Turning the ship around with a Rising Tide

It was incredibly empowering to be part of a joyous, colourful crowd of climate defenders in kayaks on Newcastle harbour that turned a coal ship around.

When you’re on the water nearby, the scale of these ships is almost too much for the mind to encompass. Half the world is moving in front of you. It’s disorienting, both physically and emotionally. And one of these truly massive tankers was forced, by us, to abort an entry to the world’s largest coal port, doing a u-turn and heading back out to sea.

Slowing down this omnicidal industry through the presence of some 7000 people on and around the beach, many hundreds of us on the water, and 170 people pushing the boundaries sufficiently to be arrested, Rising Tide pulled off possibly the biggest act of climate-focussed nonviolent civil disobedience in Australian history.

But we actually did something much bigger than that.

While it’s fantastic to see how much coverage there has been of the direct action and the arrests, I really want to celebrate the incredible work of Rising Tide (the core team that I’m not part of and don’t speak on behalf of, as well as the large assemblage of people around it) coordinating a tremendous, joyful, beautiful YES to the new world alongside the strong NO to coal and the old world organised around it.

Together, we started living into being the world we want and need to live in – a world of mutual aid, of deep, deliberative democracy, of the solidarity economy – in a powerful act of prefigurative politics.

The ten day Protestival, in Newcastle and the closing Canberra Wave, involved 44 teams of volunteers, mobilising the energy of over 1000 people doing everything from cooking and washing up to inflating and carrying kayaks, cleaning toilets (thank you!) to de-escalation-based camp security, police liaison to media liaison, and, through it all, putting First Nations justice at its heart.

The kitchen crew, with heaps of volunteer support, prepared an astonishing total of 20,000 meals for all the volunteers on site! They were all genuinely delicious, healthy and vegan, with options for allergies and preferences. And they were served in re-usable bowls with cutlery donated by participants, all cleaned and dried by teams of volunteers between meals.

The “security meerkats” did gentle dispute resolution internally, mostly by simply observing and being a reassuring presence, while the police liaison team kept external relationships mostly smooth.

Personally, I was heavily involved in the incredible direct democracy program – the spokescouncil. Following an ages-old organising model, attendees were encouraged to band together into small affinity groups – friends, or people from the same place, or shared interests – to look out for each other both during direct actions and around the site. Each affinity group could then send a delegate to the spokescouncil, which met at least twice a day for updates and discussion. Our spokescouncil involved spokespeople from some 140 registered affinity groups, representing well over 2000 people in a genuine, grassroots, consensus-driven body which was amazingly effective in ensuring communication, cooperation, agency, and well-tested decisions.

The meetings were a space for important updates (“we’ll be meeting on the beach at 10am to prepare for launch”), volunteer call-outs (“can we have 5 people to help carry a raft after this council?”), and offers and proposals (“would a few younger people like to join some of the elders in kayaks to give them confidence?”). But we also discussed decisions like endorsing a union campaign, selecting political targets for the media messaging, whether and how to do decentralised actions without jeopardising the whole blockade, and how to manage the campsite after dark. Bearing in mind that consensus is an effort to ensure that everyone is at least comfortable with an outcome rather than needing everyone to be ecstatic, it’s still remarkable that every single decision was made by consensus, and generally at speed. The spirit of cooperation and solidarity across differences of opinion, age, background and perspective was wonderful.

And that consensus process dovetails with the countless trainings in nonviolent direct action, for months in geographical hubs as well as online, and multiple times a day at the camp.

There was a moment on the beach that will stay with me forever. After the second wave of arrests on the water when a ship was brought through and we had all paddled back to shore, a group of police officers marched down the beach and started confiscating our paddles. This aggressive and unnecessary act caused a fair amount of angst and anger, understandably, and the crowd, already upset at seeing a coal ship come through the channel, started up some anti-cop chants. The energy was rising in a way that could have exploded. All of a sudden a few people started singing. It was a climate protest song, so the message remained strong. But it effectively de-escalated, reduced the tension, and brought us back to our purpose.

The music program, featuring artists as big as Angie McMahon, Peter Garrett and John Butler performing for the camp, brought another element of joy, community and world-building to the protestival.

Speaking to people afterwards who aren’t traditional protesters but went along because they felt they needed to take a stand, I heard so much feedback that it was unexpectedly fun, caring and uplifting.

These people went along because they want to say no to coal, and they did! They loved being part of such a clear story of plucky ordinary people in colourful kayaks against the might of dark police boats.

But they came home cherishing the experience of saying yes to the new world at least as much. And it’s the joy, the community, the world-building that will keep them involved in the movement and recruiting their friends.

And it’s exactly what we need in the face of a crumbling political system that is defending power and profits against people and planet. It’s increasingly obvious that this system cannot solve the crisis. The system created the crisis. The system is the crisis. And the system is crumbling.

And, as the old world dies, another is being born. With the Rising Tide, she’s on her way!