Princewill Pius
In a post published on Feb. 7, 2020 — the day after his death, Raphael Coleman (a.k.a. James “Iggy” Fox) explained why he had shifted his focus to activism — or as he called it, rebelling. In the post, titled “This Is Why I Rebel,” he wrote, “After seven years studying, researching and protecting nature as a wildlife conservationist, I stopped fieldwork and deferred an MSc in order to rebel full-time,” he wrote on the Extinction Rebellion website. “Because no matter how many surveys I ran, how many turtle nests I protected, or how many young people I educated about ‘sustainability’, the seas kept rising, forests kept burning, plastic kept clogging the beaches, and our data kept showing that wildlife was being decimated… I realized that as an activist my voice could be far more influential than it had been as a scientist.”
According to the website, Extinction Rebellion is “an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse.” At the top of Coleman’s blog post, the organization noted that he “fought hard for the cause, especially for Indigenous rights. Iggy was a burning bright soul and he will be deeply missed by us all.”
Written by: Nicki
