Back to the roots…

It has been an amazing few weeks for all of us involved in citizen organising. The May 3rd assembly catapulted the movement into the media limelight, and also yielding substantial relationships with and commitments from the then PM, the new PM and the new Deputy PM! Citizens UK Director Neil Jameson was in No 10 yesterday – and the meeting is reported on our sister blog there.

A key challenge is to convert this excitement back into tangible change at the really local level, That is where our Jellicoe interns come in! Last night, we had our last Community Evening with Megan Dilhoff and Theodore Wold, who return to the US after building significant new links with Catholic parishes in Shadwell & Wapping. They will be much missed, and go with all our thanks and prayers.

Amma Asante continues her work at the University of East London, and Ian Bhullar at St Mary’s Cable Street (and the newly-recruited E1 Community Church). They’ll be joined by around 18 summer interns, focusing mainly on the CitySafe campaign – very local relationship- and trust-building, which is the lifeblood of citizen organising. It’s from this local base that we build up to the amazing national successes – the end of child detention, local mutual banking and a Community Land Trust on the 2012 Olympic site.