19 May ‘Acts of Mercy’ in a time of global change
“We definitely don’t need hierarchies and we definitely don’t need leaders. We need a leaderless revolution,” says Christian climate activist Richard Barnard.
IN AN ACT OF MERCY
One 7 a.m. rush hour in April 2019, Richard scrambled up a retractable ladder onto the roof of a busy DLR train. It had been stopped at Canary Wharf after activists thrust down the emergency lever. He and six others unravelled a banner which read: “Business as usual = death.”
He described feeling a sense of serenity and calm when going through the motions of the action – he was certain it was the right thing to do. He had prepared himself mentally by fasting and praying and felt as though the roof of that train was precisely where he was supposed to be at that time.
Once everyone was in position, he reached into the pocket of his fancy borrowed suite and revealed a paper that contained a statement he put together. He began:
“We would rather not be taking this action, but the ravaging of God’s creation calls us to do something, anything, to stop this headlong rush into extinction.”
The reasoning behind the action he said was to challenge the system. The station was chosen with a symbolic purpose, as the “thrown of capitalism which needs to be smashed,” he said. “I don’t really care about my liberty. I am tiny and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.”
AT THE CATHOLIC WORKER HOUSE
I visited Richard at the London Catholic Worker House on an oddly hot mid-February day. He had just finished his morning run and was set for a day of activism-related meetings and calls. The Catholic Worker community is an international radical Christian movement which provides hospitality for destitute refugees and asylum seekers. They are built around doing the “works of mercy” – feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, visiting the prisoner and challenging the social and political systems that cause injustice and violence.
“The people who live here will say it’s still hard, it is a hard way of living but it has its beauty. It’s not as hard maybe as working ten hours a day, getting the tube, getting stressed and being shouted at by your boss.”
Those who live and work in the Catholic Worker House, like Richard, find there is something humbling about challenging the capitalist system and agreeing to live in voluntary poverty: “When people do it they realise there is something beautiful and amazing about it, and freeing – we get possessed by our possessions funnily enough,” he said whilst sipping on his hot chocolate.
“Even in rich western societies, in London where we are, the majority of people are struggling to make ends meet, to buy shit they don’t want, not because they’re bad people themselves but because they think it will make them happy and it doesn’t.”
We walked through a narrow alleyway separating the main church hall from the small housing complexes. Once inside, we entered a massive hall with a large dining table and various bookshelves and sofas scattered across the room. The sunlight penetrated the giant stained-glass windows creating an ethereal atmosphere which gave warmth to the room.
“I think design and spaces are really important,” he said, pointing at the table. “If you design a place where you have an eating hall and people eat together, then that creates a sense of community. I think eating together is important even if you have spaces to go back to on your own.”
He walked me to a reading nook at the back of the church. Books were stacked from the floor to my shoulders and the spaces between large church windows were covered in activist-related propaganda posters. The books on the table, most battered, and loved, were related to resistance and post-capitalist ideas: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt by Chris Hedges, Post-capitalism by Paul Mason, The Leaderless Revolution by Carne Ross.
TALKING BUSINESS
“The thing that enrages me most is injustice,” he said. Although it is something that doesn’t immediately spring to mind when discussing environmentalism, it’s something that “fires me up most of all.”
Many of the climate-related disasters today disproportionately affect those in poorer nations, those who are disadvantaged, marginalised and who have contributed least to the problem.
“We are all born as lived things and we all return to dust and we’ll all be the same. We’ve made up structures and things that make us feel we’re not and that makes me angry because we can dismantle those structures.”
He highlights the statement, “system change not climate change,” which is often seen on banners at climate protests. “It’s true,” he says. “We need to change the system. I wouldn’t necessarily say capitalism is broken, I would say capitalism is evil.”
Richard first got involved in activism about 20 years ago, before that, he was just a regular guy who went to the pub a lot. Various things happened in his life which led him to Christianity and the dawning reality of the fragility of life. It made him wonder how he could make a difference in a way that wasn’t pointless or hedonistic.
He began campaigning within the “normal structures of society” – a Greenpeace representative and animal rights campaigner. Seeing the futility of mainstream campaigns and big organisations like Christian Aid, constantly being “fogged off” by politicians made him realise that, “actually, cutting a fence with a bolt cutter isn’t the hardest thing in the world and just requires a bit of bravery.”
Richard is often involved with Christian Climate Action (CCA), the Christian arm of Extinction Rebellion. On April 15 last year, Richard and other Christian rebels drove a lorry to Marble Arch, an operation that shut down London’s major road junction for nine consecutive days. The vehicle stopped in the middle of the road and activists quickly chained themselves to the underside to prevent police from moving it, one of many pivotal actions CCA took to help push climate breakdown into public awareness.
He cannot remember how many times he’s been arrested. Maybe 25 or 30, and the first time, he was 13.
“I have been at the back of a police van with a police officer stamping on my head and breaking my elbow,” he told me. “I’ve been in lots of situations so this feels almost normal. It feels like the right thing I should be doing because I don’t have that fear.”
A CALL FOR REVOLUTION
In the months I spent getting to know Richard, spending countless hours walking across London and back, or at dinner in the London Catholic Worker House, we often spoke about the transition and changes necessary to transform society. He often points towards the need to pull the breaks on perpetual growth, halt resource extraction and environmental exploitation altogether.
“We need to own nothing. We don’t actually own anything, none of us do. It’s just a bullshit construction,” he once told me.
He believes it’s important to integrate more community-focused elements in the design of new buildings and streets – “stripping down the fences in everyone’s garden so that everyone starts talking to their neighbours is a start.”
“Any new building must be designed upon those kinds of principles. So, if you are building new flats, you have a washing room where everyone goes to do their washing.” This way, instead of every household in the apartment complex owning their own washing machine, fewer machines can be shared and greater opportunities for socialisation are opened up. In these communities, people can make their own choices in terms of how much community they want. Aside from those shared spaces, some might prefer to spend the rest of their time in their house and others might choose to entwine their lives much closer to their neighbours, growing food on allotments and other community-focused activities.
Richard thinks we need to rethink paid work: “What’s all that about? I’m talking about that 5-day-a-week business. Where did all that come from?”
As a Christian, he feels partly responsible because of “that Protestant work ethic,” despite being a Catholic. He feels there is no need to work so much and working one to two hours a day would open up time for things like growing food and being creative, doing things you actually enjoy.
Growing food is a great way to not contribute to the system at all. He sees it as a more pure method than voluntary poverty because it can exist outside a capitalist system. “The model at the moment of just being in voluntary poverty, we rely on capitalists to give us their excess. I think it’s an interim measure to get to where we’ll be better and have space to grow our own stuff.”
One thing I’ve noticed from my own activism experiences over the last two years is that we often approach activism and sustainable living with that same capitalist mindset we are trying to abandon. Some capitalist qualities, such as working tirelessly and constantly trying to do better, are so ingrained in us we don’t even realise we’re doing things in that way. Richard spends two hours a day in silent meditation and feels that even that in some form is “doing something, rather than just being. The whole thing about being human beings, not human doings is a really key thing,” he says. “It’s key because, how we construct the world, if we just make it a thing where we just work work work, we’re going to end up living the same way, using the same resources.”
“I used to go on quite a lot of retreats. People were like, “yeah, just coming to recharge the batteries’. No, fucking hell. You are not coming to recharge the batteries, you’re coming to learn how to live without having to recharge batteries. It’s the opposite of all those things.”
Connecting with the natural world is another vital point: “It always blows my mind to think some of the most beautiful flowers ever produced, no one ever sees. They are wasteful in a capitalist mindset, but not in the eyes of the universe or God or divinity, whatever you want it to be.”
He calls for greater resistance and rebellion: “We definitely don’t need hierarchies and we definitely don’t need leaders. We need a leaderless revolution.” In his eyes, there needs to be a bottom-up approach and various groups need to band together and make choices for themselves on how to take the next steps. “Communities will build upon some kind of shared experience, be that place or religious belief, or whatever it is. But, there definitely needs to be no hierarchy and no formal leaders. So yeah, the leaderless revolution.”
