I've always hated canvassing for myself because we on the left don't stand as ourselves, for our own personal gains, but as a collective. The Left needs to mount pressure on all the other parties and to distinguish ourselves from the people who offer lollipops and lipservice to an increasingly disillusioned population. It is not true that we are apathetic; when there is only a rizla paper between the main parties is it no wonder that people stay away from the ballot boxes, preferring instead to express their anger in a variety of different ways.
We need a new vision. We need a return to honest campaigning. We need a team of people in ULU that can show what can be done when we fight together.
See you in ULU :-)
Thanks to
Luna 17. And lecturer and student at SOAS
Demet Dinler.
Let the battle begin...
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This is what
The Sauce wrote:
Activist, blogger, single mum Clare Solomon (that's me!!)
is standing for president of the University of London Union (ULU) as a left candidate promising a year of protest and campaigns.
Clare was at the centre of two occupations - one against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the second for cleaners who had been held and deported - at the SOAS campus.
The 36-year-old is one of the most dynamic, hard working and inclusive campaigners on the left and should she take office the reverberations would spread well beyond the student movement.
Her election statement reads: "Students across London need a strong and dynamic campaigning union to defend themselves against the savage cuts in education and across public services threatened under Labour and Conservatives.
"It's obscene that students and those relying on social services and working hardest are being made to pay for the bankers' greed. Higher education will suffer cuts of £449m because of the crisis. ULU must be at the heart of a London-wide movement which uses the strengths, talents and experience of all students in the city in the fight for adequate funding.
"A real union is more than gym membership. ULU’s excellent facilities will be a hub of activity, accessible to every student. From two years’ experience as SOAS Finance and Communications sabbatical, I know students feel part of the union most when it is active, effective and visible.
Post strike"The ULU President must project student voices to the outside world and campaigns work. We occupied our colleges when Israel invaded Gaza last year, killing more than 1,300 people. Thousands protested against wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot let Islamophobia bolster the Nazi BNP.
"Climate protests have made governments across the globe take notice. Miss University is not returning to our campuses because we protested. I have been active in all these campaigns.
London is expensive. SOAS Justice for Cleaners campaign delivered the London living wage for SOAS staff and helped launch successful campaigns across London. I will continue to fight for a London Living Wage for all staff and students."
The coming "year of change" threatens to be scarred by a Conservative victory at the elections, massive and damaging cuts to services and the spectre of the IMF enforcing even greater economic surgery.
The position of students' unions and unions generally for the past decade has been professionalism, cheap insurance deals and a resistance to strikes or anything which might rock the Labour government boat.
A victory for Clare, a revolutionary who has supported the post strike, demonstrated with Stop the War, and organised the Mutiny events, would be spark amidst the paraffin.
