Support Rebels with legal fees

Since October 2019, more than 50 brave Rebels have been arrested in acts of civil disobedience, bringing attention to government inaction on the existential threat of the climate and ecological crisis. Humanity finds itself embroiled in an event unprecedented in its history. One which, unless immediately addressed, will catapult us further into the destruction of all we hold dear: this land, its peoples, its ecosystems and the future of generations to come.

 

Rebels going through court face legal fees and fines, and we are asking the community to contribute to a fund to support these costs.

 

Says Zain, an XR Rebel who has been arrested multiple times:

"The Earth is a gas chamber and the Canadian government continues to put poisonous gas in it. This can only be opposed through mass participation in civil resistance in the city centers.

 

On the 27th of December, I was arrested by CN police, a private police force, for disrupting the railway lines in Vancouver. Since then I have been arrested 6 times, mostly for sitting down on the road in Vancouver. I do not see arrest as an option, during times of extreme emergencies and radical criminality by our governments, our options become binary. We can either rebel or be complicit in a mass extermination project. Rebellion and classical nonviolent civil disobedience involves risking arrest until we are thrown in prison.

 

This involves practical sacrifices, losing our jobs, risking deportation, and potentially more. It also involves money, legal fees and fines. My current fine for the first arrest is $1500 plus $4000 in legal fees. If individuals are not willing or able to enter into civil resistance to the point of arrest, any help for arrestees to pay off our legal fees and fines would be greatly appreciated.

 

I grew up in Karachi, in the global south, and have seen extreme poverty and death as a result of the climate emergency itself. If people were genuinely concerned about the global south, they would stop talking about it, and enter into civil resistance to the point of arrest. That is the best way in which you can reduce the suffering in that part of the world. Time is not just running out, time is up. If we don't rebel, we will be the most hated generation in history."

 

 

The science is clear: we are in the sixth mass extinction event and we will face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and robustly. When Government and the law fail to provide any assurance of adequate protection, as well as security for its people’s well-being and the nation’s future, it becomes the right of its citizens to seek redress in order to restore dutiful democracy and to secure the solutions needed to avert catastrophe and protect the future. It becomes not only our right, it becomes our sacred duty to rebel.