Last month, Bruno De Oliveira, councillor for Hollingdean and Fiveways in Brighton and Hove, stepped away from Labour to become an Independent. Shortly after, he was welcomed into the Green Party to become the 10th Green councillor on the city council.
His decision reflects a general mood – a deep desire for principle, aspiration and hope in politics that Labour is failing to deliver. His actions are a step towards the change this country deserves and his journey shows the “political beings” we all are and the potential we have to unleash.
Growing up in an impoverished area of Northeast Brazil, Bruno’s political education began with the experience of “deep social inequalities”. When he moved to Brighton to begin university, austerity was the new shared political landscape he was educated in.
“I remember being kettled outside Westminster anti-tuition fees protest. The first step is critical solidarity. That is, caring for our community (well, fighting for rebuilding a sense of community in the first place)”.
Seeing the impact of these “poverty-driven policies” drove Bruno to stand for election. Having researched and co-ordinated a homeless service for his PhD, seeing the deep impact of austerity, he could not merely spectate.
Yet he felt trepidation in this.
“A work-class Brazilian-born British person with brown skin is not something we see in our politics, especially with the focus on othering and anti-migration. I never felt politics was a place for me, but what keeps me going is the ideal of solidarity”.
As a “socialist”, he stood for Labour in “hope” of social justice and equality as the “building block that we aspire to and need”. Highlights in office include chairing the city’s Health and Well-being Board, shifting services to co-production and passing motions for the BabyBox, challenging health inequalities.
He lost this hope as Labour “lost its soul”.
“The island of strangers was a very regrettable yet consequential speech. But the cuts to foreign aid and winter allowance were just crude. Not good politics nor economically”.
He wants more with the Green Party. “People must believe that they can shape their communities, society and beyond”. This speaks to the undeniable feeling of listlessness in Britain. That politics and economics merely happens to people and we should be grateful it isn’t worse than it is.
Taking back control of our world is at the heart of Bruno’s philosophy and with it, the audacity to believe we can “dare to challenge and shape the rules of the game”. We simply cannot “leave it to the few rich, well-connected and powerful”.
Central to Bruno’s switch to the Greens was the refusal to be divided as “an island of strangers” and to allow an elite to enrich themselves whilst they blame “the most vulnerable… to distract from rising inequality”.
Bruno stands behind a “hopeful alternative”. A Green offer of “peace, housing and affordability”, an overarching desire for “economic justice” and a “fairer society”.
Being told that we are not in control, “that we had to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish”, holds us back and this is enabled by a misleading “notion of neutrality”. When reactionary and regressive assumptions are plainly threaded through every pragmatic decision, it is undeniable that the current situation we find ourselves in is a political choice.
So why not dream?
“Imagine someone telling Martin Luther King Jr to put his civil rights dreams away. A revolution starts with a mere dream of the world we want to live in, and not as it is, and I, like most of you, have a dream of a fairer society”.
But dreaming alone is not enough. Only in solidarity were the most radical dreams in history realised. We need more dreamers, we need more aspiration. Do you know someone who could do with some hope? Share this story and sign them up to demand the change we deserve to see.