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Every weekday morning, children from Asian families in Burnley would assemble before heading to school. This was the 1970s, a time when far-right groups were actively organizing, and these children were the sons and daughters of Asian migrants who had been invited to Britain in the previous decade to work in understaffed industries.

Among them was Asad Rehman, who had come to the community with his family from Pakistan at the age of four. “We traveled as one,” he remembers, “as there were risks to walk alone. Younger children at the center, the bigger kids forming a perimeter, as there was a threat of violence on the way.”

Things were no better at school. Other children would perform Nazi salutes and yell abusive language at them. A few distributed Bulldog without concealment at school. The black and brown pupils “every day, at break times, we would barricade ourselves into a classroom, to avoid being targeted.”

“So I started talking to everybody,” he notes. Together, they chose to challenge the teachers who had failed to protect them by collectively refusing to attend. “and we will say it was due to the schools didn't provide security for us.” This became Rehman’s initial experience of activism. When he became part of broader anti-racist campaigns developing across the country, it shaped his activist perspective.

“We started to protect our community which taught me that abiding lesson which I've carried: collective action is stronger when we are a ‘we’ rather than individually. Groups are necessary to bring people together and you need a vision to hold you together.”

Recently, Rehman was appointed head of the environmental charity Friends of the Earth. For decades, the poster child of climate breakdown was the iconic bear in a thawing landscape. Now, addressing global heating without mentioning systemic unfairness is now highly inappropriate. Rehman positioned himself as a leader of this transformation.

“I accepted this position because of the scale of the crisis out there,” he shared with the media on the sidelines a Make Them Pay protest near government offices last month. “It’s an interconnected crisis of climate, [of] inequality, of capitalist models designed to favor against ordinary people. At its core a crisis of justice.

“A single organization that has always centred justice – green rights and climate justice – namely this charity.”

Having numerous backers and community teams, The organization (operates separately in Scotland) represents Britain's largest environmental campaigning network. Over the past year, it spent more than £10m on advocacy from courtroom challenges to government policy grassroots efforts opposing chemical use in park playgrounds.

But it has – albeit undeservedly – been perceived as not extremely activist versus other groups. Focusing on awareness campaigns than road blockades and occupations.

The hiring of someone focused on inequality with his background might signal an effort to redefine itself.

This isn't his initial stint he collaborated with the charity.

Post-education, Rehman continued campaigning for racial justice, engaged with the Newham Monitoring Project in the era while extremist groups had influence in east London.

“There were initiatives, and it was doing casework, and it was rooted in the community,” he says. “This taught me grassroots activism.”

However, unsatisfied beyond addressing racism on the streets and from the state together with peers, aimed to elevate the fight against racism within a rights framework. Which guided him to the human rights organization, for a long period he worked with developing world advocates to advocate for significant change regarding the interpretation of freedoms. “Back then, the organization didn't focus on financial and community issues. they only campaigned political freedoms,” he notes.

As the conclusion of the nineties, his efforts at the organization had brought him into contact with multiple global equity groups. Then they came together in opposition to neoliberalism resisting corporate dominance. The knowledge he acquired from them influenced his ongoing activism.

“I traveled collaborating with activists, and everybody you spoke to was saying the severity of environmental issues, agricultural challenges, forcing migrations,” he says. “It struck me! Everything we have fought for and won might be lost due to climate change. And this thing occurring, it’s called climate – and yet nobody’s talking about it in those terms.”

This led Rehman to begin working within the organization in 2006. At the time, most environmental organisations framed global warming as a distant threat.

“Friends of the Earth was the only mainstream activist body that then officially broke with what I’d call other green organizations. and was one of the founders creating the climate justice movement,” he declares.

He focused to amplify concerns of the developing world into discussions. These efforts rarely gain widespread approval. In a particular instance, he shares, post-negotiations between UK government representatives and environmental NGOs, a politician called his chief executive demanding he call off his assertive tactics. He would not be drawn on which minister it was.

“There was a sense: ‘Who is this person challenge conventions?’ Understand, green issues are important, there's common ground. [But] I saw it as combating discrimination, a fight for human rights … about power structures.”

Justice narratives gained traction among activists. But the converse was also happening. rights-based campaigns increasingly tackling sustainability concerns.

And so it was that War On Want labor-aligned {