Jeremy Corbyn tells huge anti-Trump protest: 'We want a world not divided by misogyny, racism, and hate'

July 14, 2018
Issue 
Jeremy Corbyn addresses the July 13 anti-Trump protest in London.
Jeremy Corbyn addresses the July 13 anti-Trump protest in London.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn joined the mass protest against Donald Trump in London on July 13  where he said the message to the U.S. president was a call for a "world of justice not division."

Speaking from Trafalgar Square to an enormous crowd after hundreds of thousands marched through the streets of London, Corbyn praised those gathered for "asserting our right to free speech and our right to want a world that is not divided by misogyny, racism, and hate."

He took aim at specific actions the Trump administration has taken, including its cruel "zero-tolerance" immigration policies and decision to ditch the historic Paris climate accord. Though he didn't name Trump specifically, he said: "When somebody on a global stage condemns Muslims because they're Muslims, it's not acceptable and we will call it out."

"When a major country says it wants to walk away from the UN council on human rights, I say, 'Sorry, you are wrong. Human rights belong to all of us,'" Corbyn said. "And when a government condemns children because they're Mexican or Guatemalan or from somewhere else in Central America, that is a breach of every international convention that I understand," he said.

Corbyn's full speech.

Beyond issues of humane immigration policies, Corbyn said the problem is "also about our planet, our world, and how we relate to each other. Our environment is under threat ... there is no hiding place, ultimately, from foul air, from dirty seas, from polluted rivers. There's no hiding place from the destruction of our natural world for any of us—unless we work together to protect it and our environment and our sustainability."

Uniting the throngs gathered, Corbyn said, is "a wish to live in a world of peace not at war, a wish not to blame refugees for wars that they themselves are victims of, and a wish that we pursue the politics of unity, the politics of togetherness, the politics of recognizing the strengths and the good that is in each of us, however poor, however marginalised, however put-upon."

Rather than politics of fear and austerity, he said: "We want human rights for the rest of the world, we want justice for the rest of the world. But above all," he continued, "the message we give here today—in all our diversity—is one of solidarity of people, of people wanting that different and better world."

He said that "when we divide ourselves by xenophobia ... when we divide ourselves by hatred, at the end of the day we all lose. When you unite together with common objectives, we can all win."

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