Next Wednesday (29th) Left Foot Forward will be hosting a 90-minute hustings with the Green Party's mayoral hopefuls
Next Wednesday 29 July at lunchtime Left Foot Forward will be hosting an online hustings with the Green Party’s mayoral candidates.
Caroline Russell, Sian Berry, Benali Hamdache, Rashid Nix, Jonathan Bartley and Tom Chance are all competing to be the Green mayoral candidate in the elections which will take place on 5 May, 2016.
This is your chance to ask them questions about why they should run, and why London should be in Green hands.
Visit this page at 12.00pm next Wednesday for what promises to be an interesting discussion.
15 Responses to “Online hustings with Green Party mayoral candidates”
Joe Mitchell
Politics is changing. How will you use your power as mayor to increase democratic engagement and participation in the governance of London?
Ednamcraver
Go to Our Community l e f o t o a d Online money
Fraser
What will you do to tackle corruption in the city of London’s “square mile” / financial sector that’s so damaging to not just London but the whole UK?
Maeve Tomlinson
How will you stop incinerators in favour of zero waste, with re-use & recycling and improve London’s air quality?
Ed Jones
Hi, here’s my question:
“As the Green Party’s Mayoral candidate, what would you practically do to support and expand the
co-operative sector in London, to reduce inequality and to ensure that we have more ownership and control over our work, housing, energy, care, food, and in the many other aspects of our lives? In some countries which have larger worker and housing co-operative sectors than the UK, one of the key reasons for that is a multitude of state-led initiatives to support and expand the sector. What state-led initiatives would you promote at a London level to expand the co-operative sector?”
As some background, this is a really excellent article on what local government, in this case New York, can do to expand the co-operative economy:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/17061/a_co_op_state_of_mind
A quote from the article:
“The FPWA contacted the center and various worker cooperatives and incubators to learn about their needs. The group also studied cooperatives in other U.S. cities and in Canada, Spain and Italy. They
heard the same thing repeatedly: ***To get a mass movement of co-ops off the ground, a public investment is needed.***” [my emphasis]
This is also a really nice paper by Prof Milford Bateman, which gives many examples of what local government can do to support co-ops:
Cooperative Enterprise Development as a Key Aspect in Rebuilding Solidarity-Driven Local Economies in the Aftermath of Thirty Years of Destructive Local Neoliberalism:
http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/%28httpPublications%29/0EA6898AF80B5759C1257B5F00510FFB?OpenDocument&panel=relatedinformation
Finally, there are many more reasons for supporting co-operatives than those given above. For example, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level, have recently been strongly arguing in favour of co-operatives as a means to reduce inequality of income, power and education as well as a
means to create a more sustainable society. It is well worth reading their latest article on that.
Pickett, K. and Wilkinson, R. (2014) ‘Reducing Inequality Through Economic Democracy’, Progressive Economy http://www.progressiveeconomy.eu/content/reducing-inequality-through-economic-democracy-en
There is also a lot of research on co-operatives which show:
* Co-ops often have lower wage differentials,
* Are often resilient economic forms (including in economic crises e.g. http://www.cicopa.coop/Resilience-of-cooperatives-to-the.html & http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_emp/—emp_ent/—coop/documents/publication/wcms_207768.pdf ),
* They empower workers within the workplace,
* They contribute benefits to the community and democracy more broadly
* And much more….