 Please, as I get my screen set up, I'd like to reiterate Lisa's call for everyone to drop their names, location, pronouns in the chat so we can all say hey to each other. And at any time, if you think of anything, if you have a point that you'd like raised, it would be great to put them on the chat or put this star sign so that we can, you know, hear what you have to say about the things that we're gonna discuss today. Let me just share my screen. All right. So before I officially begin, I'd like to apologize in advance because I have someone coming in, for sure my dog is gonna make a lot of noise, but let's just think of that as him saying in dog speak climate justice now. So good afternoon from the Philippines, Magandang Hapon, or good morning, Magandang Umaga, good evening, Magandang Gabi, wherever in the world you may be. Thank you so much for joining us for the organizing session under the Global Trainings Week hosted by 350. My name, as you know, is Beatrice Talaga. You can call me Bea, you can call me Beatrice. I'm senior regional organizer for 350.org in Asia. And today, instead of, you know, a more technical, or I don't know how we can call that technical, but technical lecture on organizing and campaigning, all of that. This will be more of a reflection, a collective reflection on our organizing as a practice, as a site of continuous learning and experimentation and collective liberation. So this is called, our future is non-negotiable, building solidarity across borders towards climate justice. But before we get into it, I'd like to honor all the organizers who led us to each other today. In this Zoom room, in the sea of thousands and thousands of Zoom rooms floating all over the web, I'm gonna be really vulnerable here by saying that for the longest time, I haven't felt comfortable calling myself an activist. I'm more comfortable calling myself an organizer because I think it has the beautiful task of bringing leading people to each other. So I always begin my speaking engagements like this. So for now, I'd like to invite you all to drop the name or I don't know, any definition of the first time you were engaged in any climate justice or any social movement. If you can drop the name of the person who introduced you to activism or movement work or organizing, we'd like to honor them for a few seconds. It can be your mom, it can be your best friend, it can be your colleague, it can be a random person who handed you a flyer in the mall, anyone really. I'd like us to all collectively think back to that one person or one organization even who led you to the work that you're doing today. Okay, I'm gonna mute myself right now. Okay, I'm seeing some notes on the chat already. Monica's dad, parents got to the first protests and social media who introduced Will and Hermione to protests in general. Okay, so just keep them coming. And I'd really like us to honor the fact that we didn't go to this space, to this activism world, to this movement work through only our own doing, right? It can be always traced back to some group of friends or some person who really made the effort to include us, to make it a community towards organizing for not just climate justice but social justice in general. So thank you for indulging me in that and I'd always like us to think back to them whenever things get hard. So yeah, I'd like to honor that. Today's session will be, as mentioned, it'll be centering on two specific questions, seeking to understand our personal organizing practice as opposed to a more technical lecture where I talk about a case study or a specific organizing technique that really helped me. Although, of course, that will be interspersed in this talk. It's more really, the beauty of this session will really be towards the end where we all collectively reflect on two specific questions and we'll be able to hear from each other because I'm of the opinion that the beauty of organizing is that there are infinite ways to do it, right? According to your cultural opinion, your social political situation, there are multiple sites of resistance and the beauty of this work is that it's never finished. It's a continuous process of learning and unlearning. And yeah, with that, I'd like to finally officially begin by saying that conferences alone won't save our world and instead, people, power will win us our future. And this is, I say this as someone who has utmost respect to all the technical policy analysts, the scientists, the negotiators, the policy makers, who do the behind the work scenes in negotiating international climate agreements. But I also say this, as someone who's beginnings in the climate movement can really be traced back to being part of conferences, of being part actually of the Philippine delegation to the UN since Lima. And honoring my past, I really found my footing in climate policy research, but I still am of the opinion that the most powerful work I've ever done is organizing alongside local and international climate groups, learning as much as I could, alongside youth activists, alongside community activists, alongside frontliners. So, but I think that work really means that we are building solidarity outside these halls of supposed power, but that alone requires inquiry, right? Like what do we really mean when we say we're standing in solidarity, we're building in solidarity outside of these formal spaces, right? So that's one of the questions that we're gonna be doubling down on later today. And it's what do we really mean when we say we're standing in solidarity and it can look super different in my part of the world, in the people I organize with as opposed to the people you organize with and how you show up in solidarity in your part of the world. And again, that's the beauty of organizing. So in inquiring about solidarity, this is something that I've been thinking about recently also in like evaluating if what I'm really doing is still effective by any means. And I realized that my beginnings in organizing can really be traced to two climate stories. And the first one is during a visit to this place in Tacloban in the Philippines. Tacloban is called the Ground Zero of Typhoon Haiyan. And on a rainy January morning in 2016, this man, a city official led me to this field of white crosses. And all 2,917 of them had scribblings because they turned out to be names of the dead and the family members just chose which mound, which cross they will give and just literally handwritten their, the names of their family members who they lost. And that really made me realize then I was a policy researcher that what I'm doing, that's not necessarily automatically translate to support on the ground. And that's really what led me to organizing. But even more so, what cemented my decision to stay in this space is realizing the reality for many environmental activists. And there was this one community we organized with until now, they lost one community member because she was shot dead by still unidentified men. She was called the first extrajudicial killing under President Rodrigo, then President Rodrigo Duterte. And she was a climate activist. She was protecting their village against a coal stockpile. And she had no other political activities other than this campaign, under then safeguarding her neighborhood for her grandchildren, for her 18 grandchildren. And what these stories really make up is that organizing in the Philippines, a site of both struggle across climate impacts and the root causes of climate change. It's really different in the sense that climate change is not really something for the future. It's not a problem for the future, but rather we're facing it in a myriad of different ways. Like for example, climate impacts and also fossil fuel affected communities facing health issues, human rights violations and even violent threats and killings. And that is, we expect that to even be more intensified in the next six years under a new president. And this is so heartbreaking, but that leads back to the question, right? Like what do we do to stand in solidarity? How do we organize our communities in such a way that there is active, continued, persistent resistance against this? And we draw our strength from these stories on the ground and we really try to uplift the stories of the frontline communities facing both impacts and fossil fuel abuses in this country. So basically that leads to my first point about how the needs of communities in general will not be all addressed in conferences alone. And they serve the rubber stamp, the work that's being carried out by grassroots movements all over the world sending policy signals and what should be done. And this serve as our pressure points, our movements pressure points for even more ambition. But as we all know, we wouldn't be here today if we think conferences are gonna magically solve all our issues. How do we then mobilize and organize beyond conferences, beyond high level spaces? What's beautiful about the climate strikes is that it brought both the use of Bataan and Tacloban, the two sides of the stories that I shared earlier. They brought those young people out in the streets. They joined the global climate strike and this pushed media and even politicians in the Philippines to talk about climate justice. So it's not anymore a situate or a story about mitigation and adaptation targets, but also justice for the communities affected. And there was this one lawmaker who introduced this resolution, signifying the support of the House of the Philippine representatives for the climate strikes. And again, that just seeks to solidify the work that's being done on the ground. And this is also replicated in the regional organizing efforts of young people, climate strikers, who formed the Asia Climate Rally. So the Asia Climate Rally was organized both online and offline during COVID-19. So what happened was climate strikers from various countries organized together, first very much online, like a four-hour live stream, a social media store, Twitter spaces, all of that. But even beyond that, they hope to identify common Asian targets. Right now, that takes the form of development banks and private banking institutions who continue to fund fossil fuel projects, but they're also targeting other regional bodies in Asia. So what that seeks to uplift is that from these stories on the ground, climate strikers really mainstream climate as a justice issue that affects everyone and organizing the Asia Climate Rally to become this group of friends that pretty similar to what everyone shared on the chat earlier, to be this group of friends who sought to involve more people into organizing towards climate justice, has now been turned into actual human-to-human friendships. Like this is not just a way for these youths to get support for their climate strike or other political work, but they have started to form human-to-human relationships. And that's why I think it's super important to have this perspective, the shifting from mile-wide inch-deep movements to inch-wild mile-deep relationship building that sustains movements. And I guess if you're taking away one thing from the space today, it's really the question of how do we make sure that when we say that we're organizing ordinary people towards climate justice, more and more people to join the climate movement, how do we also ensure that this participation in this movement will be sustainable through relationship building? How do we protect and honor and really do the painstaking work of maintaining these relationships, even outside formal activism spaces, right? Like how do we make sure that relationship building and relationship deepening really takes center stage in this organizing work? Because I think organizing is really about at the end of the day, it's about building relationships, leading people into each other, yes, but also making sure that these connections are sustained enough that they overthrow not just literal governments in the case of the Philippines, but also seek to undo the damages of multiple sites of oppression. So I really like this quote that I encountered when I was studying a short course a couple of months ago about how hope is defined, right? Like hope, according to this Jewish scholar, Moses Maimonides of the 12th century, hope is the belief of the plausibility of the possible as opposed to the necessity of the probable. And I think that's really what organizing is about, isn't it, right? Like believing that a better world is actually possible as opposed to the doom and gloom of the probable. And I think it's always a question of hope, right? Like how do we intentionally infuse our organizing with this power of hope and love amidst a persistently warming world against a background of disinformation, killings, threats, extreme poverty amidst a pandemic? How do we actually continue to organize that centers hope that brings toward hope and love to the surface amidst every difficult thing that we as human beings are facing right now? That was very short, but I really hope that we can focus on the sharings and then we'll come back in plenary after. So today, we're gonna be grouped first into two groups. The first group will answer the question, what do we really mean when we say we're standing in solidarity and I should correct myself. I don't really mean that we should answer this question with finality today. It's more like reflecting on this question on what do we really mean when we say we're standing in solidarity with each other's fights? And the second group will reflect on the question, how do we intentionally infuse our organizing with hope and love no matter what your source of hope and love is and however you define solidarity for the first group. So, okay, I think Monica will be taking us into the two groups and just decide on, the first group will do the solidarity question, the second group will do the organizing with hope question. Okay, take us away, Monica. Okay, so room one will be answering solidarity question. You can see it in the more tab. You can just join the breakout group and then room two will answer the hope and love organizing question. Thank you, everyone. Hello. Do you wanna join a breakout group and viral part? Hi, and is it Envero? I've just seen your message. That's really great. Maybe your group can take one of the questions and discuss it together. And if we do feedback, maybe we can hear from your group as well, but feel free to pick one of the two questions, whichever one works best for you, maybe. Okay, I see some people are coming back. Welcome back to the main room. How was that? Okay, let's just wait for the rest, maybe a couple of more seconds. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. Hi, so how was that? I was really intending to make this session, the sharing part a little bit longer, but considering that we are a relatively smaller group, I was hoping to reserve some time for like collectively reflecting on the questions, like reporting back from the groups on what you spoke about. And it's really with the intention of, taking a minute, taking a breather from usual day to day organizing and campaigning programmatic work, because I realized that the whys of why we do this can sometimes get lost in the mix over the years, like whenever I do organizing regionally, like even with training events or like with recruitment for, and alongside our partners, we really do drop these terms a lot, right? Like we say that we stand in solidarity with this event, with this organization, with this movement, with this cause, and we really say that we're organizing so that we'll have hope amidst the climate crisis and all the intersecting crisis, but it's really helpful, at least for me personally, to really take the time to reflect on these questions alongside fellow organizers. So I hope the space, however short that was, was equally useful for you all. Okay, so one of the things that I heard from when I was hopping around the rooms is that the importance of solidarity is really recognizing the need for it. And there's an impact in people not actually standing in solidarity. And from the other group, when I was there, someone was talking about how, organizing, being anchored on hope and love really traces back its roots to having a common vision and shared values, like common goals that we can work towards so that we can experience success together as a collective. But I'm wondering, of course, I'm really acknowledging my blind spots here, not just in this space, but also as an organizer whose organizing is also very limited by where I am and the people I organize with. But what else came up from your conversations? Maybe we can have someone share about what they talked about. Like anyone can just put the star sign on the chat or you can raise your hand, then you can share about either of these two questions or even both if you want to. I was hearing like a lot of like spirited discussion in both groups. So I was hoping you can share it back to the other people from the other groups. Does anyone wanna share? Yeah, after Monica, you can also put notes in this chat if you'd like, if you're in a spot where you can unmute, you can also put your reflections on the chat. Okay, I'm just gonna acknowledge the fact that one of our participants today is actually a group of like 20 people. Hello to Enviro Vito Org. Thank you for joining us today, all of you. And also I appreciate everyone for taking the time to go to this session today. But I'd like to hear from you like what you thought about like, you know, cause I'm very much limited by where I am in the world, the people that I organize with, my personal circumstances, my view of the world is very limited as an organizer and as a human being. So I would like to really inquire on what your views are on, what does it mean for you to stand in solidarity with each other's fights, with other climate affected communities, with other movements? How do we operationalize that? Oh, go ahead Hermione, sorry. I hope that I'm saying that right. Almost, but it's okay. Me talking about like the idea of a global solidarity and how, so I was saying I'm based in the UK, so like how can I target institutions or corporations or anything that are causing harm in other countries but working together with those movements as well and other countries, yeah, just the countries working together to help combat like a more global fight. Thank you for sharing that. Does anyone want to respond to that? I'm just going to call on, there were these, there was this group who talked about how organizing should be anchored on shared values and shared vision. Maybe someone from the second group can share more about that. Cause I think it all links together, right? Like, you know, we can't organize without a shared vision, collective solidarity and all of that. Like how does that play into our work? Maybe someone from the second group can share the organizing with the hope group. Savgar, are you able to share about your point or both well? Okay, thank you very much for the opportunity. Yes, from our group we discussed that there should be a sense of collectivism in the movement where we are saying that there should be a unity of peoples having the same ideology towards achieving the goal that you intend to achieve as a group. So we are having a situation whereby each and every member of the movement have to have that ability to know what is expected of them in order for us to achieve the common, the ultimate common peoples of the entire movement, of the entire group, of the entire circle that we are having. So that was another part of our discussion. And also it is also important to infuse that welcoming spirit in that movement that each and everyone who wants to be part of that movement will actually feel that they are welcome in that movement not to discriminate certain people based on race, based on color, skin color or whatever, but it should be welcoming so that our organizing can accommodate each and every person who feels that they are part and parcel of the vision that we have. Thank you so much, Mothwell, for that perspective and that reflection. With that, I would like to plug our next sessions. Since we're talking about identifying common goals and uniting behind common goals, common targets, there's actually two campaigning sessions upcoming. And also if it hasn't happened already, there's also a session on how do we sustain our movements because this work, of course, is admittedly very hard. It can sometimes be very draining. It can sometimes get to burn out. How do we sustain our movements and each other? So there's also those sessions under the global trainings. You can never just like to plug that. But I also like to uplift the ones on the chat, the importance of collaboration, fighting towards standing in solidarity across aligned groups. Yeah, so does anyone else have any reflections on before we go into the final reflections from my end? Sagar, you're on mute, okay. Yes, so a few months ago, I actually been researching about the world called sustainability. What exactly sustainability is from an Indian culture or an Indian perspective? It has a different meaning. From Western it is different, but when I was looking at sustainability from the global perspective, I found that there are three main things which are actually composed of sustainability. The one is ecology. The second is economy. And the third is equity. So any action, if it's supporting these three parameters equally, then that goal can be a sustainable. And I know United Nations or this global organization are promoting global goals and sustainable goals. And every business is actually promoting about the sustainability. So I'm okay with it, but for example, the equity part from the sustainability, if there are a limited number of people who are actually managing the industries, managing the natural resources, then that company or that industry can be a sustainable. So as Bhakt will actually say that there should be a solidarity, there should be equality, there should be a certain level of redistribution of power, redistribution of resources. In that way, any business, any movement or any initiative can be a sustainable. And that is more productive, I guess. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sagar. All right. So I think one of the things that I learned the hard way is that there are no finished conversations and that we have to accept that reflections on organizing is really an ongoing process. And I really hope that we can keep connected. I'm gonna be mentioning some opportunities to get connected in a few, but I hope that today we were able to reflect again together and inspire this culture of reflection on, because we throw this words around like in our communications, in our campaign materials and all of that, but how do we actually make sure that we constantly learn and unlearn previous preconceptions about solidarity, organizing, hope, love, collective care as we go further and further in building a better world. So yeah, basically I heard also from the group set there must be working towards across movements. We have to continue to organize and build intersectional people, power and solidarity from the ground up, taking leadership from communities from the most affected people in areas, listening to each other and centering collective care so that we can anchor our work on common values. From my end in the Philippines, I think we should also work towards pressuring our leaders for policies that don't just aim at resilience or adaptation. We also demand justice, support for just transition and reparations. And a lot, I think there are sessions not just in 350, but in the 350 Trainings website that talk about using storytelling and how we're organizing and how to work with allies so that we can uplift climate change. It's not just a technical greenhouse gas emissions issue, but also a story of resistance against multiple sites of oppression. And for those based in Asia, or if you're interested, you're not based in Asia, but you're interested in working, standing in solidarity with the Asia Climate Movement. There's gonna be the Asia Solidarity Lab on September 24th, 25th, that's I think the last weekend, if not the third week end of September. And we will be launching the registration to be this week, but you can keep tabs on that by following us on Twitter or other social media. So the ASL 2022 is a gathering. Supposedly we're targeting youth organizers, but we're also open to everyone who's just getting into the climate work, the climate movement to uplift emerging campaigns, storytelling and transformative organizing towards climate justice. We'll also be having cultural performances, open spaces to discuss, gather, reflect together, stars such as this one about co-creating our future. And we'll be focusing on four key themes. The first one is how do we, center community care in activism? There's this talk of a lot of youth organizers burning out, feeling like the work is too much, being super pressured. But how do we make sure that our activism itself is sustainable as we fight for a more sustainable planet? We're also gonna be talking about intersectional climate organizing. We're gonna be talking about fossil fuel finance campaigning or campaigns, actual real on-ground campaigns on how people are targeting financial institutions in shifting their financing away from fossil fuels and towards solutions. And with that, we're also gonna be talking about how do we reimagine a better world? How what are existing solutions on the ground towards climate and social justice that we can take inspiration for from? And with that, I think if you have other concerns, if you want to join, if you have a local group or if you're interested in organizing in Asia or even anywhere in the world, really I can connect you to my colleagues outside of the Asia regional team. You can connect with me via these emails and on Twitter. I'd like to thank everyone for taking care, I for taking the time to join this session today. It's really, really means a lot to me to be able to reflect on this questions together to continue to learn and unlearn so much about organizing as a practice in this work towards building a better world that works for people and plan. Thank you everyone.