man were actually pretty reasonable. Among them: They wanted the event to ban private jets, single use plastics and unlimited generator and propane use.
All of which of course can contribute to climate change.
THE BACKGROUND
Plenty of similar climate protests - mostly in Europe over the past couple of years - involved blocking busy highways. I'm not sure how effective those protests have been, since they only serve to turn the stuck motorists off from the climate cause. That leaves the real powers behind climate change, like powerful corporations and governments, pretty much unscathed.
At least the Burning Man road blockade had more of a focused point. Let's face it, Burning Man - and all the traffic going to and from it - put lots of carbon in the atmosphere.
Vox reports that an internal Burning Man study says the annual event pumps 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. That's roughly how much carbon dioxide 20,000 cars push into the atmosphere each year.
To be sacrilegious here, if the annual Burning Man didn't exist, humanity would continue on just fine.
THE CLASH
Anyway, back to the Nevada road blockade. Soon enough, a long traffic jam formed on the remote paved road and those stuck behind the climate protest quickly became irate. Clashes quickly developed .
People, some exiting vehicles that have seen better days, others leaving their super big, expensive gas guzzling trucks and RVs confronted the protestors.
They kept trying to forcibly remove the trailer, push demonstrators away, and attempt to direct traffic around the edges of the blocked road, and yelled and hurled insults at the activists.
The activists blocking the road weren't exactly behaving wonderfully either. One kept insisting he has an absolute right to protest in the United States. Which is completely true. However, he wanted to be left alone to protest and block traffic as long as he wished. Even though for most people, there are consequences to direct action. Sometime you are moved, or arrested, unjustly or not.
Worse, as The Guardian notes, this demonstration took place on land owned by the Paiute Tribe, members of which told the activists they weren't allowed to demonstrate like that on tribal land. The demonstrators were unmoved by this.
What did move the protestors, literally, was the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribal police department, which wasn't messing around. They showed up just a little over a half hour after demonstrators first blocked the road.
The police demanded they get off the road within 30 seconds, one of officers, apparently cosplaying Rambo or the Incredible Hulk, floored the truck he was in and bashed through the trailer blocking the road, despite the fact that some protestors had chained themselves to it.
The red-faced officer then pulled out a what appears to be a gun or taser and yelled, "Get on the ground, now!" When one activist who was forced to the ground was picked up and escorted to a truck, you could see in the video her face was bloodied.
Though I understand people stuck in the European protests complain that the police there are too milquetoast, the officers in Nevada took it to the other extreme. This scene wasn't exactly a tutorial video on how police should de-escalate things, that's for damn sure. a
Bottom line, police behaved badly, too.
Badly enough so that the ranger who plowed through the barricade and drew the gun or taser might be in trouble. "The involved Ranger's conduct is under review," according to a press release from the Paiute Tribe.
Of course that scene of aggressive police breaking up the blockade got right wing media in a big happy dance. They like that sort of thing.
"Everyone has been waiting for law enforcement to step in and establish authority" at climate action road blockades, huffed Fox News weekend host Lawrence Jones.
Fox contributor Mollie Hemingway went further, saying, "I don't buy that these people care about the environment.....They only care about controlling the economy, people and destroying peoples' lives."
Hemingway didn't explain how the Burning Man climate road blockade destroyed anybody's life. But oh well. Hyperbole sells, right?
A large proportion of the comments on the YouTube video of the whole incident suggested a lot of people got off on watching the violence.
DOES CLIMATE ACTION WORK?
I'm actually in favor of direct action, like protests, to rail against those who would block efforts to stop climate change. Sure, the Burning Man stunt got publicity, which is good I suppose. Did it move the needle at all on climate change? I'm not so sure.
What was Seven Circle's end game? I get why they were protesting Burning Man, but how did they expect the road confrontation to end, and when? Were they going to block the road for an hour? All day? All week? All year?
If so, did the demonstrators really think Burning Man organizers would cave to their demands that afternoon? I guess my question is, was this demonstration just to call attention to the wastefulness and stupidity of Burning Man?
If so, great! If not, what the hell were they doing there, anyway?
Showy climate protests attract the news media. But if you make the publicity negative, how effective are you?
I know there's a lot of good climate activists who are not trying to get into the newspapers. .But they are perhaps quietly pressuring politicians and corporations more and more to take the climate crisis seriously.
I know, too, that quiet efforts don't always work, and sometimes you have to make a bunch of noise. But let's do it in a way where people not only hear the message, but actually listen to it and join the cause.
Here's the video from Freedom News TV of the whole thing. It's a bit long, but the crapshow is still worth the watch, especially if you like all those "Karen" videos. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that:
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