A message from Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO David Ritter to the Greenpeace Australia Pacific community following the US Election result:
Today, we awoke to a difficult morning. Events sometimes feel hard to comprehend.
All around us, people are more worried than ever about the future; about what on earth is going to happen now. My phone is buzzing with anxiety and fury and tears. Last night (Australian time) was hard.
I want to acknowledge the truth of things—it is a devastating result for so much of what we care about, and for so many human beings in the USA and around the world. So, how do we stay in this moment, and what do we do?
In our friend Naomi Klein’s most recent book, Doppelganger, she quotes John Berger:
“When people and societies enter into a state of shock, they lose their identities and their footing.
Hence, calm is a form of resistance.”
As Greenpeacers, it is very important that we stay calm. Not ‘calm’ in the sense of not feeling sadness, anger—a whole range of emotions – but to keep our heads, because in our calm, we will be better able to care for each other, for all those whom we care about, and to make better decisions about what to do now.
And the truth is, as Greenpeacers, we have a job. We know what we need to do. Our founding story of the Rainbow Warriors has contested and hokey origins, but the essential truth has analogues across many times and cultures. You know the story: when the state of the world becomes dire and threatening, a group of people will emerge whose mission is to restore the balance.
We woke up today to a darkened morning, but we must remain emissaries of humanity and ecology, shielding the shining lamp. Amidst whatever grief and rage we are feeling now, it is our vocation to offer hope through action, to reject despair as being of no use in this fight, to collaborate with those with whom we make common cause, and to retain our conviction that a safer climate and a regenerating earth remain within our collective power.
Our colleagues in Greenpeace US are in a defiant mood. As my counterpart at Greenpeace US, Executive Director Sushma Raman said last night, “now is the time to move forward in a united manner with creativity, courage, and boldness”. And we are with them in spirit.
I am in no way sugarcoating what has happened; but there is also no doubt that today’s result may have highly unpredictable consequences. History doesn’t run smoothly, and historical causation is complicated. There’s a reason why historians often disagree; why ‘history is an argument without end’, to quote one historian. And politics, too, is strange and difficult terrain. Democracies can and do bounce back.
And for months, all around the world, people have been preparing for eventualities—including for how to keep multilateral progress on climate change alive.
In 2016, I remember recalling the darkest days of the Cold War, when a former B-grade movie star turned President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an ‘evil empire’ and the nuclear war doomsday clock edged towards midnight. Greenpeace did not give in to despair then. We kept courage and conviction, spoke of a vision of a better world and did our jobs. And 35 years ago this week, the Berlin Wall came down.
Now I can add that in 2017, Greenpeace flew the ‘RESIST’ banner above the White House—and just five years later, that same White House signed expansive climate legislation into existence in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act.
This is not the first time, and will not be the last time, that events may feel overwhelming. In these circumstances our role and responsibility in the world could not be clearer.
We stay calm. We focus on the mighty work that we can do at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, delivering on our strategy. And we think of our values: we are motivated by love, of people and of nature. We have a job to do.
Whatever the perversities and unpredictability of politics, however strangely to our eyes humans may act, we cannot lose the faith and reason of our convictions: that a future world capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity remains possible, and that people working together can make it so.
I feel so humbly grateful for friends and colleagues like you. I couldn’t think of a better place to be right now than Greenpeace. There’s plenty to do. Onwards we go, together.
David