PARTISAN!

Peter E, Sydney

Surely the biggest challenge we all face is fragmentation. Climate-focused activists tend to prioritise a deforestation action over a marine sanctuary action, and our ocean-focused friends will fight plastic, but may not to turn up to a coal-train action.

We fight for climate – which includes anti-logging and marine sanctuaries. But does it include plastic reduction and recycling? Of course it does, but we can’t be in six places at one time! Fighting for Climate intuitively includes fighting for Equality of Opportunity, how could it not? That’s why Climate activists naturally support Gaza, and Palestine. So, are you are Forest campaigner, or a Gaza campaigner … or are you a Trans-rights campaigner, or a Reproductive rights campaigner?

I capitalise the labels of these campaigns because we seem them as distinct. But they are not. They are the same fight! But the use of these labels fragments us, divides our energy. And it greatly assists everyone we fight against.

We are all fighting exactly the same enemy, and by naming the enemy we will realise that we are one army of activists; one powerful body fighting a single battle.

It sounds like a cliché, but it is absolutely true. Our battle is against The Patriarchy. The Patriarchy is no content with a status quo. The Patriarchy wants to force us back into the ‘Good Old Days’ it wants to make us ‘Great Again’. It is in love with the last century.

The Patriarchy believes in the days of colonies, of women as baby-factories. The Patriarchy is the antithesis of everything we believe. They see the days of Empire as the greatest of times when white men ruled the world, when brown, black and yellow-skinned humans were cheap labour, when they could steal the land and resources of those brown, black and yellow-skinned people to make themselves rich beyond measure.

The patriarchy belies many other things; that their god is the only true god. They believe that the strong should rule over the weak, that men are worth more than women and should rule over women; that the able-bodied are worth more than the less abled, and that foreigners are thieves, coming into their country to corrupt their heritage.

They also believe that masculinity is a prerequisite of power, which is they demean women and despise queer folk. And the believe that money bus people; bosses own their workers’ lives, and that trade-unions are the devil’s work.

The list goes on, but the message is simple. We are one army. Every climate-activist, forest-activist, ocean-activist is in our army. Every LGBTQIA+-rights activist is in our army. Every pro-Palestine activist, every women’s rights activist, every workers’ rights activist is in our army.