Blockade Australia
Written by Ben Boyang
June ’23
I am a passionate supporter of Blockade Australia.
BA believe we cannot tackle climate collapse without addressing
the economic system that is fueling it. That is why they target
the ‘bottlenecks’ of the system in an attempt to disrupt the
economic system itself, giving them political leverage.
We can gauge the effectiveness of this disruption by the response
from ‘the-powers-that-be’, usually draconian new anti-protest laws.
‘We will tolerate dissent as long as it is ineffective.’
– John Gorton, Australian prime minister, c. 1970
In this country it is illegal to protest if you don’t get permission from the police.
The police are the compliance arm of the state. Naturally they will not allow any
activity that disrupts the operations of that state.
The only effective form of protest is disruption, therefore all effective protest is illegal,
and only ineffective protest is allowed.
We have all seen how ineffective legal protests have been.
Tens of thousands of school kids can march through the streets
and the powers-that-be will praise their passion and conviction.
The next day is business-as-usual.
To understand just how ineffective our protests have been over the years
we can look at our achievements, or lack there of.
At the Earth Summit in 1992, all the leaders of ‘the free world’ pledged,
hand-on-heart, (fingers crossed behind their backs)to drastically reduce our use of fossil fuels.
At that time 87% of our energy consumption was from fossil fuels.
Now, after some 30 years of protest and inaction, fossil fuel use has dropped
to 83% – a mere 4%. At this rate, by 2050 our emissions would be down to 79%.
We would not achieve zero emissions for another 900 years!
For a more detailed explanation of the BA rationale go to,
Ben's Blog 