Policing the Pedal Rebels: A Case Study of Environmental Activism Under COVID-19

Murray Lee

doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.1887

Abstract

Australia, along with nation-states internationally, has entered a new phase of environmentally focused activism, with globalised, coordinated and social media–enabled environmental social movements seeking to address human-induced climate change and related issues such as the mass extinction of species and land clearing. Some environmental protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion (XR) have attracted significant political, media and popular commentary for their sometimes theatrical and disruptive forms of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. Drawing on green and cultural criminology, this article constitutes an autoethnographic account of environmental protest during the final stages of the initial COVID-19 lockdown in NSW, Australia. It takes as a case study a small protest by an XR subgroup called the Pedal Rebels. The article explores the policing of environmental protest from an activist standpoint, highlighting the extraordinary police resources and powers mobilised to regulate a small peaceful group of ‘socially distanced’ protesters operating within the existing public health orders. It places an autoethnographic description of this protest in the context of policing practice and green and cultural criminology. Additionally, it outlines the way in which such policing is emboldened by changes to laws affecting environmental protest, making activism an increasingly risky activity.

Highlights

With environmental movements in Australia predating Federation, conservation has reflected a popular scientific theme in Australian natural history
The conserving of the Franklin River (Cohen 1997; Hamilton 2016), Kakadu, Fraser Island (Hutton and Connors 1999) and the Union-initiated Green Bans (Colman 2016) are key examples where environmental protest shaped modern Australia and protected what are seen as key environmental assets
Protests for climate justice such as school strikes, anti-fracking protests and Extinction Rebellion (XR) actions constitute a continuum to this history of environmental protest—albeit in a new international and globalised context where coordinated social media–enabled social movements have produced new forms of activism (Powell, Stratton and Cameron 2018)

Summary

Introduction

With environmental movements in Australia predating Federation, conservation has reflected a popular scientific theme in Australian natural history. Protests for climate justice such as school strikes, anti-fracking protests and Extinction Rebellion (XR) actions constitute a continuum to this history of environmental protest—albeit in a new international and globalised context where coordinated social media–enabled social movements have produced new forms of activism (Powell, Stratton and Cameron 2018). Such recent movements seek to address human-induced climate change and related issues such as the mass extinction of species and land clearing

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Conclusion