EXPOSED: Europe’s top eco-zealots are plotting a huge ‘civil disobedience campaign’ of highway blockages and disruption at ‘federal properties’ in America’s first summer of chaos

Europe’s top climate activists are planning a ‘large-scale civil disobedience campaign’ of highway blockages, hunger strikes and disruption at ‘federal properties’ in the US in August, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Leaders from Extinction Rebellion (XR) and other European groups known for their large-scale disturbances are rapidly expanding their US-based franchise, Declare Emergency, to create mayhem on this side of the Atlantic.

In a videoconference, which DailyMail.com attended, the Europeans taught their US allies how to raise money, boost membership and recruit scores of ‘arrestable’ members to spearhead the most aggressive protests.

In Europe, those groups have assembled tens of thousands of protestors and brought cities to a standstill, causing millions of dollars of losses, but it remains unclear if they can replicate that success on this side of the pond.

‘What we want to do is create a large-scale civil disobedience campaign on the climate catastrophe in the United States,’ Roger Hallam, the co-founder of XR, told the online gathering of a few dozen US-based activists.

Hallam, who co-founded XR’s US-based sister organization Declare Emergency last year, said he had raised $1 million in the past week and laid out plans for aggressively recruiting 1,000 members in the coming weeks.

The seasoned activist, speaking from the UK, said his organizational tactics were ‘not that complicated, have worked in many countries, and we see no reason why they shouldn’t work in the US.’

Though small, Declare Emergency, has made headlines in recent months, including when two members smeared paint on the case of a Degas masterpiece at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in April.

They’ve also blocked roads in the capital and Maryland and rallied outside Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer’s home in New York City. Several members have been arrested and fined; the art gallery protestors face jail time.

But to date, the group hasn’t matched the scale of Europe’s climate chaos, notably XR’s week-long series of rallies in London, which closed drown bridges and shuttered much of the city center, causing millions of dollars of losses in 2019.

Members have planted trees in Parliament Square, superglued themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace and other landmarks, vandalized artworks in major galleries, and shut down runways used by private jets.

Though many people support efforts to tackle global warming, others eschew the tactics of XR and other hard-line outfits, which have shuttered roads, highways, airports, offices, and other public venues.

Hallam said such a massive disruption was possible in the US, citing the decades of civil rights protests that shifted attitudes on gay rights and led to the mass racial justice protests over the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Declare Emergency, which wants President Joe Biden to declare a national climate crisis and use his executive powers to sharply cut pollution, coordinates with overseas activists through the so-called A22 Network.

READ MORE HERE