Purpose
Extinction Rebellion has stated in its demands that it demands system change. However, there is no internal conceptual framework that makes it clear what the system change is for XR. The System Change circle gives substance to that concept and facilitates the broader XR movement, solicited and unsolicited.
The XR movement can play an important role in realizing systemic change by connecting its existing strengths and strengths with a deep, internalized understanding of the causes of the polycrisis. The core task of XR System Change is to promote this understanding while making visible inspiring, existing initiatives in which the community can directly participate in constructive solutions — such as local cooperatives in the fields of energy, food, housing and money.
By questioning the system and experimenting with e.g. financing and payment systems under democratic management, we offer alternatives that can ultimately form a transition path to a new, healthier economy, based on inclusion and equality within the limits of our planet.
The goal of XR System Change is: “To realize a fundamental transition from the neoliberal capitalist system to an economy that revolves around environmental sustainability, social justice and democratic control — without growth pressure or profit maximization.”
Activities of the System Change Circle include (but are not limited to) facilitating actions and campaigns, and proposing/forcing the establishment of citizens’ assemblies at political institutions together with other circles within and outside XR, such as the Strategy Circle, but also the Expertise Group Citizens’ Assembly and Democracy for the Future (cooperation to be coordinated).
Responsibilities
The XR System Change circle facilitates every XR community and other circles through the activities below, to contribute to the effectiveness of the overall XR strategy and the individual actions in particular. We build relationships within the XR organization to provide them with the system-changing knowledge to enrich their actions.
We can achieve this by working as much as possible with existing XR communities and circles on, among other things:
- Awareness: we make it clear through conversations, presentations, training courses, what makes so little seem to change, by providing insight into the underlying systems
- Alternatives: we show which alternative structures rebels can use immediately to build a new future fundamentally and with inspiration
- Confronting the causes: direct action and escalation of actions aimed at underlying systems (fossil energy, lobbies, banks, etc.)
- Building alliances: building a broad, intersectional solidarity
- Increasing political pressure and institutional change; We are working towards more democracy
- Transformation of existing institutions: influencing organizations from within
- Cultural imagination: through art, music and creative expressions, to denounce the existing dominance through imagination and to make another world tangible, so that it is not only in the head, but in the heart