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Climate protesters chained themselves to the State House gate on Monday and Tuesday and vowed to dam the Hooker entrance until their demands were met or they were removed by police.
Extinction Rebellion The Boston members stationed themselves on the gate until the Massachusetts government announced a ban on recent fossil fuel infrastructure.
“This specific demand, no new fossil fuel infrastructure, is pretty modest,” Paul Shorb, a protester who chained himself to the gate and is a retired environmental lawyer, told Boston.com. “It's one of the first steps toward all the changes we need to make.”
The group arrived on Monday around 2 p.m. and again on Tuesday around 9:45 a.m., chanting and distributing leaflets.
“Our plan is to stay here indefinitely,” Extinction Rebellion spokesman Isaiah Shadrach told Boston.com. “We'll see what the police plan to do.”
Extinction Rebellion is energetic in 56 countries and has 645 local groups, based on his website.
Shadrach said the group was now intensifying its demonstration by disrupting “normal business operations.”
“The message is: If we don’t get our demands met, we will close it,” they said.
Previously, Extinction Rebellion had held a protest rally in front of the State House with the identical demand for months, but to no avail.
“We have been protesting with the march for a year, but they have not listened to us,” Johanna Vollhardt, a protester chained to the gate and a professor at Clark University, told Boston.com. “So we have to step up our tactics now, because we really have no time to lose if we want to survive.”
Vollhardt said the “worst” could possibly be prevented if “we act now with the utmost urgency.”
“Every bit of warming we prevent will change the scale of the disasters,” she said.
Some of Extinction Rebellion Boston's previous demonstrations resulted in police intervention, including 10 arrests during a roadblock in September 2022, eight arrests during an illustration outside the State House in September 2023 and 20 arrests during a “slow march” in Boston's financial district in September 2023, the advocacy group said.
No arrests were made at Monday's demonstration. Shadrach confirmed police presence but said it was not certain whether there could be any arrests on Tuesday.
“They chose not to arrest us. One could assume that those in charge did not want the additional publicity that arrests could bring because they did not want their inaction to come to light,” Shorb said.
Shadrach said the protest had two goals: to lift public awareness and to place pressure on state officials.
“There is this high-profile goal to convey to our fellow Massachusetts citizens that this demand is important and should be taken seriously,” they said. “And then there is also a direct message to lawmakers: If they want peace and want to get to the State House without major delays or disruptions, they should do their jobs and take the climate crisis we face seriously.”
Craig Simpson, one other chained protester and a retired preschool teacher, said his job inspired him to advocate for climate reform.
“I taught young children for 45 years, and that really showed me what I should do with my life: advocate for the young children,” he said. “I think about future generations and how we communicate this terrible situation to them.”
image credit : www.boston.com