Extinction Rebellion has announced it will hold peaceful demonstrations throughout Manchester centre today (Monday 2 September), including a protest outside Barclays’ regional head office in Piccadilly.

Barclay’s is one of the largest investors in fossil fuels, and has £15.6 billion of assets in oil, gas and coal extradition globally.

The group has announced it will hold a peaceful protest outside the bank’s office in Piccadilly Placethis morning, to call on the business to recognise the catastrophic impact its actions are having on the environment, and cease its investments in fossil fuels, which are currently increasing.

Impacts

A spokesperson from Extinction Rebellion Manchester said: “Barclays has funded the fossil fuel industry, from fracking and coal here in Britain to the Dakota Access pipeline in North America. Mines and oilfields are financed with the help of Barclays, who are increasing their financing for fossil fuel.

“Today we’re calling on them to stop doing that and recognise that we are facing catastrophic ecological breakdown – which these practices are contributing to. Not a day goes by without further news of the unfolding crisis; whether its unprecedented fires in the Arctic, glaciers melting at terrifying rates, thousands of species being lost. We have just a handful of years before the damage we have done to the planet becomes irreversible.”

Extinction Rebellion Manchester has been working with police and other authorities throughout the Northern Rebellion, and have been meeting with the police every few hours to keep them informed about its activities.

The protest group will also today gather outside Manchester’s Civil Justice Centre, to show support for the three anti-fracking protestors appearing in court as part of a legal challenge, which aims to reduce the scope of Cuadrilla’s injunction against protests outside its fracking project in Blackpool, and also reduce the sentencing of protestors found to be breaching this injunction.

An Extinction Rebellion Manchester spokesperson said: “The protestors appearing in court today were amongst the first to stand against an injunction designed to stop people protesting against Cuadrilla, a company which said it could frack without causing earthquakes or environmental damage.

“In reality, Cuadrilla has in fact caused more than 100 quakes including a 2.9 intensity six. This is just one of many awful impacts Cuadrilla have admitted – it has also cold vented 6.8 tonnes of methane.”

Performances

Demonstrators from Extinction Rebellion will later today meet at the group’s site on Deansgate to form a peaceful, musical protest procession led by a samba band.

This will see demonstrators peacefully march through the streets of Manchester city centre, staging non-violent ‘die-ins’ as they go, to raise awareness of the climate emergency and highlight the threat of ecological breakdown and biodiversity loss.

Protestors will carry plants with them from the guerilla garden the group created this weekend on John Dalton Street, to be repurposed in the disused Central Retail Park on Great Ancoats Street.

The community living around this 10-acre site want to turn it into the world’s first recycled People’s Park as part of the ‘Trees Not Cars’ campaign and protestors want to help them.

Extinction Rebellion Manchester, one of the largest localised groups in the UK, has been hosting four days of free talks, music performances, art, training, food, workshops and peaceful, non-violent direct action at the site it has been occupying on Deansgate.

Disobedience

This has been done in discussion with Manchester Council and Greater Manchester Police and the city council.

The Northern Rebellion has been attended by hundreds of supporters of the group from Leeds, York, Liverpool, Sheffield, Cumbria, Cheshire, North Wales, London and from across Europe.

The group plans to vacate the Deansgate site following an extensive clean-up later today.

Extinction Rebellion is calling on the Government to tell the truth about the urgency of change needed by declaring a climate emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 to halt biodiversity loss and create a Citizen’s Assembly to lead decision-making on climate justice.

Extinction Rebellion is an international movement with a presence in at least 80 countries, which uses non-violent civil action disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Extinction Rebellion. For more information on Extinction Rebellion and to support the Northern Rebellion, visit its website.