How does throwing soup get us to much-needed climate policy changes?
Earlier this month, members of Riposte Alimentaire, an environmental group, threw pumpkin soup at the Mona Lisa, to raise awareness of threats to agriculture and food sustainability. This tactic, designed to elicit shock and attract media attention may seem counterintuitive. Even to the casual observer, there is a disconnect between the immediate action and the stated goals of the group. Why soup? Why da Vinci? Who is this message for? How does throwing soup get us to much-needed climate policy changes?
Civil disobedience is not new to the environmental movement, but tactics that involve direct action have become much more popular in the past few years. Direct action involves disruption and civil disobedience, including nonviolent and violent tactics like sit-ins, general strikes, vandalism, monkeywrenching, and even riots. Direct action is being used to achieve a range of environmental goals by a growing list of groups, including those who are focused on climate change, as well as those who have broader goals. This latest soup-throwing incident is part of a long tradition of direct action, designed to elicit shock, grab headlines, and raise awareness.
On October 14, 2022, two young climate activists walked into the National Gallery in London, opened up a can of tomato soup, threw the soup on a painting of sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh (which was covered in a protective coating), and then crazy-glued their hands and stuck themselves to the wall below the painting’s frame while giving a speech about fossil fuels and the energy crisis in the United Kingdom.
This action was one of many in fall 2022 that were part of the Fall Uprising. The uprising involved a coalition of groups that organized sustained disruptive protest throughout eleven countries during the month before the COP27 round of climate negotiations began in Egypt. It included activists blocking traffic, interrupting talk shows, and throwing food at famous works of art as a way to gain attention for the climate crisis and the need for more aggressive climate action. The Fall Uprising was funded by the Climate Emergency Fund, which explained the motivation for supporting the shockers and their activism on their website: “We support the organizations who tell the truth, demand transformation at emergency speed, and put everything on the line to protect humanity and the living world.”
The main goal of this type of activism is to raise awareness about the climate crisis by using acts of civil disobedience to gain media attention. Frequently, this type of action also elicits a lot of anger and criticism from the general population.
One group embracing this strategy in the United States is Declare Emergency, which is part of the international A22 Network and describes itself as “a campaign using nonviolent civil resistance techniques to disrupt the status quo and demand that our government take meaningful action to address the climate emergency.”
A volunteer organizer with the group explained the network and their tactics to me when we spoke in March 2023: “we share strategy and tactics of nonviolent but highly-disruptive actions, calling for climate action by our governments . . . [Our type of activism expects] the majority of people participating in an action to risk arrest . . . which disrupt[ s] the general public, instead of focusing on an industry or political target.” This group is one of many in the United States that follows the example set by Extinction Rebellion (XR), which focuses on nonviolent civil disobedience designed to end in arrest. In their book about XR and climate activism, Oscar Berglund and Daniel Schmidt explain: “Arrests were not just an inevitable result of the disruption, but an end in itself.”
In an article for the Guardian, members of the United Kingdom–based group Insulate Britain, which blocked roads in the United Kingdom in 2021, explained why they had chosen this type of direct action: “ ‘We managed to keep going out for so long and still get the media attention . . . Even if people thought it was negative, it planted a seed.’ The only way to get attention was to cause serious disruption. Holding placards and signing petitions was not going to cut it.” This quote by an activist from Insulate Britain summarizes the general sentiment among many shockers: their civil disobedience is choreographed explicitly to attract attention from the general public and the mass media.
A similar explanation was provided by actress and activist Jane Fonda when she described her Fire Drill Fridays. Inspired by Thunberg and her Fridays for Future, Fonda started these actions in fall 2019. They involved acts of civil disobedience that were intentionally designed to lead to the activist’s arrest and to draw attention to the climate crisis. The weekly actions brought together notable people, including “celebrities, youth, Indigenous leaders, representatives from impacted and underrepresented communities, as well as movement and thought leaders” to participate in “weekly protests centered around civil disobedience and a demand [that] Congress pass the Green New Deal.”
In an interview, Fonda explained her activism: “Civil disobedience is not a first resort, but it’s a step up. You’ve petitioned, marched, pleaded, and begged, and you haven’t been heard, so you take the next step. To align your body with your values is very empowering, and this offers that opportunity.”
As a working actress who has won numerous awards, Fonda was able to take advantage of her platform and notoriety to gain substantial media attention for her acts of civil disobedience and subsequent arrests.
Another group that follows this model of engaging in direct action to shock the public and get media attention is Scientist Rebellion. The group is known for its activists wearing lab coats at protests and is comprised of “scientists and academics who believe we should expose the reality and severity of the climate and ecological emergency by engaging in non-violent civil disobedience . . . We are terrified by what we see, and believe it is both vital and right to express our fears openly.”
Climate scientist Rose Abramoff wrote about her experience with the group protesting at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in the New York Times in January 2023. “My fellow climate scientist Peter Kalmus and I unfurled a banner that read ‘out of the lab and into the streets.’ In the few seconds before the banner was ripped from our hands, we implored our colleagues to use their leverage as scientists to wake the public up to the dying planet.” The protest lasted a very short time between plenary speakers before security at the AGU meeting escorted the two scientists out of the meeting and a professional misconduct inquiry was initiated.
As news spread about the incident, Abramoff was fired from her job working as a scientist for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I spoke with her on the phone two days after her piece was published in the New York Times to learn about why she had chosen this form of activism. She explained to me that she considers civil disobedience to be “severely understaffed” as a tactic in the climate movement and she is “well-equipped to do it.”
Shockers were also active in April and May 2023 in Europe and North America. In the United States, they stopped traffic, blocked the entrance to the White House Correspondents’ dinner, and smeared paint on the casing around Degas’s Little Dancer of Fourteen Years sculpture in the National Gallery in Washington, DC. In response to the action at the National Gallery, which was organized by Declare Emergency, the editorial board of the Washington Post published a scathing editorial, calling the action “counterproductive”: “This kind of ‘protest’ is no protest at all. It is vandalism plain and simple, and, perhaps more than anything, it harms the cause these ‘protesters’ claim to care so much about.”
Although this editorial was one of many that claimed this type of activism was detrimental to the broader climate movement, the evidence to date does not support this perspective. In an article published during the Fall Uprising in 2022, social psychologist Colin Davis summarized the general social science research on the effects of this type of activism. He concludes that disruption “may actually be a very effective way to increase recruitment . . . The existence of a radical flank also seems to increase support for more moderate factions of a social movement, by making these factions appear less radical.”
These findings are consistent with research conducted on the radical flank in other social movements. For example, in their study of the radical flank in the women’s movement in the 1950s through the 1970s, Holly J. McCammon, Erin M. Bergner, and Sandra C. Arch find that this type of within-movement conflict can create opportunities to achieve the movement’s broader political goals. In his research on disruptive tactics during the civil rights movement, Doug McAdam finds that, by employing innovative tactics, activists created moments of “increased bar-gaining leverage” for the movement. These findings are also corroborated by data collected from the general population.
In a 2022 survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, over a quarter of the U.S. population was found to support generally “an organization engaging in non-violent civil disobedience (e.g., sit ins, blockades, or trespassing) against corporate or government activities that make global warming worse.”
When the data were broken down by political orientation, 56 percent of the people who identified as liberal Democrats showed support for an organization that engages in nonviolent civil disobedience. It is important to note that these findings are based on general opinions; they are not actual responses to a particular act of civil disobedience with a particular target. When I surveyed activists participating in the legally permitted March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City in September 2023, 100% of respondents reported that they support the organizations that are engaged in non-violent civil disobedience (e.g sit-ins, blockades), including throwing soup.
Although much more research is needed to understand the broader effects of specific actions on public opinion, political opportunity, and media coverage, most of the shockers and the groups that fund them use media coverage—such as the number of sources covering the story or impressions on social media—as the main indicator of the success of this type of activism. When we look at the media coverage of direct action to elicit shock, there is little question about their success: the shockers and their actions are successful in drawing attention (and media coverage) to the action and the issue. I mean, you’re reading this article aren’t you?
Excerpted from Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action by Dana R. Fisher. Copyright (c) 2024 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
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