 Okay, so I think we're live. Good evening everyone. My name is Natasha. I'm the Europe organiser, temporarily filling in for Emma, who normally does this job, who is on sabbatical. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. It's very exciting. We have people joining from 24 countries signed up and more than 300 of you, which is great. I've already seen lots of different people signing in from different countries around Europe and also in the States. So yeah, I would first of all like to introduce the panel that I've got. So I am here tonight with Asad Rehman. Asad, would you like to introduce yourself? Not me today. I'm unmuted now, sorry. Apologies for that. Hi everyone. My name is Asad Rehman. I work for Friends of the Earth. I lead their climate justice work. But my background is in social justice and anti-racism work, all the 30 years of sort of grassroots struggles against the far right and racist violence and police violence in the UK. Thanks, Asad. I'm also joined by my colleague Nico, who is joining us from France. Nico, would you like to say hello and introduce yourself? So hi everyone. I'm Nico. I'm a campaigner for Swiss 50 based in France and working in France. So helping moving our campaigns and mobilization here. And I've also been involved for the last 20 years in the global justice movement and the world social form process, which has been a space where there were many discussions on how to make different agendas and struggles converge. So that's part of my background too. Thanks, Nico. So as you can see, it's just the three of us that are on the school, but I have some colleagues that you can't see that are helping to moderate and collect your comments as they come in. So there are two ways that you can contribute and share comments or questions to this webinar. First of all, you can comment in the chat box below the webinar. And to do that, you need to have a YouTube account and be signed into that and then create a channel. You should be able to see how to create a channel and click on that. If that's too faffy for you, we're also collecting comments coming in on Twitter. So if you use the hashtag 350 Europe, that'd be great. And if you could carry on signing in and saying where you are in the world, that would be awesome. It's very exciting to see the mixture of people coming in from all over lots of different places. As well as we go along, as you sharing your questions and comments, we would like to get your ideas for the way that the climate movement can respond to the rise of the right and individual actions that people can take. And so please feel free to share them as we go along. I'll actually be collating all of the suggestions into a resource. So if you have links to particular groups in different countries that you think are interesting or anything, please do share it with us. It might seem like there's lots of stuff coming through, but we will go back through it and try and make it digestible and shareable. So Nico is going to be, first of all, talking through and summarizing his blog that he's written on the connection between the climate crisis and the rise of the right. And then we'll take some questions and discussion points around that. And then Asad will be joining in and we'll be talking about maybe picking up on some of the things that people have already said and also making suggestions for the kind of actions we can take. Then we'll have some more questions and discussion. And then I will be talking a little bit about how some advice that I've got from one of my colleagues in the States about how we need to kind of calm everything down and ground ourselves because there's a lot of action happening at the moment. There's an awful lot of heat, but not very much light. People are responding very quickly and not acting kind of strategically and we need to conserve our energy and be in this for the long haul. So I'll be talking a bit about that and setting some things for people to go and think about in their groups or with friends and we'll have a bit more of a discussion at the end. We should be done in a little bit more than an hour. It depends how quickly we go and how much you have to say. Also thanks to everyone that commented on the blog that Nico wrote. Hopefully we'll cover lots of the kind of points and themes that came out of that in the conversation. But yeah, this is just the start of this work. So I'm just going to start talking about the purpose of the webinar and then we will go over to Nico. So we were moved in the 350 Europe team to respond to Donald Trump's election and the Muslim ban and think about actually the rise of the right on our continent and what this means for our work basically. It's a time of great change and the rise of the right here in Europe is more visible than ever before but it's not a you problem. It's been growing for a long time and across the continent we've got elections coming up with Le Pen and France. We've got UK Brexit and the UK Independence Party gaining a lot of traction. In Sweden we've got right wing parties affecting government policy and the right is basically sewing division and hatred. They're dismissing science, climate science first and foremost and reinforcing the existing inequalities that there are and a lot of those go back to the colonial era when a lot of Europe was founded. We know we need to respond as a climate movement for the sake of our common humanity and the success of our struggle. I wanted to share this is something that I really feel when thinking about this stuff. It's a quote commonly attributed to Lilla Watson who is an Aboriginal activist but I think it actually came from her group. It's if you've come here to help me you're wasting your time but if you've come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together and I really feel like that. This isn't about how we need to act on behalf of other people who are suffering. It's about how all of our struggles are intertwined and we're not going to win unless we can kind of bring them all together. So this webinar is not going to be about how to solve racism or about how to make our movement more diverse. We don't have all the answers. We know that we're going to make mistakes as we try and find a way forwards but we need to try and for 350 at least. This is the start of a conversation. We've already learned that trying to do things in a hurry is not a great approach. We reacted to the Muslim band very quickly, tried to pull this webinar together very quickly, didn't leave ourselves enough time to consult with activists that were affected and we should have taken our time with it a lot more but thanks to everyone that helped. I got a lot of help and support with this. So that's some kind of basic framing. I would like to hand over to Nico now to kick this off and to talk about why we think that it's so important for the climate struggle that we respond. Yes, thanks again Tasha. I will maybe start with a little background on how we came to writing this blog that even if I'm the author of this blog was also a collective effort from the European team at 350 and based in many conversations that we've had for a while now based both on doubts and reflection that we have on our own work and also attempts and experiences that we've been involved in working with more international intentionality with Cascos communities and groups impacted by climate change. The question of course is not new. As I said before I used to be very involved in the global justice movement and 20 years ago in the world social forum or in all the G20, G8 counter-submit everyone was talking about the idea of the convergence of struggles. Now it has changed a little. We're rather talking about intersectionality which is the idea that our identities are plural. We are not defined by one single trait, by one single quality, but several of them and all those traits they cross or they intersect where we are and they shape ourselves, our identity and ourselves are of course more than one or two of these traits. They are the combination of all those traits. Let's take myself for instance, I'm not just a man, I'm not just white, I'm not just a permittal class, I'm just living in the global north and just heterosexual cisgender, I'm all of these together combined and this is what defines my identity and helps to understand where I'm situated in the different layers of domination and interaction that built those dominations and the shape from speaking in terms of convergence of struggles to speaking in terms of intersectionality is quite important and comes with new challenges. Of course there's something in common between this initial idea of the convergence of struggles and intersectionality. The main thing that they do have in common is that they both break with the strategies of let's say the historic Marxist progressive movements which was based on the assumption that there would be a primary struggle and one collective actor of change. The primary struggle would be the class struggle and the collective actor of change would be the proletariat and then there would be many secondary struggles against colonialism, for gender equality, against racism, et cetera and the idea was then to sum up let's first get rid of the structures of capitalism and then we can deal with colonialism, with feminism and with all the other issues and there was a first breaks who in that perspective with the feminist movement, the environmental movement and of course also the anti-colonial decolonial movement which shared like our mainstream the idea that there is no primary struggle and then secondary struggles but that those struggles are all equally important. Yet in that convergence of struggle or those attempts to make those struggles converge many causes, many approaches were missing because they were not visible, because they were excluded, because actually within a class or within a race or within a gender there can be domination or people dominating one another precisely because our identity is not just based on the class or the race or the gender but all of it combined and I think intersectionality puts a stress on those who suffer from several forms of domination and exclusion and want to be actors of change of course and like bring also the ideas that even in our movements there are people who dominate others and that's those who dominate others within the movement cannot be the one defining the agenda and so intersectionality eventually has to do with individuals not as giving up on collective organizing that's pretty much the opposite it's collective organizing based on those identities and how they intersect so that's the background like maybe political or intellectual background to that thinking then came of course the election of Trump and among his most outrageous decision the so-called Muslim ban and then talking to one another within our team and with many partners we realized that actually Trump is a very good example he embodies somehow why intersectionality matters why because it's not surprising at all that he's at the same time racist sexist violent climate denier that he denies the right of people to self-determination that he's organically connected to the fossil fuel industry it actually shapes a coherent set and this has implication for our strategies namely we won't be able to fight accurately against Trump and his world if we don't find ways to articulate the fights against climate change or climate denialism or against the fossil fuel industry with a fight against racism with a fight against gender oppression with a fight against class oppression etc so so Trump somehow embodies a reversed intersectionality which calls for a movement that articulates different fronts and different struggles and to be maybe a bit more specific of concrete this is something that groups working on human rights know very well right they know that fundamental rights are both interconnected and that they are global which means that one infringement against one right is not only an infringement against all rights it's also an infringement against the rights of all of everyone so if our horizon is climate justice then we have to acknowledge that it won't happen without gender justice without racial justice without social justice or to put it the other way around you might remember that back in Copenhagen in 2009 at the COP 15 which happened just after the financial crisis many of us were saying if climate was bank it would have been bailed out that was our punchline and it was a way for us to highlight the fact that states know how to be proactive and move huge amounts of public money in certain specific occasions and the idea would be to expand this logon a little further it's not only if the climate was bank then the issue would already have been solved we can also say that if Katrina or Sandy so Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Sandy or like the the storms that affect Bangladesh or the dwarf that affect many countries in Africa we're actually affecting gated communities of rich white people let's say in Florida or in France then we would also have had already answered the issue of climate change in another way than sending the troops as it was done in Katrina in New Orleans or in in New York after Hurricane Sandy so that's a way to highlight the fact that yeah we are not even we are not equals when it comes to climate change there are some people who suffer more from climate change than any other even if it's a global issue even if it affects every corner of of the planet of the earth and and that of course the current and swear which is to send the troops is not compatible with climate justice so the third thing that I wanted to address briefly briefly as as a way to open the conversation with Assad and with you all is what should we do from within the climate movement based on those observation the first obvious conclusion is that we can't keep on working in silos or bubbles as we hear we call them now breaking those silos or those bubbles is probably a long task but it begins with a very simple way is to start organize meetings with groups from communities that are directly affected by other issues than climate acknowledging the fact that they intersect and that there are people who are affected by both state racism gender oppression and climate change at the same time and that we could start from there to organize and build a movement to tackle a term his world and the fossil fuel industry of course it won't be immediate in immediate and it's a it's a process that might take a while at least for instance in France where we haven't started it yet there are other regions in the world where it's very different of course and it also implies knowing how to show solidarity wherever it's needed even if it's not directly related to climate and I think the the main like horizon would be as our colleague hoda baraka said when when she reacted to the muslim man we know that climate change has no boundaries and we won't neither have boundaries so of course there are questions that come with that the first could be and and some of you raised those issues in the comments to to the blog isn't it a diversion from our work shouldn't we focus on climate because that that is what we are good at and that is our focus and that is our identity as 350 but but actually there could be another question isn't it the only way to really achieve climate justice to tackle climate justice as an issue that intersects with other issues or the question should then probably be how do we make sure that those alliances and intersections that we need to build and seek an increase will be meaningful and effective and I think that's pretty much what we would like to start discussing with with you all during this webinar of course but hopefully also as much as possible in the daily work that that we do and in our campaign and and organizing great thanks niko um we've had I don't think we've had loads of questions come in so maybe it's just that everyone is on the same page about this and that they actually um that you actually just want us to um start talking about and sharing ideas about actions that we can take um and if that's the case then we can totally do that one thing though that has come up is a bit of a discussion about intersectionality so I wonder if it's just worth taking the time to define that um niko and asset I don't know if either of you wanted to have a go at defining what that term means I can I can go but um I said don't hesitate to jump in um intersectionality is a term that was created I think 25 30 years ago by um an Afro feminist scholar and activist and the idea was really to highlight the fact that um yeah our identity is um several falls right we have um there are several layers that shape our identity uh whether our sexual orientation our gender um where we come from socially so our class or our social origin our race um where we are based in the world uh and many other things our like cultural capital um so and they all of them form our identity and our identity is then of course part of of the broader society which interacts with us or we interact based on on this identity with others and and those identities that do intersect so it's really the idea of of crossing of coming together at some point which which is oneself uh the place where the intersection happens is oneself yourself myself uh ourselves um um when we interact with others those different layers that intersect on ourselves will contribute to define um our our place role uh in in the mechanism of operation of the or domination that that do shape and run the society can I just also jump in please jump in us so just to build on what Nico said there um many years ago we used to talk about this as being uh uh our understanding of the world some people would have an understanding of the world of why things were as they were and say this is because the economy is as such and uh our relationships with each other and the way the society is constructed is primarily about a relationship about class and that is the way in which we must look at the world and if we want to resolve the ills of the world if we resolve that class crisis or conflict we would subsequently have resolved everything else and many different groups but from black organizations women's organizations uh groups working on uh lesbian and gay rights said that's not actually the way that society is simply constructed it's not simply on the issue around class that things like race gender sexuality into play and that's what did has created the society that we want that that we live in and if you want to deal with these ills of society you can't simply have this very narrow view about uh how and what is the most important so if society is constructed on this intersection between race class and gender our movements must also be constructed on the same kind of premise that you can no longer just say well that's so the women's fight is over there and that's only for those people are interested around women's rights and the anti-racism fire is over there and that's for black people and i'm interested in you know workers rights and i'm going to fight on workers rights actually it came back to me if we win we all win and if we lose we all lose and that you know so now race class gender becomes intersectionality or an intersectional approach to looking at power how the society is constructed and also helps us look at the lens of how we should begin to organise to have more power thanks asad i'm just looking at the other kind of comments and questions coming in and we've got a few so Thorsten Berman says we're all worried about the ecosystem initiatives need to unite forces and change the system otherwise we just repair it a little and we won't get big enough fast enough which i think is a good point Olivia Linnanda says i invited people to watch this who are active in anti-racist movements i'd be glad to hear any people who are here from intersecting movements and how they think the climate movement could respond absolutely i think asad's going to talk about that a little bit in a bit and i've been trying to ask people for their input before this and we'll be afterwards as well and just got another comment that i've seen from Kitty Dalton saying climate activism can justify support of other movements perhaps by acknowledging that women and non-white people will be disproportionately affected by climate change impacts which i think is a really good point niko and asad do either of you want to come in and say anything on any of those points i'm happy to if you want i think we all recognize now that there that there are being some major problems with the climate movement and i think many of us in maybe the more sort of climate justice end of the climate movement i've i've i've tried to analyze those and say if we want to build power if we want to win and if we want a vision of a society in a world that is lives within its limits and is fair and just we we have to accept the mistakes we made as the climate movement first and foremost was the framing of climate you know when you if the imagery of climate is about polar bears and icebergs and talks about temperature levels in sort of percentages and temperature and takes away people that it speaks to a very narrow audience of people and engages that very narrow audience of people and one of the i think many criticisms that people have tended to make about the climate movement is its class based and it's primarily speaks to an afloat white middle class kind of constituency and that delegitimizes it it pits us against social justice movements it pits us against unions and also politicians are able to say well actually this this issue doesn't have broad base support secondly i think it also does a real disservice because without justice at its core you know we actually perpetuate the lie of the climate crisis so if you say you know we must end fossil fuels full stop you know that's true but if you know that the climate crisis and the impacts of 1.5 and a breach in a 1.5 and what impacts it will have on the global side you're you are basically deciding that the frame you're going to use is about what's acceptable within your political space rather than what is right through the lens of justice and and what the science says so i think just starting to have to deconstruct that climate movement to say where is the anchor well the anchor is actually with people who are being most impacted who do we who are we accountable to we're accountable to the people who are being most impacted and yes we are all affected by climate change and the analogy i know a lot people have always used is we're on the titanic and the titanic has hit the iceberg the climate iceberg and i say that's absolutely true but the problem is that the rich industrialized countries are sitting on the top of the titanic sipping cocktails listening to the orchestra and it's the poor the marginalised the indigenous who are in the hold already drowning and then finding that the hold is you know welded shut and you can't get out so if you accept if you don't accept that then the question of who you are whose voices you are speaking for and who you're speaking with uh becomes a much more sort of different conversation and i think the climate movement has tried to really address that i think 350 has tried to do a lot and of course climate justice groups like friends of the same the climate movement where it's been has been partly why it's failed you know and unless it radically change that we'll never have a chance of winning um we just i've we've got another comment that i've seen saying that um uh yeah basically that the muslim ban has nearly no collections with climate change and i can understand people would think that um says i get racism makes fighting climate change more difficult but we should not directly fight certain racist acts um i think i don't know i mean i personally think that the the argument that we're kind of trying to make here is that actually the the world that we want to see means that we need to do everything quite differently and um there's a really good uh Naomi Klein post uh piece that i will try and share um in the chat box at some point uh where she basically talks about black lives matter and climate change and makes a connection between those two things really really clearly if we stop caring about some people if like some people are just less important in the discourse whether it's people in the global south or people are suffering um from pollution it becomes much easier to put other interests ahead of people in general and then you've got this kind of hierarchy where you've got basically like the hangover from colonialism and you've got you've got white supremacy um kind of infecting everything that happens and so the thing in my mind it's it's a domination of um a domination of nature and domination of different types of people and it is the same forces i mean don't forget that it's you know like there are lots of kind of big business interests invested in funding people like trump that are also um yeah but they're you know they are they're fueling this kind of rise of the right and the kind of hatred that goes with that and at the same time they're profiting from the fossil fuel industry massively so i think that these things are bound as i said i think you want to come in yeah you're actually just to build on what you're saying of course look we've got a even if you come in purely from a climate perspective from an environmental perspective you don't really care about anything else the big question of course is you know climate is a global problem for global problem you need to start uh to be able to address it you actually need principles of solidarity right you need to be able to have that concept of it's a global problem we need to address it we need to act together that has to be some basis of fairness and justice about it otherwise nobody's going to act and those are the very same principles that are undermined by the all of these sort of bands that the very moment you need the will to act more in solidarity together people are saying let's build walls and fences as if you know all of these global problems inequality migration climate change you can section yourself off from so that's i think a huge challenge now even if you didn't care about all of those things and i think we have to take a responsibility you look at the seven countries that have been back Yemen Somalia Sudan Iraq well climate change has its fingers over everything why are people being driven there you talk about the conflict in Iraq around what's driven the war in iraq you know it's been overwhelmingly about access to oil and fossil fuels and dirty energy you see what the tremor trump is saying in terms of about seizing iraqi oil you look at the you look at the the droughts that have taken place in the horn of africa in yemen uh impacted by climate change worse in inequality you think about Syria you know where a drought five years before the conflict you know killed 80 percent of all livestock drove nearly two million people from rural areas into urban areas contributed to the climate to the to existing uh issue you know some conflicts in that area so i i think we're living in into the connected world and unless we really unless we actually deal with you know the muslim ban all these walls it's not just about those countries you know when we look at the climate crisis the international organization of migration is talking about one in 30 people will be displaced from their homes by the year 2050 that's 30 less than 30 that's about 30 years from now that's an incredible amount of people what's going to happen either we're going to have machine guns and warships around around northern countries or we have to look at a different way that the world is organizing that's why the muslim ban has to be an important fight for the climate movement if i can jump in um i'm just going to go to niko quickly and then we're going to move on and let um and let athads speak um and then we'll take more questions after that as as ever please keep coming with your questions in the chat and on twitter and we will pull them together and try and respond niko yeah i i want you to address maybe two um of the the comments that were made on chat box one is um um shall we act upon upon intersectionally first in order to show that we all plural uh and climate change goes beyond identities and the second is uh i think stressing moral issues more is correct but it should be as non-partisan as possible don't forget the majority of republican voters support action against climate change and i think that somehow those comments are um related um and and and they would come with two answers the first one is i think a good way to begin with is to um um based on what athads said kind of deglobalize climate change and recount that it's also a local issue that it's happening in very concrete and local territory so it's not just about molecules it's not just about global processes of negotiating global agreements it is a daily issue in very specific territories and starting from those territories is a good way to stop talking in a very abstract way of both climate change and what intersectionality might be because that's happening and then you see who's affected by climate change who's organizing to fight against climate change and how they already um include other issues and and and other alliances than just climate groups and then the second is it doesn't mean at all that we should stop campaigning um if we're not campaigning with people who are also fighting for gender equality uh racial equality class equality or whatever it's also important to reckon that precisely because of that intersectionality it's important to leave some room for some of the alliances to be built on a specific target on a specific objective on a specific location take the fight that is happening in the north of of the usa against the double Dakota access pipeline um project this fight probably includes people like vets veterans that were fighting uh uh abroad it might include people who uh are not like um at home um um feminist for instance yet it's important to win this fight but it doesn't mean that building alliances with people that are maybe not intersectional themselves in this um in their practices mean that would give up on the other other fight it's just important to know how to build alliances on specific objective and broader alliances on the on the general goal thanks Niko there are some really good comments coming into the chat and we're not going to have time to go over all of them now but i'd like to go to to Assad um now to if you'd like to say anything else in response Assad and also to say the kinds of actions that you think that we can take to respond as a climate movement and the kinds of things that climate activists can be doing okay so um first of all i think it's really thank you for for this webinar i think it's really important um because of course brexit le pen uh trump has not happened overnight and they've been decades in the making and so you know we know that popular extreme right wing nationalism uh this moment of economic uncertainty the blaming of the other and the how that process uh takes place and there's a lot of lessons for us to look at history uh look at how we've defeated them before and but also maybe reflect on you know why we've not been able to build a stronger alternative you know why what were we good at saying no to but what weren't we so good at saying yes to so it's also i think a moment of reflection for us as a movement you know because within this moment actually there's great possibility as well uh for us to move from both a defensive fight to actually an offensive fight and so there are some really big questions our movement needs to answer and they're the same questions i think that the climate movement asks itself about the climate change and it's the same questions we need to ask in the much broader context you know power you know why do they have it why haven't we got it you know and how did they get it and who have they worked with to get it you know audiences you know who are the people they're speaking to you know and why aren't those people attracted to us even though so much of that narrative and our solutions benefit those saying people are attracted to the far right you know we know that the part of the extreme right wing nationalism we're seeing at the moment is about anti-globalization and it's about elites well our solutions are about tackling the elites and and bringing community energy so why aren't people coming to us in terms of those solutions what's their frame and narrative that's out there and how do we and what does that say about us you know is it because we are in our own comfort zones are we in our own echo chambers are we not speaking to people and why aren't we speaking to people and i think that's big questions about frames and narratives and we just touched on about polar bears and climate change you know you talk within working class communities about polar bears you're not going to get anywhere right you talk about warm homes you talk about things that matter to people that's important there's a lessons for us from how the far right build in communities you know it's always been true that the far right when they built i've never built on we're coming in with fascism what they've built on is broken lifts and broken windows and neglect and they've come and they embed themselves in those communities on those kind of issues and we have to recognize of course that we've got we're in a moment of multiple crisis climate inequality neoliberalism extreme far right and of course they all compound each other so try to resolve one without thinking about how each reinforce each other it's also problematic for us and so i think the idea of simply going back into our silo and believing that the answer to climate change could be resolved without the answer in the problems of inequality or the global economy as it is uh it's just not possible so it even from a climate perspective it requires us to make those take those steps and of course for an intersectional movement there are big questions about what is strategic right and how do you build a movement that you know complements itself so rather than when it does actions it reinforces and amplifies a message in a frame and how we can have some transform transformational fights and what are they and how are they really important and i think of course we're seeing some in the united states with the water protectors and the court acts as pipeline where people are saying that's a fight and it's not just a climate fight actually it's a fight around indigenous rights it's a fight around land it's a fight around water but winning it makes us all win and i think some of that is about the movement we need to think about now practical things that we need to do look first and foremost you know we have to oppose the far right electorally now people say well what does that mean you know i always hear some people say well you know isn't it just neo liberals versus other neo liberals look at donald trump and see what he's achieved in in just 25 days and tell me that having the far right in power doesn't make a difference of course it makes a huge difference and so i think what we've got to we've got to of course say uh not just passively but actively say people who need to engage people need to vote against the far right and whether that means hold your nose and vote for somebody that you don't want to yes and then ask ourselves the question why is the choice between the neoliberal and the far right and why is it there another alternative there instead of that that coterie of between those two and and i think it means as a climate movement being really bold look as friends of the earth here in the uk we were a founder member we've settled stop trump coalition the protests that have been called friends of the earth have called them now we've done that because we think it's important for an environment movement to be there we have we say it's absolutely critical because we're legitimate we speak to an audience of people that the muslim organizations and refugee organizations also on the front line aunts can't speak to we give a platform so we can do that we've got resources us siding with small grassroots organizations allows the potential of that movement to grow so we've done that and that's part of being a longer trajectory of work that we've done we're in the recent brexit election and brexit referendum and in the in the elections before we take a strong position we do a lot of local work where we have politicians on platforms customs and things like that we take position no far right on there but also we take a position no uk no right wing nationalists on there and we and we convince our own supporters and members why it's important because we make the argument that we will not allow the normalization of this kind of racism and pretend that somehow you know it's okay as long as they're talking about stopping dirty energy that was all right as well because as long as they ticked our agenda it didn't really matter how obnoxious they were or or extremist races they were on on on on on other and that brings me I think to the question about ideology right you have to have zero tolerance to the far right we used to say in days gone by you know you have to know platform the fascist right and that what that meant is you don't allow them a tall hold because when you look back through history about how the far right gain grain ground and look at around us now the language the aesthetics of the far right they talk about it as the alt right but look at how they managed to do that they dominate you know online and offline they create drop boxes with far right means that means that it's not just it's up to some people to oppose it it's up to all of us to be saying we we don't allow it to happen right and that means shutting down and opposing people when you see comments you open any newspaper now and you look at the online comments and the online comments are full of racism and right wing trolls and most of us just say I can't be asked and turn and click and shut you go on facebook pages and they post memes and we say that's not for me and we shut actually we need to start to challenge them we need to post alternatives we need to start arguing because there are a lot of people who aren't speaking with us who are looking at that and and in this weird world we live in a drawing information and think that that is facts and so they're creating this alternative facts to become reality and that's a challenge for us because if you allow that then of course it undermines everything that we're doing as well and so not allowing it to be normalized I think is really really important but it's not just important on off online I think offline as well and look there are I don't want to sound like a history but there are a lot of history about you know about how fascism grew in Europe in the 30s how it got at all holding the 70s about what is the necessity of what for anti-racist and anti-fascist to be able to do and and that really does mean like opposing them not allowing them to become part of the the everyday discussion and I don't think it's an it's you know an accident that for example Le Pen was was given you know a spot on the UK's premier news channel and political discussion program on the very same day as Armistice was we were celebrating or not marking the end of the second world war and defeat of fashion and that was just totally normal because we've normalized the Le Pen and far right now like we normalize you UK so the border of what is acceptable suddenly changes and I think part of that is about also about our consciousness we have our own job to make sure we're educated and we're conscious and knowledgeable about our own history if you speak with many young activists and we think that there is no history right we've been here before and we defeated them we defeated them in the 30s in the 70s there's been moments like this there's a lot for us to learn from that from our generations that have gone by and of what was what happened and what was successful but also what didn't happen and what wasn't successful so we don't repeat those mistakes again but just remember we create history right we create society so this idea that this is just goes on around us without and we're passive knowing if we engage we can shape and determine those that those facts and and then I think we we have to look there's an opposite opposing the far right and the fascists and like you know whether it's trump and his agenda or whatever physically with our bodies now there are communities who are on the front line whether you're lesbian and gay they're transgender with your women and black migrant muslin you're facing those sort of everyday situations or whether it's like the banning the airports it's important that there is solidarity to that now some people will say I'm happy and willing to be at the front line when communities don't have a choice because of course many times communities don't have a choice to protect themselves in that moment but even if that's not where you want to be your presence makes a difference because it makes a difference whether a thousand people oppose this or 10,000 people oppose this because when you're 10,000 people you create a feeling that we are the movement and 100,000 will follow if it's 1,000 and 9,000 of us sitting in our armchair thing I'd like to be on there but I'm busy something else we're allowing these people to dominate and and that goes back to the sort of the the physical North platform in that you know some communities and some will want to have a choice right I've been I've lived in communities in my in growing up in Lancashire where we grew up simply under siege as a black community and when I was growing up my parents told me that we should all you we should always be prepared to be kicked out of this country that one day they will kick us out of this country and as a young teenager we said no never we organized anti-racist groups we said here to stay here to fight we will resist you know and and recently that same feeling has started to happen in our communities again people like we're not going to survive this all with this pressure growing we're going to be forced to leave and simply the fact the scale of the protests that you've seen has made a big difference in confidence inside communities because people have just said you know hold on a minute when you saw that sign that said they came for the Muslims and I said not today motherfucker that eat that sign you don't know how many times it was shared within the Muslim community it was incredible I saw it so much because people went oh look it's not just us opposing this mainstream society saying we're not going to allow this darkness to happen that's I think a very very important thing and it brings us to the question about solidarity and look we are where we are because you know the far right and managed to demonize migrants refugees and the Muslim community and that's happened again and again day in day out drip drip drip and it's happened because of our media and our politicians so there are you know and they play this race card and it was inevitable that once you play the race card it it results in physical attacks that's at the far end of the extreme but it also changes the political conversation people said to me say to me well you know you are very active in the anti-racist movement in the 80s and 90s and said didn't you smash the far right and and now I ask myself well is what we did we just made it not possible to be racist in public and have the politicians given people confident to be racist again and if so you know why did we allow them to push back so much at this moment and and that I think means that we have to really stand and take on this narrative about Islamophobia and migration and I think there's another thing that we've got to do which is you know when people talk about the far right they talk about the far right as if it's like oh that isn't that just the lumpen white working class that's the uneducated white working class over there as if it's those people who are the responsible look at the far right actually the far right are educated they're in student movement they're professionals that they're middle classes and that's what drives a lot of the far right and so the idea that somehow it's not within our part of society it's in somebody else's part of society I think is also something we have to take on and and and challenge and there are very practical things we can do around that look you know there's a there's an exercise that we did many years ago that if you took the Daily Mail which is one of the most popular newspapers in the UK and if you put the headlines of today about against the migrant community and the Muslim community and you then you put the headlines from the 1970s against the Asian community then you put the headlines from the 1930s against the Jewish community it's exactly the same headlines from exactly the same newspaper saying exactly the same thing we're the problem taking our jobs not you know all the sort of racist tropes and what are we doing about it well we can say we don't buy the newspaper but actually we have to be much more active we have to take on the people who are advertising in the Daily Mail we have to start saying to companies if you are starting to prop up this by advertising we're going to oppose you we're going to challenge you whether it's online not buying things from them I think we have to start making the things that make them respectable and able start to challenge them and the same on politicians whether it's on local and I'm going to finish now sorry you know for politicians as well we allow politicians to say so much and allow it to happen and then we're shocked when you know Donald Trump says that but Donald Trump has been built in on you know sort of decades of this kind of racism now I want to just finish on the final thing which is about the bigger project right because that's our defensive fight and our offensive fight is you know what is our vision right and I think this has been one of the problems of our movement is we've not been able to articulate a vision that is understandable and accessible and at that core of that vision I think is a fight about justice which is why you have to be able to from a climate perspective this is a really important fight because unless we build a movement around justice we don't get the power to even win on climate because we need a big justice movement to build a climate justice movement so I would say it's not simply your ignoring climate to build another movement we're actually building the movement that allows us to win on climate because even if it's practical things the frontline communities in Europe migrant and refugee communities they're the communities that be most impacted on climate by climate change but they're not going to speak to you about climate change because at the moment they're going to be worrying about the far right and migration and all of those things engaging with them and where people are helps us also build that constituency that we that we need Alan there oh it's a question can you refer to sometimes and how do you do the degree three yeah yeah don't don't worry I'm gonna that's one of the comments we've had so many kind of comments and questions that have been coming in what you've been saying has been really great and helpful we're running slightly over and I'm really conscious that you have to go in a few minutes though I just like people thinking about suggestions for things that we can do so the kinds of things that we'd grouped those suggestions into thinking about how you can educate yourself so I will share a load of resources in the blog with people I shared Naomi Klein's comment piece and it's good to educate yourself about historical successes in this kind of thing as well as just you know the kind of the roots of the struggle and how these things are interconnected and and then yeah there's a there's a question for Assad about yeah learning from the the kind of successes that we've had in fighting the far right before the sort of small steps that you could take could be writing to your local paper about your concerns getting involved with anti-trump protests and looking at giving money to kind of local refugee or international refugee projects and kind of bigger bigger commitments like connecting with groups working locally on race migration and refugee issues supporting what they're doing and opposing the rise of the right where you are perhaps electorally bringing it into your climate work highlighting connections between the fossil fuel industry and right wing politicians you'd need to do some research for that talking about climate impacts how those in the global south are feeling things more talking about pollution and those sorts of things where people across Europe are suffering from things more and those are some of our ideas I'd love to hear yours if you could write them into the chat box and and I'm just going to put this out to you and Assad just before he has to go and then Nico if you have any suggestions about the ideas for actions like concrete actions people could take or if you wanted to respond to anything else before you go Assad well if you're in the UK on the 20th of February next week you know is the big stock Trump protests outside parliament the two million people who've signed the petition to call in on the UK government to withdraw state visit you know the government said no we're going to ignore you there's a debate in parliament I think it's really really important that we see huge mobilization of people this has got to be like the protests we saw against the war in Iraq you know on that scale and and we made a big impact that's what we've got to do we've not got to allow this normalization so whether it's Donald Trump if he comes into your country he has to be met by huge protests but that is not just about them over there like the United States over there we've got to pivot back and and to hold Trump as a mirror to our own countries and say what's wrong there and why are our own far right parties growing and so I would say you know use the Trump anger because I think it's swept all across Europe but pivot it back to our our own countries and then I think it's very much in terms of us as a climate movement doing the very practical things that you said it's said if we want to talk about climate let's talk about air pollution that talks about inequalities let's talk about you know educating our own communities around you know climate and its impacts and how our consumption our banks are driving migration because global inequality how we're on you know an average of $55,000 per capita if you're in the United States but on $700 if you're in Mali why climate change is collapsing 50% of agricultural yields there why droughts are displacing three and a half million people what does an economic migrant mean you think are right that's not about people wanting a better salary that's about people wanting the right to a life to a dignified life and what kind of world do we want and I think it starts to begin to have those conversations and I'm a great believer that actually ordinary people connect with and have huge empathy and we saw that I think during the so-called refugee crisis last summer and the summer before when ordinary people all across Europe even in places where people said oh there'll never be any solidarity in Central and Eastern Europe where people said there were so many other challenges ordinary people came out and showed real solidarity and that has to be where we have to start building from and say that's the glimmer because it's the same values that are going to help us tackle the climate crisis and that's what we've got to reinforce amazing thanks I said I don't know you you need to go now right so maybe we should say goodbye to you um or do you want to stay on until you actually need to go to you how long how long is this one I don't know how long we'll go for like maybe another 10 15 minutes but do feel free to leave me to no problem okay cool all right in that case um Nico I would uh yeah I'd like to invite you to come in yeah maybe a few quick comments um on on the question um how do we make this not just about term how can we be offensive and which is also another question that has been asked how do we make uh this fight not just global but local and um I would take three examples the first one is um the issue of heat waves um there was a huge heat wave in the summer of 2003 or 2004 in France like 15 000 people died um during three weeks more than usual because of the heat and uh when you look at the figures um of who died you realize that a the people who died most are the people living in popular neighborhoods because uh they are lonely there's much more isolation they don't have um and they live in buildings where the elevator doesn't work any longer so they couldn't you know go downstairs and buy water whatever or have some visits and also because of the ins bad insulation of of um the houses and the other people who died first were of course people um working outside like building roads and which means that's a very good example of intersection so poor people and workers died more of the heat wave than people like me working in an office uh as a climate organizers so there's first clear inequality when it comes to something that appears in theory as um touching everyone the same way well it doesn't so the first approach is say okay when there's a heat wave how can we organize to make sure that a the people who suffer the most from it don't don't have to suffer that much and b of course that they are not invisible because it took months to realize that people were not equal facing the heat wave same goes with air pollution that as I mentioned and that's where for instance the notion of um environmental racism is very useful because then you realize that it's not because of faith that people suffer from air pollution more than others it's because where they are born who they are where do they live um so so it really has to do uh with that intersection between the class the race the gender uh and the climate so starting from those issues and trying to build them as not being just related to climate not related only to uh air pollution not related only to heat waves but to social issues to racial issues is important and the third example that I want to take any which is a very concrete example for France you might know that these days in France there's a huge rising moralization against police violence um because um a young black guy was raped uh by the police the police used the button and raped him with a button and he's uh of course very um well he he won't die because of it but uh he's really injured and so there's a mobility mobilization that started and based on on the blog that we wrote we had discussions that okay we need to support the mobilization against police violence even if it's not related to climate because that's important to start from those fights to build those intersections and why is police violence also something that has to do eventually with climate well uh just before the cop you remember cop 21 the cop happening in paris you remember that there were the terror attacks and just after the terror attacks um for so long decided to um install a state of emergency and some people from the climate movement we were working with that were very important to our mobilization we're under house arrest um marches were banned and so the space to mobilize now done and then we got to talk with people from popular neighborhoods they said well that's nothing new to us this is exactly what we do express on a daily basis so hey okay you discover those issues you want to fight against uh police repression you want to find against a state of emergency and you want us to join fine but where were you when we were fighting against police violence that was affecting us this has to do with our own fight this has to do with with everyone's fight and and this is again where it's important to acknowledge and remember that an infringement against one right is an infringement against everyone's right and all rights so yes at first glance maybe uh fighting against police violence in France this day has nothing to do with climate but as as that said if we are managing to if we manage to fight against police violence then we will reinforce the struggles for climate justice thanks Nico um thank you I am going to we are kind of running over time we've got loads of great kind of comments and points coming in and it looks like the conversation has been really fruitful um yeah this is just the beginning of this conversation with us I'm going to try and pull a lot of your comments um and thoughts into the blog that that I write as well um there are a few more things that I wanted to say um before before we finish this this call so um there's a few things that I kind of that really really helped me when um when the Muslim ban happened and all of the big protests kicked off uh there were lots of things being shared on social media I guess I was starting to feel quite panicked um it was quite tricky one of my colleagues in the states has made this incredible resource finding steady ground I will share that in the chat um or if somebody else if one of my colleagues could while I'm speaking that would be great um so yeah I would just encourage you to think about what's driving you right now and is it panic at um at the urgency of the situation with the rise of the right or is it a grounded sense of the need for a just and sustainable future with wisdom about the best role that you can play um so I've been panicked I'm excited and heartened by all the resistance but I have been panicked and um the advice that was in this resource really helped me step back take some kind of deep breaths and think about where I could best put my energy um because yeah this is I mean like as I was saying these fights have been you know these fights have been one before history's not decided it all hangs in the balance but it's going to be a marathon not a sprint we need to be in this for the long haul and we need people to be sustaining themselves so that they can make the effort that's needed um so think about think about I would I would really encourage you all to take a look at that resource and have a think about the advice that's in it see if there's stuff there that resonates for you um I'll be putting that in the blog and there'll be a link to it in the email tomorrow as well there's things like thinking about where you get your news from what you do after you get your news um maybe buddying up with someone to talk about the kind of actions that you're taking you're taking and find a way forward um the second point that I wanted to make is that um this is a time of great change I think what we're seeing is the failing of the old economic system that started with the global financial crisis and we're witnessing the birth of a new one and it's it's a crossroads it's an uncertain time opinions are massively divided people's opinions are pulling in two different directions but that shouldn't necessarily be feared in times of great change globally the voices on both sides of a debate get louder and the debate gets more polarised as the battle rages for popular consensus and the path that will ultimately be taken but this is a necessary stage it's an uncomfortable stage but it's a necessary stage for the kind of transformational change that we need doesn't mean that we should embrace shouting at each other we need to find energy to disagree with each other with love and compassion but this conflict can be a force for goods if it's non-violent and it's well grounded and it's really important to stand with those that are most affected and to resist also this is a big one another point I wanted to make is about spreading fear let's not spread fear and we need to reduce this and the behaviors that contribute to it I've been guilty of sharing on social media things I've read and have scared me people are sharing things that are not necessarily true not well put out and having knee jerk reactions um I ground ourselves think about the stuff we're sharing share stuff that is um that is hopeful and successful and yes reach out when we need support um but don't kind of perpetuate the kind of infection of fear because that's not a good place to be acting from and to be going forwards from and this one's really important um for me and lots of activists or people who campaign on anything don't try and do everything um so don't burn yourself out think about what it is you can add to the fight where what your best place to do and what you have energy to do and you're not always going to have energy to do all the things and that's fine everyone is different like we all kind of go through seasons of how much we can engage so rest when you need to rest act when you feel like you can act and we need an ecology of approaches from inside a lobbying to petitions to positive stories to cutting edge research to protest what are you in a position to do um and yet there are lots of and lots of different protests that like the rise of trump and his election and the things that he's doing have kicked off protests all over and spawning from that there's all sorts of other things coming out in your countries will be great if you could share ideas for the kinds of actions people could take in this chat it will stay open after the call finishes and we'll still be putting those things together and also on twitter um yeah so the the final kind of um the things i wanted to leave everybody with are i would like to ask you to commit to kind of taking this forward this is the start of the conversation um i don't know how exactly it's going to go forward but we're committed to taking it forwards i'll write an email tomorrow we're going to write a blog um and there'll be more thoughts go into it but but could you go away and either with your group if you have a group of people that you take action with um on climate change or or just a friend a buddy if you don't have a group that you work with think about which of the behaviors in the finding steady ground resource would help you say active and effective and see if you can commit to check in with your friend or group weekly on how you're doing with those um and also how can you in your climate campaigning and in your life tackle the rise of the right which of the suggestions we've discussed all the ideas you've seen can you take on remembering to focus your energy and take care of yourself um and then when well yeah when the blog is posted i'll invite you to kind of start sharing some of those and we want to continue the conversation as we go forwards um we're over an hour now i think asset definitely needs to leave um but i'd like to go to um yeah first to asset and then to nico to get any kind of final thoughts before we close asset are you still there yeah i am i'm can you hear me or if i disappeared i've simply disappeared oh no i'm still here and i just wanted to say you know thank you for the opportunity i think you're very right we're we're building a movement we're on a journey and this journey is about it needs all of us uh but it's uh and we're building a movement whose beating heart has to be justice i we've been here before we can fight and we can win i'm more important than winning we can win and create something better and that's what we should do it's not about defending the status quo it's actually about defeating this and providing an alternative thanks asset nico um yeah yeah i'm still uh i'm still here um um i think at this stage i i really just want to to say and and commit from my end to make sure that this is just a beginning that it's not one shot like webinar and then uh we go back to our daily work you know saying okay we have done our duty and paid our like have a we've had our share in in building um that intersectional movement uh but that we really do and find ways to move that conversation ahead um and and find concrete ways to like in our daily mobilization campaigning work etc uh do that a first step would be definitely as you both said bringing those conversations to our own national spaces um because the context is different and for instance um for thrilling to see you know many positive comments to the english version of the blog post and uh actually very uh tough and harsh comment uh in the french version of the blog post because like the french movement and the french uh progressive um feel is is color blind and religion blind so uh to many people it's not an issue so i think like in France it's really like contributing to make it an issue um and yeah um so um it's just the beginning great thanks so much everyone i'm gonna close it there um because we're over an hour thank you all for staying with us um and yeah i think that we're all committed to taking this forwards um and so i will be in touch with you again thanks to Niko and Asad and to my other colleagues that have been supporting this behind the scenes and thanks so much to all of you please do keep um sharing your ideas in the comments after we close and um yeah this is definitely to be continued