Why are you standing for election?

For over six years, I’ve been part of a campaign to get a community voice in plans for the Tesco site in Hackney Central and for two months in 2024, I was one of the organisers of the Hackney for Palestine Camp in front of our Town Hall. These are different campaigns but I’ve learned from both how difficult it is to get our Labour Council to listen to residents and to change.

The Tesco site campaign – Morning Lane People’s Space – has had some success, with the original plans falling through, and an increase from 0 to 26% social housing. But, the Council still plans to replace the big Tesco with a much smaller store.

On Palestine, our Labour Council still invests over £100M in companies complicit in genocide and has repeatedly blocked votes on ending our twinning with Israel’s military port Haifa.

If you camp outside their doors 24/7 for two months and still they refuse to listen, the only option is to try to breach those doors by getting elected as a councillor and replacing Hackney Labour.

What are three things you are most excited about in our manifesto for Hackney?

I want to change so much that it’s difficult to pick just three. But the three things that come up most often when we’re talking to residents in Homerton are LTNs / road closures, essential housing repairs not being done, lack of trust in our Council and in politicians more generally. In our manifesto we have plans to do something about all of those issues and it’s those things that I’m most excited to put into action.

First, on LTNs / road closures, we’ll advocate for an immediate end to the closure of Chatsworth Road to traffic because of the problems with it and to ask residents which other LTNs / road closures we need to re-work and how.

Second, on housing repairs, we’ll work for every Council tenant and leaseholder to have a named Housing Officer, who holds monthly face-to-face meetings with residents. We’ll also build up the in-house team so the Council doesn’t have to use external contractors for so many repairs and can ensure work gets started on time, and isn’t left unfinished. And we’ll use the Council’s enforcement powers to take action against Housing Associations and private landlords that fail to adequately maintain properties.

Third, on trust, I think a major reason for people not trusting our Council is that when they do consultations they do not listen to what residents say. There is no point in doing consultation, only to ignore the results. Our key priority is to work with residents to co-produce a Consultation Charter which will commit Hackney Council to honest and open engagement and to implementing the results.

What’s one thing residents might not know about you?

I’ve always enjoyed watching long dramatic and melodramatic sagas on television from Dallas as a child, to St Elsewhere as a teenager, through Buffy in my 20s and then the launch of Big Brother and the brilliant HBO series of Oz, Sopranos and The Wire. In the past few years, I’ve been watching a lot of Latin American series because I enjoy their exploration of love, revenge and forgiveness – and because I’m trying to learn Spanish. I don’t know what this says about me or what residents will make of it. But it feels an important part of who I am and something politicians don’t talk about much. Television, like films and books, is one of the ways that I learn about other people’s experiences and hav come to understand other ways of being.