Protesters plan ‘swarming’ style protest to gridlock York roads and bridges

A ‘rolling roadblock’ by environmental campaigners could block York bridges and bring temporary gridlock to the city centre.

Members of the Extinction Rebellion group say they will take to the streets from 11am on Friday (November 23) to carry out “a series of non-violent direct actions”

They aim to block a road in the city centre and one of the bridges across the River Ouse.

The action will culminate “at a well-known public building”.

Catastrophic consequences

Their actions follow similar ‘swarming’ style protests which brought gridlock to central London.

A spokesman for Extinction Rebellion York said:

• We understand that this will cause disruption in the city and apologise for the inconvenience caused to people.

  However this relatively minor inconvenience could help save us all from catastrophic consequences in years to come.
  

The group demands that City of York Council “recognises that we are in a climate emergency, and brings its policies in line with this, including but not limited to going carbon neutral by 2025”.

York can take action

Extinction Rebellion is a project of a direct action group called Rising Up which has campaigned against the new runway at Heathrow and traffic pollution in London.

It has three core demands – that the government:

1. tells the truth about the climate and wider ecological emergency, reverses inconsistent policies and works alongside the media to communicate the situation with citizens
2. enacts legally binding policy measures to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and to reduce consumption levels
3. convenes a national Citizen’s Assembly to oversee necessary changes, as part of creating a democracy fit for purpose.

The York spokesman said: “The action taken in York will be in support of these demands, but also recognises that while the national government continues to fail to act, local government can still take action.

“This has recently been seen in the Bristol and Manchester City Councils.

“Bristol have declared a climate emergency and unanimously agreed their target for going carbon neutral by 2030. Manchester has declared a new target of being a zero-carbon city by 2038.”