On Friday evening I spoke to a substantial gathering in Glasgow’s George Square in the wake of the vote for Britain to leave the UK. I was joined on the platform by anti-racism campaigner Jonathon Shafi and NUS Scotland President Vonnie Sandlan. Glasgow North East MP Anne McLaughlin also spoke.

In Edinburgh there was a substantial march for the same cause. There was widespread anger, sadness and despair tempered by the need to show unanimity that immigrants were welcome here.

That unanimity stretched across political parties and across generations. As reports continue of immigrants and the children of immigrants being told to “go home” because “we voted leave”, we gathered to reject the bigotry and chauvinism of the Leave campaign.

There was an atmosphere of despair, sometimes devastation, at the result for many.

But everyone who gathered there shared a deep anger at the tone and content of both sides of the mainstream campaigns.

The Leave campaign, especially, was used to stoke up hatred and fear, and it did nothing to dispel myths and lies about immigrants, our economy, or our public services.

This is so clearly demonstrated by Farage’s comment that “not a single bullet had been fired”, merely a week after the awful shooting of Jo Cox.

For some time this has been brewing.

Ever since the 2008 crash politics has become very much more fluid. The initial move by some to blame spending on public services, on nurses, teachers and social workers for the crash resulted in a Tory-led government.

But blaming people and services that were manifestly unconnected to the crash always carried significant risks. In this case the cuts to public services produced a backlash at foreigners.

These are the very foreigners who do much of the vital work in our NHS and across our public services. They are the same foreigners who pay more in tax than they cost in services.

It is these foreigners who are vital to caring for our young and our elderly. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj ?i?ek describes the situation well when he says “the old world is dying, the new is struggling to be born, now is the time of monsters”. And we cannot fight those monsters in the old ways. Just as the old world is dying, so the old ways of resistance are dying.

It is time for us to stop pandering to immigrant bashing. Immigrants are part of the solution, not part of the problem. In our workplaces, in our communities, we must stand with immigrants – we must do more to make immigrants welcome. Friday’s demonstration in Glasgow and the accompanying march in Edinburgh are only the start.

And it is not just immigrants.

The Leave vote opens the door to a massive attack on human rights, on workers’ rights and on our remaining public services. And it is a gigantic kick up the behind for those who value these rights and our public education and health services. We can no longer rely on European institutions to protect us.

But we won maternity rights, the right not to be killed or maimed by our employers, and free, universal health and education outside the EU, so we must find the ways to protect them outside the EU.

That requires a movement for our future and for the future of our children and grandchildren. It requires organisation – across parties and across generations. It demands that we fight every step of the way against the moneyed interests who have caused so much damage with the austerity agenda of cuts to public services and their campaign to blame immigrants for those cuts.

We are sad, we will mourn what we have lost, but now more than ever we must look to ourselves, to our institutions and to our communities. And we must use our institutions and communities to enable this social movement to transcend the boundaries of geography, age, ethnicity and political allegiance.

Only then can we effectively challenge the ‘monsters’ that are the cause of our devastation and despair: neoliberalism and the imperial capitalist project that ruins lives, livelihoods and our world.

Maggie Chapman is Scottish Green Party Co-convener