Hi John,
You don’t need me to tell you that the re-election of Donald Trump is a very dark day. The vision of Trump and his allies is a plan for the wholesale authoritarian takeover of the US, including mass deportations and an unprecedented attack on human rights.
From the fight against racism to women’s reproductive rights, reducing inequality to securing a habitable planet, the task of global justice will be much harder. We are sending love and solidarity to our colleagues in the US on this most difficult of days – and to everyone around the world who is reeling from this result.
As a founding member of the Stop Trump Coalition after his first election victory, we will resist the UK government cosying up to Trump in the months and years ahead. For decades Britain’s international policy has followed instructions from Washington - causing immense damage around the world. That must stop once and for all. We will demand a government that stands up for social and environmental justice, even when that puts them on a collision course with Trump.
Most immediately on climate, the COP29 summit begins on Monday and we must make sure that Trump’s victory doesn’t derail it. The global renewable energy industry continued to grow even during Trump’s first term, as did many countries’ commitment to some form of green transition, slow and unequal though it's been so far. We refuse to go back. We will need to keep the pressure on the UK government to push for the kind of global climate action that remains urgently required.
More broadly, it is likely that our government will further ramp up the military budget both to appease Trump and build alternative European power. But more wars are not the answer. We need a radically new economic and political vision to overcome everything Trump represents. And as Global Justice Now we will continue to fight for this.
Trump’s victory tells us that the Democrats failed to create a better world, most notably ripping up international law by supporting a genocide in Gaza. They also failed to give an economic vision that would bring enough real change to people's lives. One that could have given hope for what a post-fossil fuel future could look like.
We had better all learn from that failure. Forty years of neoliberalism have left a hollowed out society where the very act of connecting with others is a form of resistance. The social fabric is torn into pieces. Only something big and radical will change things.
Today, we all collectively feel like we’ve been punched in the gut. There are no easy solutions and I will not pretend the path forward will be easy. But I do know that these dark times will not last forever, and that if we want to hasten their end and have a chance of building a better world one day, we must work together, learning from our mistakes, creating new ways to resist and to build. And we must do that at every level from the local to the international. That’s why we exist.
We will overcome, together.
In hope,
Nick Dearden
Director, Global Justice Now
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