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Each school day, youngsters from Asian families in this Lancashire town would assemble before making their way to school. This was the seventies, a time when the National Front were actively organizing, and they were the offspring of immigrant laborers who had come to Britain in the previous decade to work in understaffed industries.

Among them was Asad Rehman, who had relocated to the community with his family from Pakistan as a small child. “We traveled as one,” he explains, “as there were risks to walk alone. The little ones at the center, the bigger kids forming a perimeter, because we’d be attacked on the way.”

Conditions were just as difficult at school. Pupils would give fascist salutes and shout racist insults at them. Some exchanged the National Front newspaper without concealment at school. The black and brown pupils regularly, at break times, we secured ourselves into a classroom, because we would be attacked.”

“I began discussing to everybody,” he notes. Collectively, they chose to challenge the teachers who had ignored their safety by collectively refusing to attend. “and we will say that the reason was the schools didn't provide security for us.” It was Rehman’s initial experience of mobilizing. Participating in national equality efforts that were formed across the country, it defined his views on society.

“We started to protect our community which taught me that crucial insight remaining with me: collective action is stronger when we are a ‘we’ than when we’re individual. Groups are necessary to bring people together and a common purpose to hold you together.”

In the past few months, Rehman was appointed head of the green organization Friends of the Earth. For decades, the symbolic image of global warming was the iconic bear on melting ice. Today, addressing global heating without mentioning systemic unfairness is widely considered highly inappropriate. He has stood as a leader of this evolution.

“I took this job given the enormous challenge out there,” he explained to the media on the sidelines an environmental protest near government offices recently. “These issues are linked of climate, economic disparity, of financial structures which are biased against ordinary people. It’s ultimately an equity issue.

“And there is only one organisation prioritizing equity – environmental justice and climate justice – this particular network.”

Boasting over numerous backers and community teams, The organization (Scotland has its own) is the most extensive green activist community. Recently, it invested more than £10m on campaigns including judicial reviews on official regulations community initiatives against councils’ use of pesticides across urban areas.

However, the organization has – perhaps unfairly – gained a profile as a less radical organisation in the activist community. More bake sales and petitions than road blockades and occupations.

The selection of a stalwartly class-conscious campaigner like Rehman might signal a strategic move to change perceptions.

It's not the beginning he collaborated with the organization.

Following university, he persisted campaigning for racial justice, engaged with a community organization during a period while extremist groups was still a force locally.

“It was running campaigns, supporting victims, deeply connected locally,” he explains. “I gained experience in local mobilization.”

But not content beyond addressing public discrimination and government policies collaborating with activists, sought to place the fight against racism on a human rights level. This led him to the advocacy group, for a long period he partnered with developing world advocates to advocate for significant change in the understanding of freedoms. “At that time, Amnesty didn’t campaign on financial and community issues. they only campaigned on civil and political rights,” he says.

By the end of the nineties, Rehman’s work with Amnesty connected him with a range of international social justice organisations. At that time they had coalesced in opposition to neoliberalism against neoliberalism. The knowledge he acquired through this experience would affect the rest of his career.

“I traveled collaborating with activists, and each person mentioned the severity of environmental issues, unsustainable practices, how it was displacing people,” he recalls. “I thought! Everything we have fought for through activism is going to be unravelled because of environmental collapse. This challenge we're facing, termed environmental crisis – however nobody’s talking about it with urgency.”

This led Rehman to an initial position within the organization years ago. At the time, many activists discussed environmental issues as a distant threat.

“Friends of the Earth stood out as the sole green group which diverged with what I’d call the rest of the environment movement. pioneering of what we now call climate equity activism,” he states.

His efforts centered to amplify concerns of the developing world into discussions. This approach wasn't earn him friends. On one occasion, he remembers, post-negotiations involving ministers and environmental NGOs, a politician phoned the leadership requesting he control his strong advocacy. He declined to specify on which minister it was.

“There was a sense: ‘What gives him authority challenge conventions?’ Consider, the environment is a nice thing, discussion is possible. [But] I saw it as combating discrimination, a fight for human rights … about power structures.”

Equity frameworks found acceptance within green movements. However, the opposite occurred. organizations focused on equality increasingly tackling ecological challenges.

Consequently the anti-poverty campaign labor-aligned {