Short answers, pulled from the story.
Extinction Rebellion was founded in Stroud in May 2018 by Gail Bradbrook, Simon Bramwell, Roger Hallam, and Stuart Basden, along with six others from the campaign group Rising Up!. The movement launched publicly on the 31st of October 2018 outside the UK Parliament, calling the occasion a Declaration of Rebellion.
Extinction Rebellion's three original UK demands are that governments declare a climate and ecological emergency, halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025, and create a citizens' assembly on climate and ecological justice whose decisions governments must follow. The US branch added a fourth demand calling for indigenous sovereignty, environmental reparations, and legal rights for ecosystems to regenerate.
XR's April 2019 London occupation of five central sites, including Piccadilly Circus and Waterloo Bridge, resulted in 1,130 arrests. The October 2019 International Rebellion, a two-week action, brought a further 1,832 arrests and cost the Metropolitan Police an extra £7.5 million.
Major donors include Christopher Hohn, who gave £50,000 directly, and his co-founded charity The Children's Investment Fund Foundation, which donated more than £150,000 and was the single biggest individual donor as of January 2022. The Climate Emergency Fund, launched in July 2019 by Trevor Neilson, Rory Kennedy, and Aileen Getty, donated almost half a million pounds to XR groups in New York City and Los Angeles. By October 2019, total fundraising had reached just over £2.5 million in the preceding 12 months, according to the Financial Times.
Hallam was convicted in July 2024 of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating the blocking of the M25 motorway and sentenced to five years in prison. In April 2024, he had already received a separate suspended two-year sentence for attempting to block Heathrow Airport with drones.
On the 16th of November 2023, a jury acquitted nine Extinction Rebellion members who had smashed the windows of HSBC's London headquarters, causing £500,000 worth of criminal damage as a climate protest. The defendants did not dispute the facts of the case, and the jury returned a not guilty verdict after deliberating for just two hours.