Rei Takver, Author at Extinction Resilience

Emily Has Tourette’s. She Needs You to Hear This.

Imagine protesting, in front of a line of cops, while your involuntary tic disorder forces you to say: Fuck pigs! Wankers! Woo! …Right in the officer’s faces. Should people with conditions like that, or other serious physical or neurological disabilities, protest with XR on the streets? Meet Emily, from XR Glasgow. Emily was diagnosed with Tourette’s in 2018, and now has to worry, every time she steps out in public, that she’s going to get kicked out of a coffee shop, taunted by fellow bus passengers, accused of bigotry, or whispered about in an […]

The Keys to Nonviolent Protest: An Interview with Kazu Haga

Nonviolence is like …karate? Yeah, you read that right. Perhaps you wouldn’t expect Kazu Haga, a Kingian Nonviolence trainer who has facilitated restorative justice groups in California prisons for twenty years, to dedicate an entire chapter of his new book, Healing Resistance, to nonviolence as martial art. But he does. And the crazy thing is, he has a point. Kazu is the rare person you can simultaneously imagine traversing a prison hallway and decorating a cookie. In the three hours I spent with Kazu, he managed to receive bear hugs from at least four towering formerly-incarcerated men, […]

Action Wellbeing, A.K.A. The People Holding Your Hand While You’re Locked To A Bathtub

LONDON–It takes only two minutes following Claire, a member of Trafalgar Square’s Action Wellbeing team, before we encounter an arrestee in need. I never learn this young woman’s name. Within an hour, however, it is hard to imagine that she isn’t my niece, or the neighbor’s college-bound daughter. We find her lying, propped on a sleeping bag on the pavement, with her right arm locked via a wide metal tube to another woman who is sitting in a yellow bathtub–yes, I realize this is a difficult image to keep in the mind. Picture a ceramic bathtub sitting on the […]

Disability’s Seat at the Nonviolence Table: Thoughts from a Rebel-Vicar in a Wheelchair

Can a Wheelchair Stop Violence? “You are visibly, tangibly vulnerable, so I think it adds weight to the nonviolence…The chair speaks, so I try to make it an icon, a prophetic witness of vulnerability and power.” LONDON–I encounter Zoe, a Vicar in the Church of England, after stumbling upon the outer edges of a Eucharist service in the center of Trafalgar Square. Three priests light candles and lead prayers in front of a makeshift altar, while behind them a Samba band beats a mix of excitement and nervous tension into your stomach. Police officers’ yellow jackets, lining up across […]

Snapshots: Rebel-Community in Action

You may be wondering, by day three of Extinction Rebellion’s October Rebellion, how regenerative culture looks out there, in real time, as our communities rise from the streets. From our vantage point here in London, we’ve tried to capture the essence of rebel-community in action. Take a look:

Spiritual Leaders Speak: Bridging Faiths in the Name of Extinction Rebellion

LONDON— The October Rebellion kicks off in light rain, and a coalition of Extinction Rebellion (XR) spiritual groups—including XR Christian Climate Action, XR Muslims, XR Jews, Sikhs, and XR Buddhists—band together despite the nip-your-cheeks wind to stride onto the road of Lambeth Bridge. It is a heavily used pedestrian and vehicle cross-point over the Thames, a short hop, its northern end practically in the Palace of Westminster’s shadow. By 9 a.m, it is filled with the smell of incense burning, the voices of a four-part Christian choir singing XR’s Demands like they’re a holiday carol, samba drums, scores of […]