A poster reading "Vote Green Party" on the back of a chair

While we’re both black, queer and socialists to our core we have very different backgrounds.

Ekua is African Irish and a Muslim revert. She was born in Hampshire, spent her early years on the South Pacific Island of Rarotonga, her primary and secondary education in rural midlands towns of Rothwell, Desborough and Kettering. College in Northampton and Cheltenham. Art School in London! where both her children were born and then she moved with them aged 3 and 6, a single parent escaping domestic abuse, to build a new life in Manchester, which she has called home for the last 32 years. She is now a grandmother to four, aged 8, 5, and 5 and the last due in the next few days.

Kat sees the world through a disabled lens, having Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and being neurodivergent. Half of Kat’s family have Jamaican roots and the other half are from Sussex, where Kat were born. They moved to Herefordshire when they were 10, all the way through growing up in social housing and was home schooled, until they attended Hereford Sixth Form college for A-levels. They were the first in their family to go to university, studying maths and statistics at Bristol UWE. Kat quickly made Bristol home, living there for the last 15 years, for both the love of the city and to escape their abusive father back home.

How we crossed paths in the party is probably not typical of most job-shares. We met in a Greens Organise meeting where we had a reasonably heated disagreement, whilst we had the same aims in mind, we had a different idea of the journey to get there.

So after the meeting we worked on a solution together and came out with a stronger new proposal that addressed both of our issues. We see this as a strength of ours, that yes we do sometimes clash, but by doing so in a way that centres understanding and compassion we get the best out of the both of us.

We, of course, agree on our core values that there is no environmental justice without social justice and we have to fight for everyone’s rights, leaving no one behind.

When we were looking at standing together, shortly after this, we had several in depth conversations about our shared understanding of feminism, our support for trans rights, our campaigning against the genocide in Gaza, and so many other pressing topics of the day. We quickly became friends with all the common ground we held.

We also found we bring a lot our passion and commitment to equality and diversity born from our lived experience. With very different journeys in the party, we have a broad understanding of how the internal party structures work as well as first hand knowledge.

Ekua served 2 years as a Green Councillor, and the deputy leader of the Green Group on Manchester City Council. She served as the Comms Officer for Greens of Colour (now Global Majority Greens) and is the outgoing Chair of The Deyika Nzeribe Fund and currently a Non Portfolio Officer for Muslim Greens. She also sits as an elected rep on the Conference Committee and the Equality and Diversity Committee.

Kat has been a Green Party member for the best part of a decade. Currently co-chair of LGBTIQA+ Greens, served in multiple roles in other liberation groups and been the Equality & Diversity Coordinator for both their local and regional party. They also stood as a target candidate in the last Bristol City Council elections and have written various policy over the years that has been adopted at conference.

For our campaign video, Kat travelled up to Manchester, where we had co-written the script and shot it in one very long day. Thankfully the day stayed sunny. Ekua thinks we should share our outtakes with the membership! But seriously we feel its important to share who we are and what we believe in. And also finding we could also laugh together was just as important.

We are standing to address some of the challenges we face as party. It is unfair on all the members of liberation groups and the communities they represent that they are often considered as an afterthought when drafting policy, writing the manifesto and in our comms strategy.

We have had the Diverse Matters report for over 3 years now and made so little progress. The membership are crying out for support. Our current leadership seem to have stalled in this area. We urgently need a staff team to lead with EEDI. We need to work with the E&D Committee to ensure that post is developed with the seniority it needs, the post need a team and a lot of resources. 

We also have a duty of care to EDI Officers sitting on committees of local parties. They have been left to muddle along as best they can. And, no doubt! Many have done very good jobs. But they aren’t even in post in lots of local party committees.

Our campaign for Equalities and Diversity Co-ordinator focusses on the key issue of ensuring our party is able to recruit from and engage with communities from all sectors in our society. 

In order to do this we also need to see a more diverse group of members supported to take on leadership roles throughout the party, from local party committees, to national roles on GPRC, GPEX and Regional Committees and also to stand and be successfully elected as political representatives, as our local councillors and MPs.

The key to this is getting our liberation groups properly resourced to be able to carry out the work they have been set up to do – to ensure that the voices of members with lived experience of oppression or who have chosen lifestyles that challenge a mainstream capitalist narrative are front and centre on how we shape policy and practice in our party.

Image credit: Jon Craig – Creative Commons