Finding hope amidst our struggle for justice π
Dear friend,
This past month, we celebrated Pride around the world in remembrance of the Stonewall Riots, which was the catalyst for the LGBTQ+ movement in the U.S. Similarly, we held our annual Pink Dot event (the first in-person Pink Dot since COVID-19 started!) in support of the freedom of our LGBTQ+ family to love here in SIngapore.Β
These events remind us that despite the ongoing struggle for equal justice β be for people or for the planet β there is still hope and a sense of community to be found. We at SG Climate Rally continue to stand in support of marginalised groups, as we continue to reimagine a more equitable and inclusive society.
In doing so, we also need to support those who spend their time and effort speaking out for change, only to be rebuffed by the authorities. Kirsten Han writes about the growing pattern of harassment activists face where even wearing simple t-shirts led to their seizure, while recently migrant poet Zakir, who spoke at our 2021 rally, was forced out of the country for his poetry about the conditions migrant workers face.
For anyone of the LGBTQ+ community seeking help, Oogachaga offers counselling services that provide emotional support for those in need. Sayoni, an organisation dedicated to the support of queer women, also offers a helpful list of other resources and LGBTQ+ groups in Singapore.Β
For a better world,
SG Climate Rally
For World Ocean Day, we celebrate the incredible beauty and diversity of marine life in new ways. This article on queer ecology calls us to appreciate the fluidity of nature that the ocean represents β a Nature we are undeniably a part of.Β
Read the full article here, written and illustrated by RQ.Β
In a latest communique published on June 28, the Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) have committed to forming a βClimate Clubβ which would prioritise a βhighly decarbonised road sector by 2030β and a βfully or predominantly decarbonised power sector by 2035.β
However, the document also noted that there would be exceptions in βlimited circumstances clearly defined by each country consistent with a 1.5Β°C warning limit and the goals of the Paris Agreementβ β meaning that there would be continued reliance on fossil fuels such as liquified natural gas (LNG).
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity held preparatory talks in Nairobi for COP15 -- similar to the COPs for climate -- , but scientists warn that progress to reach a deal by December has been slow, with key disagreements on funding for low-income countries. Without a deal, one million plant and animal species are estimated to go extinct within the next few decades.
The UKβs Climate Change Committee estimates that the governmentβs target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 will not be met, as current policies can only deliver around 40% of the emissions cuts required. Similarly, though Singapore has announced a net zero target βby or around mid-centuryβ, it is important that the government is transparent about its progress towards meeting this target.
Green Circle Eco-Farm, as well as others in the Lim Chu Kang area, are having their leases terminated for future military use. There is an ongoing petition for the government to conserve the pioneering food forest there, such that the carefully-built soil structure and ecosystems over the past 20 years would not go to waste. Sign it here!
The overturn of Roe v. Wade in the United States, leading to the significant curtailing of abortion rights, and the continual news of climate disaster among many other events might lead to a sense of hopelessness that the change we want will not come. In times like these, Rebecca Solnitβs writing about how social movements have grown throughout history in her book Hope in the Dark offers some guidance:
βTo hope is to gamble. It's to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.
I say all this because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say it because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope. At the beginning of his massive 1930s treatise on hope, the German philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote, "The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming, to which they themselves belong.β To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.β
In the book, Solnit also quotes the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire from the opening words of his Pedagogy of Hope, on how hope is closely related to struggle:
βI do not understand human existence, and the struggle needed to improve it, apart from hope and dreamβ¦. I am hopeful, not out of mere stubbornness, but out of an existential, concrete imperativeβ¦Without a minimum of hope, we cannot so much as start the struggle. But without struggle, hope, as an ontological need, dissipates, loses its bearings, and turns into hopelessness. Hence the need for a kind of education in hope.β
In such times, it is imperative that we continue to organise together, and in so doing build a shared hope that can power us through the despair into building something better.