Asad Rehman's Remarkable Transition from Antiracism Campaigning in Lancashire to Leading Friends of the Earth

Day after day, children from Asian families in this Lancashire town would assemble prior to going to school. This was the seventies, a period when the National Front were mobilising, and they were the offspring of immigrant laborers who had come to Britain ten years before to address employment gaps.

One of these children was the young Asad, who had come to the community with his family from Pakistan as a small child. “We traveled as one,” he remembers, “as there were risks to walk alone. Smaller kids in the middle, the bigger kids forming a perimeter, as there was a threat of violence on the way.”

The situation was equally bad at school. Pupils would make offensive gestures and yell abusive language at them. Some exchanged Bulldog publicly in corridors. The black and brown pupils regularly, when the lunch bell rang, we secured ourselves into a classroom, to avoid being targeted.”

“I initiated conversations to everybody,” he notes. As a group, they chose to challenge the teachers who had not kept them safe by as a group declining to attend. “and we will say this is because the schools were unsafe for us.” It was Rehman’s first taste of activism. As he joined national equality efforts developing across the country, it defined his activist perspective.

“We started to protect our community which taught me that crucial insight remaining with me: we are much more powerful acting together rather than individually. Groups are necessary to organise you and you need a vision to hold you together.”

This summer, he took on the role of head of the environmental charity this major campaigning network. Historically, the symbolic image of global warming was the iconic bear on melting ice. Today, discussing global heating without mentioning inequality and discrimination is widely considered almost impossible. He has stood in the vanguard of this shift.

“This role appealed to me due to the severity of the situation out there,” he shared with the media at a Make Them Pay protest outside Downing Street last month. “We face multiple connected challenges of climate, social injustice, of financial structures designed to favor elite interests. It’s ultimately an equity issue.

“Just one group has consistently focused on justice – green rights and global climate fairness – namely this charity.”

Boasting over a quarter-million members and community teams, The organization (with an independent Scottish branch) is the UK’s biggest conservation movement. Over the past year, it spent significant funds on activism ranging from legal actions to government policy to local campaigns opposing chemical use across urban areas.

However, the organization has – perhaps unfairly – gained a profile as not extremely activist in the activist community. More bake sales and petitions than road blockades and occupations.

The hiring of someone focused on inequality such as him may represent a strategic move to change perceptions.

It's not his initial stint he has worked there with the network.

After graduating, Rehman continued campaigning for racial justice, working with the Newham Monitoring Project during a period while extremist groups remained active in the capital.

“There were initiatives, and it was doing casework, and it was rooted in the community,” he explains. “This taught me local mobilization.”

However, unsatisfied than just responding to everyday prejudice and government policies collaborating with activists, sought to place the fight against racism on a human rights level. That brought him to Amnesty UK, for a long period he partnered with international campaigners to push for a fundamental shift in the understanding of basic rights. “Previously, the organization didn't focus on economic and social rights. their work was limited to individual liberties,” he states.

Towards the close of the nineties, his efforts with Amnesty had brought him into contact with a range of global equity groups. During that period they united into the counter-globalisation movement against neoliberalism. What he was to learn from them shaped his ongoing activism.

“I was going and working with these people, and each person mentioned the severity of environmental issues, agricultural challenges, forcing migrations,” he explains. “It struck me! All our achievements through activism is going to be unravelled because of environmental collapse. And this thing occurring, termed environmental crisis – and yet few addressed it in those terms.”

Which directed him to begin working at the environmental charity years ago. Back then, the majority of green groups discussed global warming as a problem for the future.

“This network was the only mainstream green group which diverged from the rest of the environment movement. pioneering of what we now call climate equity activism,” he declares.

His efforts centered to bring the voices of the developing world to the table. These efforts rarely make him popular. On one occasion, he shares, following discussions between UK government representatives and environmental NGOs, an official phoned the leadership insisting he stop his strong advocacy. He would not be drawn the individual's identity.

“Many believed: ‘What gives him authority challenge conventions?’ Consider, the environment is a nice thing, discussion is possible. [But] I saw it as addressing inequality, defending rights … a deeply political fight.”

Fairness perspectives found acceptance within green movements. But the converse occurred. with justice-oriented groups starting to address climate and environmental issues.

This led to the charity supported by unions {