The Dutch chapter of the global Extinction Rebellion movement is building incredible momentum. Their recent disruptive actions, including their blockade of a private airport using bicycles, have led to a huge upswing in participation and turnout. Making the most of that momentum, starting in September 2023, XRNL mobilized tens of thousands of people to blockade the A12 for 27 straight days, leading to over 9,000 arrests. That pressure was enough to force the Dutch government to commit to ending fossil fuels! XRNL has bold plans to keep building momentum throughout 2024.

Futuro Vegetal is a Spanish collective organizing against animal agriculture due to its outsized impact on the climate crisis. They are demanding an immediate halt to government subsidies for animal agriculture, with those funds going toward sustainable plant-based food systems instead. Their actions have made meat consumption a top political issue in Spain, leading to a ban on new factory farms being passed by the Spanish government in December 2022. The group is continuing to execute actions and build momentum, targeting a major mobilization in Madrid in Spring 2024.

Scientist Rebellion is an international network of scientists who have concluded that disruptive civil resistance is the only way to force elected leaders to take action at the scale and speed demanded by the climate science. They achieved breakthrough success in Spring 2022, generating hundreds of news articles and tens of millions of views on social media. In the Fall of 2022, they generated international headlines with their protests at COP27 in Egypt and their blockades of private jets at airports across the globe. Scientist Rebellion plays a critical role within the global climate movement by normalizing and legitimizing disruptive protest as the most rational response to climate breakdown and government inaction.

The A22 Network launched in April 2022 with its Spring Uprising, and has achieved major success across the globe. Eleven groups, including Just Stop Oil UK, Letzte Generation in Germany, and Save Old Growth in British Columbia, took coordinated disruptive action and made major narrative interventions in their home countries. This mobilization laid the foundation for the A22 Network, allowing it to continue recruiting and building momentum. The network will continue to escalate and expand its capacity throughout 2023.

End Fossil Occupy is an international network of young climate activists aiming to reinvigorate the youth climate movement by incorporating disruptive school occupations as a core tactic. Their first wave of action in Fall 2022 was a major success, with over 50 actions spread across the globe. They executed another successful wave of occupations in Spring 2023. The group continues to build momentum as the radical flank of the youth climate movement.

The global Extinction Rebellion movement, active in over 80 countries, began in the United Kingdom in 2018. The UK chapter is responsible for some of the most inspiring climate protests in history, including its weeks-long occupation of key sites in London in 2019 and its blockade of rightwing press distribution in 2020. In Spring 2023, XRUK led the biggest climate protest since the Pandemic when it brought 100,000 people to the streets outside Westminster. Their core demand is the creation of a legally binding citizen’s assembly on the climate crisis to design a holistic plan to get the UK to zero emissions at emergency speed.

New York Communities for Change (NYCC) has built a multi-racial, cross-class base of activists pushing for climate justice in New York City. The group has achieved numerous concrete victories, including a statewide ban on gas in new construction. NYCC played a central role in the huge September 2023 March to End Fossil Fuels, as well as the wave of disruptive actions before and after the march. In 2024, the group plans to continue pressuring the financial backers of the fossil fuel industry, as well as calling on New York to tax the rich to fund climate justice policies.

Rich City Rays is a grassroots partnership of community groups in Richmond, California and climate justice activists who are using kayaktivism as a force for addressing the climate crisis and environmental injustice through community-led non-violent direct action on the water. They work to empower the communities most harmed by fossil fuel operations in the Bay Area to stand up to corporate polluters.

Debt for Climate is an international collective of climate activists demanding that Global North countries cancel debt for countries in the Global South, allowing those countries to devote more resources toward climate crisis mitigation and adaptation. The group’s powerful, internationally coordinated protests have fundamentally changed the narrative around debt cancellation, playing a role in the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund at COP28. In 2024, Debt for Climate will continue to build momentum for debt cancellation by scaling up its protests against international financial institutions.

After the Atlanta city council’s 2021 approval of a plan to bulldoze 300+ acres of urban forest in Atlanta to build a $90 million police training facility, a fierce resistance movement quickly emerged to oppose the project. Dubbed “Stop Cop City'', this movement has been using direct action in an attempt to stop the destruction of the forest, citing concerns about environmental justice as well as overpolicing and racial injustice. Despite intense police repression, including the killing a nonviolent protester and community organizer within the forest, the community continues to fight back, and national support for the movement continues to grow.

The Green New Deal for Montgomery County, Maryland, campaign is preparing the next generation of climate organizers. The campaign provides training and support for high school organizers, who are primarily Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, to put pressure on the Montgomery County government to enact climate policy. The group is currently organizing at the intersection of climate and housing justice, and advocating for the construction of widespread green social housing within Montgomery County.

The Philadelphia Hub of the Sunrise Movement is attempting to successfully bring the methodology of the A22 Network to the United States, taking into account the unique context of US Climate organizing. The group is calling for a “Green New Deal for Public Spaces”, demanding that the city of Philadelphia make a significant investment in community gardens, libraries, and community centers, to build up climate resilience and to address some of the root causes of violent crime. They are planning a series of disruptive protests to put their issue on the top of Philadelphia’s political agenda.

The Oil and Gas Action Network (OGAN) is a collective of California-based organizers with an extensive track record organizing against fossil fuel infrastructure. In 2023, the group launched an an advanced, nation-wide direct action training program, aiming to turn experienced organizers into experts. Once trained, OGAN will organize a network of “rapid responders” who can be deployed to hotspots of resistance to quickly scale up the movement’s capacity. OGAN also plays a critical role bringing the climate movement together for large-scale disruptive actions.

The Social Change Lab is a leader in rigorous research on the mechanics and impact of protest movements, especially climate movements. They published cutting edge analyses of the outcomes of many of the most prominent protests in 2022, such as their analysis of the Radical Flank Effect with respect to Just Stop Oil UK. With CEF support, Social Change Lab is currently working on a quantitative study of the impacts of various protest tactics.

All for Climate is a non-profit association based in Belgium that provides critical financial infrastructure services to climate protesters in Europe and beyond. They operate a transparent and distributed financial infrastructure system that allows them to charge very low fees for their services. All for Climate currently provides fiscal sponsorship services to more than 200 climate protest campaigns.

Sociocracy for All is a group that trains climate organizers with crucial skills that allow for effective, decentralized organizing, providing expertise on areas such as internal structure, decision-making, facilitation, and more. These trainings allow groups to maximize impact and growth, especially during periods of high momentum. With Climate Emergency Fund’s support, Sociocracy for All is scaling up their training program by offering translations in 9 different languages.

The Center for the Working Poor is an LA-based collective of organizers & movement strategists. Members of the collective played a key role in the writing of This is an Uprising, a core piece of movement strategy, as well as the Momentum School, which successfully incubated and launched numerous disruptive movements. With support from CEF, the Center for the Working Poor will provide high-level strategic consultation to leaders within the climate movement.

Beautiful Trouble is a US-based collective of direct action trainers, containing some of the most experienced direct action practitioners in the United States. The group makes micro-grants to disruptive campaigns in the Global South that organize to protect their communities from economic and ecological harm. Beautiful Trouble also provides training and other forms of support for these campaigns to help them maximize their chances of success.