A photo of Green Party campaigners at the party's 2023 local elections launch in Mid Suffolk

Our country finds itself in a significant moment in history. Yet another Labour government has failed to deliver even minor material benefits for ordinary people. That same government is complicit in genocide, is refusing to take the action to address the climate crisis knocking at our door and is engaging in nasty, divisive politics that demonises everyone from migrants to trans people.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings to take advantage of the wholesale disaffection millions of people feel towards the Labour Party are the far right and Reform. They’re ready to exploit the situation for their own ends and they are on track to send Nigel Farage into Downing Street and his cronies to the Senedd.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, and it is abundantly clear that the Green Party has to rise to the challenge. There is no other political force at the ballot box that has the transformative vision of society that can speak to this moment – a vision which recognises that the people who are benefiting from rampant inequality are the same people who stoke division and the same people who are profiting from the climate crisis.

This summer, party members are deciding how to respond to the political moment we are in. Much of the focus has been on the leadership election, with big questions being asked about what the best strategy is to take the fight to the government and to neutralise Reform. Maximising the number of Greens in both in the House of Commons and the Senedd will be central to that, and part of how we get there relates to the questions being thrashed out in the leadership contest – what our electoral strategy should be and what the messaging is that can assemble a winning electoral coalition.

But part of it also relates to questions of organisation. In order deliver the electoral earthquake we need to at the next general election, we need organised, strong, effective local parties that are tooled up, resourced and built to deliver the next generation of Green MPs who can fight for our radical vision of a different in the corridors of power.

We already have some of the answers to this. Over my six years on the Green Party Executive, the party has taken massive strides towards supporting our local parties. We’ve got infrastructure we know works – Campaign School and Candidate School have both been invaluable in building election organisers that go out to win time and time again. This has been an important first step.

But this alone isn’t enough to scale up the success we know we can deliver. We need to go further. We need to roll out national training programmes that skill people up beyond what we currently do – supporting the next generation of activists in our party to get their local parties, their councillors, their parliamentary candidates to be able to truly cut through in the media, to produce powerful social media campaigns and to raise the funds needed to get more Greens elected.

Fundamentally, this approach is about building our movement. And movement building is at the centre of what I believe is needed to take the Green Party to the next level. Our party was born out of radical social movements fighting for a fairer, more equal, more sustainable world. Our success is built not only on the tireless work of the volunteers who knock on doors and deliver leaflets, but also on the social base we can build within society. That’s why the party’s next political strategy – being written in the next few years – must have movement building at its heart.

The coming years will be pivotal for our country. There are two paths before us.

One is carved by Nigel Farage and his billionaire friends in the fossil fuel industry. That path tells us we should hate our neighbours, strive to hoard wealth and abandon the idea of society.

The other path is carved by us – by Greens. That path is one where people stand shoulder to shoulder with each other, where we redistribute power and wealth, and where we seek to build a society and an economy which protects the natural world in the face of existential threat.

If we are to steer our country down the right path, yes, we need good leadership. But we also need strong, robust, resourced infrastructure through which we can build a grassroots movement capable of resisting this government and overcoming the threat of Reform.

I think I’ve got both the ideas and the track record to be play a role in delivering this. Over the last decade, I’ve organised in and alongside some of the most powerful movements this century – campaigns that have taken billions of pounds out of the fossil fuel industry, have taken on arms companies involved in colonial wars, and have fought for properly funded, publicly owned public services. For the last three years I’ve been a local councillor and secured major victories for people across my city – including schemes to address period poverty, more financial support for the most vulnerable residents and greater protections for renters.

If you think we need to live up to the urgency of this moment, and you believe that means we need a radical Green Party that has the infrastructure it needs to do so, then please consider voting to re-elect me as your local party support coordinator.

Rosie Rawle is a candidate for the Green Party’s local party support coordinator