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Day after day, children from Asian families in this Lancashire town would meet up prior to going to school. This was the seventies, a period when far-right groups were mobilising, and these youngsters were the offspring of immigrant laborers who had moved to Britain a decade earlier to work in understaffed industries.

Included in this group was the young Asad, who had relocated to the community with his family from Pakistan as a small child. “We would all walk together,” he recalls, “as there were risks to walk alone. Younger children in the middle, the bigger kids around the edge, as there was a threat of violence on the way.”

The situation was equally bad at school. Pupils would make offensive gestures and shout racist insults at them. They shared Bulldog publicly in corridors. The black and brown pupils regularly, at break times, we would barricade ourselves into a classroom, due to the risk of assault.”

“So I started talking to everybody,” he notes. Collectively, they chose to challenge the teachers who had failed to protect them by collectively refusing to attend. “declaring this is because the schools were unsafe for us.” This became Rehman’s early introduction of mobilizing. When he became part of broader anti-racist campaigns developing across the country, it influenced his views on society.

“We began defending our community and I started to realise that lasting principle which I've carried: our strength multiplies acting together than when we’re individual. It takes organizations to coordinate efforts and a common purpose that binds you.”

Recently, he took on the role of CEO of the green organization Friends of the Earth. For decades, the familiar face of climate breakdown was the iconic bear in a thawing landscape. Now, addressing the climate crisis without mentioning inequality and discrimination is now highly inappropriate. Rehman positioned himself as a leader of this evolution.

“I took this job because of the scale of the crisis out there,” he told the media on the sidelines a Make Them Pay protest in central London recently. “It’s an interconnected crisis of climate, social injustice, of capitalist models designed to favor elite interests. At its core about fairness.

“A single organization prioritizing justice – green rights and climate justice – namely this charity.”

Having numerous backers and 233 local action groups, The organization (operates separately in Scotland) is the UK’s biggest green activist community. Recently, it spent over ten million pounds on activism ranging from legal actions on official regulations to local campaigns changing municipal practices in public spaces.

But it has – albeit undeservedly – gained a profile as not extremely activist in the activist community. Focusing on awareness campaigns than road blockades and occupations.

The selection of an advocate for economic justice such as him may represent a strategic move to shed that image.

This isn't the beginning he has worked there with the charity.

After graduating, he maintained fighting discrimination, engaged with the Newham Monitoring Project at a time while extremist groups had influence in east London.

“It was running campaigns, supporting victims, based in neighborhoods,” he explains. “And I learned local mobilization.”

However, unsatisfied with simply reactively countering everyday prejudice and institutional bias collaborating with activists, aimed to elevate the fight against racism on a human rights level. Which guided him to the advocacy group, during ten years he partnered with global south activists to push for a fundamental shift in the understanding of freedoms. “Back then, the organization didn't focus on financial and community issues. they concentrated solely on political freedoms,” he states.

As the conclusion of the 1990s, Rehman’s work with Amnesty connected him with a range of worldwide activist networks. During that period they came together into the counter-globalisation movement challenging free-market policies. The insights he gained from these connections shaped the rest of his career.

“I visited meeting campaigners, and everybody you spoke to mentioned the climate crisis, unsustainable practices, creating refugees,” he says. “I thought! Everything we have fought for through activism might be lost because of environmental collapse. This issue that is happening, known as global warming – however it wasn't being discussed like that.”

That guided him to an initial position within the organization in 2006. Then, the majority of green groups discussed climate change as a problem for the future.

“This network was the only mainstream green group that then officially broke with what I’d call other green organizations. pioneering of the emerging environmental justice campaigning,” he states.

His efforts centered to amplify concerns of affected communities to the table. It did not always make him popular. Once, he recalls, following discussions between UK government representatives with activist organizations, a politician contacted his boss requesting he control his “climate Taliban”. He declined to specify who made the call.

“Many believed: ‘Why does he who doesn’t follow [the] same rules?’ You know, ecology matters, there's common ground. [But] I viewed it as combating discrimination, a fight for human rights … fundamentally political.”

Equity frameworks gained traction in climate and environmental campaigning. However, the opposite occurred. organizations focused on equality increasingly tackling climate and environmental issues.

This led to the anti-poverty campaign the trade union-backed {