People Power for Climate Justice w/ Lynne Jones & Farhana Yamin

Doctor and aid worker Lynne Jones, and lawyer and climate activist Farhana Yamin, a key architect of the Paris climate agreement, discuss the rise and methods of nonviolent action for political change.

In Jones’ book, Sorry for the Inconvenience but This is an Emergency, she offers a ground-level account of the past five years of UK protests, exploring how and why ordinary citizens have adopted extraordinary methods to confront the climate and nature crises. As one of the world’s most accomplished movement lawyers, Yamin provides both inspiration and a compass for the way movements can use the law – and must sometimes break it – to bring about social justice. The concept of movement lawyering was first proposed by the US Center for Constitutional Rights a decade ago. She shares her expertise in an essay in the collection The Revolution Will Not Be Litigated.

About the book

As floods and fires rage across the planet, ever more people are embracing nonviolent action to achieve political change. Can it work?

Doctor and aid worker Lynne Jones offers a compelling, ground-level account of the last five years of UK protests, exploring how and why ordinary citizens have adopted extraordinary methods to confront the climate and nature crises. Sharing her 1980s experiences opposing nuclear weapons at Greenham Common, and her journey in movements like Extinction Rebellion today, Jones reflects on public history and her personal story to unpack nonviolent protest in a world on the brink. Can we learn from past movements? How to communicate with those who disagree? What kind of disruption is most effective in Western democracies? Is property damage nonviolent? Is the law just? How important are direct interventions, boycotts and non-cooperation? What can indigenous campaigners of the Global South teach us?

A lifetime of activism has taught Jones that we all have more power than we realise. It’s time to use that power—before it’s too late.

About the author

Lynne Jones OBE is a child psychiatrist, WHO and UNICEF consultant, and author of acclaimed books including Outside the Asylum and Then They Started Shooting. BBC Radio, The New Statesman, the London Review of Books and O, The Oprah Magazine have featured her field diaries from conflict and disaster areas.