The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. April 22, 2019 Police Clear Extinction Rebellion Sit-In Protesters as Arrest Total Nears 1,000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In London, police have cleared Parliament Square and the Oxford Circus shopping district of sit-in protesters with the group Extinction Rebellion, as they continued a week of actions demanding urgent action on climate change. Since mid-April, London police have arrested nearly 1,000 people as protesters stopped trains, blocked roads and superglued themselves to buildings in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. On Sunday, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joined the protests. Greta Thunberg: "We are now facing an existential crisis, the climate crisis and ecological crisis, which have never been treated as crisis before. They have been ignored for decades. And for way too long, the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and the ecological crisis. But we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer." Last week, Greta Thunberg was welcomed to the Vatican by Pope Francis, where she urged the pontiff to join her international climate strike.