Revolutionary Naivety

from Issue 77, Advent 2024

It felt like an exciting and inspiring time. I had been involved with Christian Climate Action for several years and was now getting involved with Extinction Rebellion (XR)— at, or even before, its beginning. The organisers seemed to have a well-organised and thoroughly researched plan to bring about the kind of revolutionary change that was — and still is — needed to respond to the climate and environmental emergency.

Of course, growing in understanding of the full urgency and scale of the climate emergency was not exciting. It was horrifying. What was exciting, however, was the possibility that this could really change things. The change needed to protect the life of God’s Earth is a move toward a post-growth, post-capitalist economy. Perhaps something akin to the model described in Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics— a space between ecological and social boundaries where just relations between humans and all life on Earth could flourish, and where all of creation could receive the love, respect, and protection it deserves as God’s gift.

Hindsight is a fine thing, of course. By the summer of 2019, there were loud voices calling on XR to avoid scaring people too much, and to be cautious about raising unrealistic hopes that would inevitably be disappointed. I did not really expect such revolutionary change, but I thought it was worth trying, and it seemed like the best opportunity I had seen— or had the chance to be part of— in my adult lifetime to create that change. In any case, I was convinced that taking part in XR was, for me, a necessary response to the climate emergency.

At its peak, XR seemed to me like a real Pentecostal miracle— an authentic expression of the life and work of the Holy Spirit. And I still believe that. Looking back now, on one hand, it seems to me that the (Divinely) providential combination of XR, Greta Thunberg and the School Strikes, and David Attenborough’s TV show Climate Change— The Facts (which aired during the most famous XR Rebellion— pink boat in Oxford Circus and everything) did have a massive and almost revolutionary impact on national and global consciousness regarding the need to respond to this emergency. But on the other hand, it has obviously not brought about the more fundamental, non-violent, revolutionary change we were hoping for.

So my question is: What do we do after a ‘failed revolution’? What are the choices, the right path? Where do we go after mighty struggles seem to have ended in defeat? How do we deal with the emotional fallout? It could be disappointment, or a temptation to despair. It could be grief. Or simply exhaustion. It could be like the miners’ strike of 1984 and the Thatcher years, or the Extinction Rebellions of 2018-2020. Or the Latin American liberation struggles of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The list goes on. My last proactive involvement in the ‘climate emergency movement’ was in autumn 2021, when I participated in two weeks of Insulate Britain (IB) blockades on the M25 and at Dover Port. After that, I had to stop, mainly because of personal and family challenges. But I also started questioning whether the strategies XR and IB were using had run their course, at least for the time being.

So now what? Last year, I read for the first time Gustavo Gutiérrez’s famous book A Theology of Liberation. Published in 1970, during the struggles for liberation, justice, and freedom in Latin America, it kicked off the whole liberation theology phenomenon. A recurring theme of the book is that those who work only on the level of ‘charity’ or even ‘reform’ for the poor and oppressed are naïve. What is really needed, according to Gutiérrez, is revolution.

I’d like to agree with that. However, the Latin American liberationists discovered they were not just struggling against the ‘powers and principalities’ (Ephesians 6:12) in the form of local elites and dictators. They were also up against the overwhelming power of the USA and its allies, including the UK.

Shortly after Gutiérrez’s book was published, socialist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile. Three years later, on 11 September 1973, he was deposed in a CIA-backed coup and replaced by the military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Similarly, the revolutionary Sandinista government took power in Nicaragua in 1979, but the US responded by funding the Contra guerilla war and imposing an economic blockade, successfully undermining popular support for the Sandinistas, who were eventually defeated in the 1990 elections. Elsewhere, the US funded and supported military dictatorships protecting extreme capitalism across Latin America. This includes the attempted CIA-backed ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion and coup in Cuba, as well as the ongoing economic embargo.

In their own terms, the Latin American liberation struggles and their support from liberation theology appear to have failed. The same could be said of XR. On the other hand, Latin America is generally democratic today, and left-of-centre governments have been elected to support the poor, the indigenous, and the working class. Relatively speaking. Alongside that, the central themes of liberation theology— ideas like structural sin and the option for the poor— have become mainstream in Catholic Social Teaching and official Catholic doctrine. Similarly, although XR did not fully succeed, it did have a massive and positive impact.

What does all this mean? The struggle for life, justice, peace, and freedom must continue, for sure. But what is the best way to direct our energies on behalf of God’s suffering people— the oppressed and impoverished among the growing wealth of the elites— and on behalf of God’s suffering Earth?

For myself, I see questions of strategy. There are also questions of personal calling, gifts, strengths, and weaknesses. Of emotional and spiritual pull. As well as personal, family, and other circumstances. Some might say I’m just experiencing burnout. Perhaps it’s more a question of cycles, like the liturgical cycle, rather than a linear view of time where campaigns have a beginning, a middle, and end in success or failure?

For Christians, of course, we look to Jesus. As Dorothy Day said, even Jesus failed. He ended up crucified. Most of his friends left him, denied him, or betrayed him. It was the women who remained with him till the end. But that was followed by the seemingly miraculous success of the Resurrection! Yet even after that, life went on. The Romans continued to occupy, oppress, kill, and enslave for three more centuries— ‘a time, two times, and half a time’ in the language of the Book of Daniel— until that empire collapsed. And history goes on.

I take comfort in what happened after the crucifixion and resurrection. The disciples took shelter and went home. Even after the resurrection, they had to wait for the revolutionary, spirit-led day of Pentecost. And after Saul’s dramatic conversion, he spent months processing what had happened. Perhaps this is what happens. After being in the middle of dramatic events, everything needs to be processed. We need to find our feet again.

Maybe the ‘80-20’ rule can help too. In Catholic Worker terms, this might mean a good balance is 80% of energy in the daily work and life of hospitality, with the remaining 20% in resistance or activism, trying to work for change on one level or another. In hospitality work, it’s possible to see, feel, and experience the direct and immediate benefit of, for example, giving a meal to a hungry person, or a home to someone who is homeless. A human being, a sister or a brother in God’s family, has clearly benefited. With activism, the benefits can be enormous, but often the outcome is disappointment, or it can feel like all that work and effort was ultimately futile in terms of seeing positive change. For three years of my life, the balance of energy was probably the other way around. So I, and others, need time to recover and regenerate. After all, even the army has tours of duty and time off afterward.

On the other hand, the climate and environmental emergency continues. Carbon emissions still rise. Many species are rapidly approaching extinction and some have already disappeared. The risk of crossing irreversible tipping points grows every day. Right now, I can only do what is at hand and pray to God for further miracles and Pentecostal days.

Finsbury Park is a beach!

Henrietta Cullinan's interview with Br. Johannes Maertens for our Easter 2023 newsletter

Firstly, what do you do?

I try to do… pastoral presence. Or prayerful presence. That means, practically, that I am [based] around Finsbury Park, mostly focused on Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees. We call them Habesha. But for other people too. I mean, I don't wear a sign that says, ‘Refugees Only’.

People talk to me because they're interested in why a monk in a habit is walking around there. Most of the Ethiopians and Eritreans know what I'm doing there, so they automatically come to me if they have problems they need help with. So, I try to be present. It’s not just being there on the street. It’s not just being there in the cafes or in the station. It’s a quality of being. And that’s the most difficult part… to be there and to be… to use a modern term … ‘mindfully present’. It’s not always easy. Because the rhythm of the city, of London, is quite overwhelming, even for people who walk. Even if you’re just going somewhere you’re swept into that rhythm. And I struggle with it. Sometimes in the summer I have less of a problem because I can go into the park. I can force myself to sit down on a bench. And wait and see if somebody comes and speaks to me.

So what do you when it’s cold and rainy?

I go to one of the cafes where people know they can come and get help. They know that I'm there most afternoons. And that works mostly for casework Finsbury Park, East End Prints support. For the ‘pastoral presence’, to be there for people, to talk with them about things other than practical help, the park in summer provides a better [environment]. The park is more [conducive] to what they would call ‘chilling’.

There is much less constraint in the park. People come to the park because they have time [on their hands]. In the street they might be on their way home, to work or to school. The urgency with which you move in the street is different from in the park and so the kind of talks you have will be different.

What other factors influence your work?

The time of day has an enormous influence. There’s a completely different vibe in the evening. The chance [of meeting someone] is greater. I talk with two or three people at the same time who might be slightly under influence of a substance, while during the day I might just speak with one person. Most people are either busy or sleeping in the morning.

And would you say that your habit is part of your space?

Well, my habit is literally the space which I inhabit. And the habit, when I wear it, and I wear it often, determines a part of the space and I know it’s not just clothes, it’s also identity. It’s also inviting or not inviting people to have a conversation about something that points to the non-material world, that is also the idea. I mean that consciously I wear it to invite people, not necessarily to a conversation, but simply to think about the non-material world. And for some people that works. For other people, that works also, but in a negative way, right?

Tell me why the people that you work with congregate around Finsbury Park. What's special about that location?

Well, principally, the park is a meeting place for very different groups of people. Because it’s such a green, wide, open space. In the summer it attracts people who are looking for a bit of space. In the summer you could even almost say it’s a beach. It’s like coming to the beach for people who don’t have the money to go to the seaside. You do see people sunbathing on beach towels.

In the winter, of course, the park is completely different. Then it is mostly a meeting place of different like-minded groups. The largest group that comes to Finsbury Park once a week would be the football fans. Because it is on the way to the Arsenal stadium the surrounding pubs, the Arsenal fans are very present, which is a completely different public from the one I actually work with.

Tell me a bit about not having a hub or a house in which to do your work?

Not having a house for me personally is a big poverty. Even if I live here and, as you can see, I have a big room and I have all the facilities I need, what I don't have is agency over the space. I have agency over my room, but not over the space. And is that important? It is if you want to do hospitality. I live in relative poverty for the moment, I mean financially. The most painful poverty is the poverty of not being able to offer hospitality. It is new for me because I’ve been doing ‘hospitality’ for almost 25 years. Not being able to give somebody a bed or a room for one night even…Yeah, that is a very, very big poverty for me.

I need to learn from this in the sense that there are many people in the world who are on the streets or sofa surfing, staying with other people or living in a room somewhere at somebody else’s apartment. And they cannot give hospitality either.

I won’t say that giving hospitality is a luxury. Not at all, because there are many people who offer hospitality, who are not rich. Probably more people who are not educated offer hospitality than people who are rich. But it is a poverty that is difficult to accept. Especially when you know that there are rooms available in several places. You know that there are places where rooms are free and you don’t have agency.

Blessed are those persecuted in the cause of right

from Issue 72, Easter 2023

I had some court fines for my part in the Insulate Britain (IB) protests in 2021. Previously I refused to pay fines, all resulting from peaceful protest. Eventually, after dealing with some moderately stressful visits from bailiffs attempting to enter our house and take away property, I spent a few weeks in prison here and there for refusing to pay up.

This time, however, things were different. For an assortment of reasons, I did pay the fines. The support networks for climate change activists who might have helped me pay the fines, did not do so. I knew why. The IB motorway blockades I had taken part in were highly controversial. Some of the groups I had been involved with had disowned these actions. Others followed suit and would not support those experiencing the costs and consequences of taking part.

This raises some questions. What does solidarity mean, and what are its limits when there is honest disagreement on tactics or principle? Dorothy once reported someone saying, “these Catholic Workers will protest with anyone”! If we only act with those we fully agree with, we will be left to act alone, whereas “Unity is Strength”. Over the years, I have been part of anti-war marches organised by the Socialist Workers Party, where I have disagreed with their ultimate (but not immediate) aims and their methods of organising. I have been on Poll Tax, Anti-Racism and Reclaim the Streets protests where some started fighting with the police, or threw ‘missiles’ at them. I was happy to benefit from their organising efforts, and only left when I felt unsafe. Some peace movement friends have intervened to prevent violence in such circumstances, rather than leave and vacate the space. On the annual May Day march, the Kurdish Workers Party used to have banners of Lenin, Marx, and Stalin, which I kept well away from. In recent years, there has been tension for a number of friends of the Catholic Worker (CW) in relation to this question of unity, solidarity and diversity of actions.

One example is that of Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya. In 2016 and 2017 they damaged machinery and equipment as part of the “Dakota Access Pipeline” protests in the USA. The pipeline was built to bring oil from the shale oil fields to a refinery in Illinois. Part of it affected Native American land and sacred sites. So opposition came from environmentalists, Native Americans and allied rights activists. Jessica and Ruby’s actions are estimated to have stopped the flow of 30 million barrels of oil. Despite being connected to the Des Moines CW community, their actions were controversial within the CW movement.

Property damage as part of nonviolent protest is not new to the CW. There is the anti-nuclear and anti-war Ploughshares movement, for example. Locally, there has been the annual Ash Wednesday witness at the Ministry of Defence in London and others. These actions have included targeted property damage while retaining a focus on non-violence and accountability. Perceptions that Jessica and Ruby did not follow this practice of accountability led some CWers to critique rather than support their action. I myself had some doubts about their methods. But I admire their courage and sincerity and the rightness of their cause. I also recognise how the shock of the ‘new’ can create a negative reaction which changes on further reflection. I think of Dorothy Day’s first, and then later, reactions to the draft board raids in Vietnam War era America. So I wanted to offer Jessica and Ruby what solidarity and support I can. Especially since they received multi-year prison sentences.

Friends close to home have also needed solidarity following controversial actions. Richard, a former member of this community, stayed here recently during a trial at Wood Green Crown Court. Richard, Nick and other friends were charged with ‘conspiracy to commit criminal damage’ for actions taken with the group ‘Beyond Politics’ (later ‘Burning Pink’) in an effort to motivate political parties, NGOs and campaigning groups to actively support mass civil disobedience on climate change. Criticism this time was due to the organisations targeted rather than the methods. Again, I too had doubts about the wisdom of some of their actions. At the same time I wanted to offer support and solidarity, especially when facing the possibility of extended time in prison. Some were already on remand, tagged, or under restrictive bail conditions with a very real impact on daily life.

When Tom and I went to support them in court, they were so grateful. It reminded me of how little support they had outside their own circle, and how important that support can be. They were acquitted by the jury, as have many other groups in recent years, thank God. Juries at least have often recognised the need for drastic action to respond to the climate emergency.

I am reminded of the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘those who love community, destroy community. Those who love those around them, build community’. This does not give easy answers or clear rules. It is that love, that care for each and every person, especially those who suffer, which is at the heart of what we do, of the Christian life. And especially those who suffer for conscience sake, because they had the courage and faith, in God or humanity, to do what is right. And for us as Christians, especially for those whose courage comes from that deepest and most secret place in the heart, the place where we meet God, where the Divine Voice speaks heart to heart, where ‘deep calls unto deep’ as the psalmist says. This is unconditional love, agape, this is living God’s Reign, the true revolution, in every moment. As Jesus said, ‘blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of right, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’.