Hussein Said is an activist and lawyer. He is a prominent member of Black Lives Matter Cardiff and Vale, and has been at the forefront of fighting for justice for Mohamud Hassan following his death after police contact in January 2021. He has also been involved in Extinction Rebellion and talked to voice about the why he supports direct climate action, the importance of anti-racism and the limits of privilege theory.
Image: Hussein Said, by Tom Davies
So what are your thoughts on the environmental movement today? Obviously you have Extinction Rebellion and now Insulate Britain getting a lot of attention in the run up to the big protests on November 6th, all happening around the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
I mean it’s interesting. I think there’s a lot of controversy around XR [Extinction Rebellion], and especially at the moment with Insulate Britain’s tactics. But I think you have to support the people that are doing it, because whatever you think of the way they should or shouldn’t be doing it, the issues that they’re protesting are the most pertinent and the most urgent of our time.
And Extinction Rebellion you have to say have been hit somewhat, because they’re such a street movement, obviously when the pandemic hit that’s gonna be a bit of a blow.
But with COP26 and the fact that the climate emergency is just going to get more urgent every year, people are wrong to say that XR are going to become irrelevant. It’s just ridiculous, because these things will never become irrelevant.
And whether you agree with the specific tactics or not, the environment is such an urgent issue that you need as many people involved as possible. And if you do disagree with certain things they do, then you should get involved in the groups and tell them what you think and how it can be changed.
But either way, yeah, I’m obviously supportive of everything that all the climate activists are doing, even if I myself disagree with some of the tactics which are a bit wacky sometimes.
Sometimes yes it can be somewhat sort of antagonising the general public, which doesn’t always work out. But overall, the message is an important one. And people trying to run them over and stuff will be seen most definitely on the wrong side of history compared to those who are sitting in the road.
In terms of the disruption and being on the right side of history, some have drawn links between the climate activists and the Civil Rights Movement. Do you agree with those comparisons?
I think direct action is always gonna be part of a movement. But to be honest with you, I don’t think you can say the Civil Rights Movement is identical in the way XR organise, because I think politically the Civil Rights Movement, while it was far more sort of stratified and non cohesive than I think people like to think, it was more politically radical than a lot of what XR does.
Environmentalism kind of came from the Civil Rights Movement anyway so I think they are intrinsically linked. And of course there was disruption caused by the Civil Rights Movement.
I mean, people like to think that Martin Luther King was this lovely man who was just sort of shaking hands with white people. But obviously, he was a big supporter of direct action, a big supporter of the boycotts and a big supporter of people being arrested.
So I think there are parallels but that’s less to do with them being synonimous movements and more that direct action is an integral part of any movement.
I don’t think it should be the only part because it can be like Fred Hampton said, sort of just like lambs to the slaughter. But as they say, direct action also gets the goods.
So yes there are similarities but I do think the civil rights movement was politically a bit more radical, and I think that’s borne out by some of the politics in the environmental movement that likes to blame ordinary people eating meat or whatever, as the primary cause of climate change.
And a lot of the criticism XR and the environmetal movement often gets online and elsewhere says that it is just a white or middle class cause, what is your response to some of that criticism?
A few years ago I was really involved in XR in Cardiff and still am although less active. And my perspective has always been that if you want to change these groups you should get involved.
It’s either you sit behind your computer and moan about them on Twitter, or you get involved in them, because they are the main environmental group doing things. So get involved and try to change what your group is saying.
And XR is not a cohesive sort of movement that has one ideology. I remember Scottish XR when they were putting refugees at the front of what they were doing for their national day of action.
And in Cardiff, we had a human rights lawyer from Sudan who I work with. Me and him did a talk when we blocked the road outside Cardiff Castle about refugees and climate change. So I am sceptical if I’m honest of people who spend their time criticising groups like XR. I think often they come across a bit like a cop. They try to tell people that you know, XR aren’t radical enough so you shouldn’t get involved with them and I think the ruling class look at that kind of condemnation fondly.
I mean, XR are obviously a movement and a group that the UK Government really hates.
Yeah, they are somewhat middle class and they are somewhat white, but it’s not homogenous. And there are some issues of course. Something I raised a lot in XR when I was more involved was around relations with the police as something that had to change. You know, some XR people thanking the police all the time, saying the police do a good job. “The police are just doing their job when they arrest you,” sort of thing.
It’s all incredibly reductive and ridiculous and it puts XR in a light that I think is really harmful.
But equally on the other side of that, there are people in XR that I organise with who are in the anti racist movement and you know, they’re very anti-police.
And people’s views change in struggle, so saying “XR, oh they all love the police, they’re all middle class.” A lot of the people who join XR, they soon find out the police aren’t on their side.
Because you’re only not anti-police because you haven’t struggled enough. When you’ve struggled enough you become anti-police, and nothing radicalises someone as quickly as an encounter with the police.
So we should try and get people involved in that struggle. And of course, black and brown people have much more risk of being incarcerated.
And obviously, that’s quite clear. But there’s also an element of homogenisation of the black and brown community that says they’re too nervous of the police.
But black and brown people can often be the most radical of all people, and be far more willing than a lot of white people to be arrested or even set a police station on fire.
And even with good people who are well intentioned, it becomes quite paternalistic. “Oh, the vulnerable black and brown people need to be looked after.”
And the realities of racism and police violence of course will hit black and brown people far more than white people. But everyone doesn’t have to be arrested. I’m brown myself, and obviously, I’ve been in XR and been in positions where I could be arrested, but I’ve always tried to not get close to that sort of stuff. There’s loads of ways to be involved in XR and not be arrested, I’m a testament to that.
But also black and brown people, if they want to get involved, and they want to be arrested, they will. If they don’t, they won’t. There is somewhat a talking for communities that I think happens even if you’re part of it, talking as if you’re all one homogenous section of the population, that all feel the same way about one specific thing or group. I just think it can be a bit harmful.
Do you think some of what you’ve just said is about identity politics becoming more dominant in some of these movements?
Yeah, I think so. A lot of people hate it completely but identity politics has been part of every struggle. But there is a difference in the way it’s presented and articulated in different movements.
And I think that the harmful identity politics is, you know, I saw it on Twitter the other day, somebody posting about the strike by workers in Glasgow and saying, “Oh, it’s just angry white men.” And you know, that level of identity politics is just completely irrational.
And I do think in these arguments that come forward, things like privilege theory are used alot.
When I speak at demonstrations about the police, outside the police station for example, I try to counter the narrative you often hear from white people when they come up and speak.
And they say, “I’m sorry,” for example. They’ll say, “I’m sorry, to all my black and brown friends for being white.” Or they’ll say something like, “oh, the police will treat me much better than everyone else. And I know that whatever I do, the police won’t hurt me.”
And that’s just not borne out by the statistics number one. Like white people, although they’re not as at risk as black and brown people because it’s a racialised state, they are still getting murdered by the police. Leighton Jones within Cardiff died after police contact
But I think that comes from almost like the inverse of what I was saying earlier. You know the idea that this is a white movement and all these white people are just, you know, getting protected by the state and the police.
A lot of XR people get absolutely rammed by the police, they get battered. And you just have to look back to the miners strike to see white people getting absolutely slaughtered by the police. There’s loads of different examples. I mean, this is the issue with radicalised identy identity politics and privilege theory is that it just doesn’t fit with reality. And it needs too many…a theory that needs too many qualifiers can never work, you know, because it just doesn’t work for a proper analysis of the world around us.
And I’m not saying that police treatment is the same level if a black person or brown person was there, the police would probably be more violent and the judge will probably be less lenient. But irrespective, the consequences are relatively similar, the state looks at a group of people no matter what colour – if they’re threatening the status quo, and threatening profits, then the state will attack them for it.
And I think that’s when XR is quite powerful when they take on some of these bigger issues. When they start linking things to fossil fuels, to war and the carbon footprint of the military for example. When they start talking about those things, I think it’s really powerful, because it cuts through capitalism, through race, and through the military industrial complex.
So yeah, I do think there’s some parts of identity politics and privilege theory that I think runs deep within the analysis. And I think every movement will have its critics, but for me, it just comes across that the people who have more anti-things to say about these movements than anti-things to say about the actual things they’re protesting against, it’s always just a bit of a red flag.
And we have the prospect of quite large-scale protests around COP26 around the world and a large coalition building around the issue. What do you think are the prospects for a mass climate movement?
Well climate interacts with so many different issues in society, and it’s really great that the Muslim Council of Wales have come out in support of the COP26 demonstration in Cardiff, because it’s often Muslim majority countries, such as Bangladesh, that are having severe flooding, and war torn countries like Iraq, that are having massive droughts.
And the impact of climate and the impact of war are not just around droughts. For the Sudanese civil war, there’s a lot of writing about scarcity of natural resources causing the civil war within Sudan.
So the climate is pervasive, and I think there’s massive potential for cross cutting through loads of different movements, but whether it can do that is another question.
I think there has to be more of a push by anti racist groups when it comes to the climate crisis, particularly in regards to climate refugees. And there needs to be a greater emphasis on, for example, Black Lives Matter groups talking about air pollution. Essentially, you’re 28% more likely to be a victim of bad air pollution if you’re black, black or brown.
So all these things are intrinsically related. I mean, there’s a reason why London City Airport is in an area that has an average income of £24,000. And the average income of people using the airport is £124,000, because they don’t put airports in areas where people who have a lot of money will suffer, they put them in the poorer neighbourhoods.
And the rich people can travel there and get their flights to Barbados or wherever they want to go.
So again, I think there has to be a great emphasis put by anti racist groups on environmental struggle, understanding that environmental struggle is anti-racism. Because, as I say, it’s taking black and brown lives in more ways than one.
In terms of the environmental movement, I think it also needs to start talking more about things like the US Pentagon, or milltary industrial complex creating, or contributing 5% of the world’s greenhouse emissions.
And if you’re talking about fossil fuels, then we need to start talking about why we’re going into Virunga in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and why we’re helping groups in the DRC who are causing civil war. Why are we why are we going into Iraq to get fossil fuels? Why are we fighting all these proxy wars for oil pipelines?
And of course, if you’re talking about 100 companies being responsible for 70% of global greenhouse emissions, and lots of those are like Shell and other oil and fossil fuel corporations, then we also have to ask where are they getting the oil from? They’re getting it from areas that aren’t theirs and it’s just a form of neocolonialism.
I mean, these corporations are at the very forefront of climate degradation but also foreign wars which are killing black and brown people.
So environmental groups need to speak more about that because quite simply, it’s far more pertinent than whether you recycle or whether you’re cycling to work. It’s far more pertinent than whether you personally are carbon neutral or whether you’re turning off your lights to save the environment.
In reality, the environment is going to be saved by shutting down big corporations and shutting down the governments that allow them to get big military contracts to cause greater climate disruption.
