The second Extinction Rebellion in London, October 2019.

My dear friend Ronan Harrington was in the Political Strategy coven, I was nestled in among the interfaith sacred activist rabble rousers. Everyone who was anyone in the UK’s cultural, environmental and progressive political sectors were in position, waiting for the most engrossing and exciting non-violent direct action movement of our lives so far to release its “difficult second album”. There was a half-joking suggestion among the XR media teams to create a live broadcast of the Opening Ceremony of the Rebellion, to use the technology that we had in our pockets to do the job that the BBC ought to have been doing with its conscience and with taxpayers money. The job of telling the truth.

So we did it.

By the close of the Rebellion, XRTV had been watched by 286k+ viewers on Facebook and 500,000+ viewers on Youtube, by audiences from Australia to Peru and everywhere in between.

The tight-knit XRTV team included the immensely charming, affable and capable broadcast journalist Luke Barker, a pair of Soho filmmakers, and a bunch of rebels. Thanks especially to Luke, we took our jobs seriously, we told the story of the Rebellion as it was happening, from the ground up, from the mouths of the babes that wailed mourning cries for the dying life of our shared Earth. I will always be grateful to Luke for everything he taught me about being an honest journalist with integrity, and the importance of presenting an unbiased perspective even when your heart is breaking.

Luke and I named XRTV together, in a moment of creative camaraderie that only an impending apocalypse can produce. Some samples of the shows are linked below. Day 6 was especially potent.