On Monday night I attended the South London Citizens AGM, along with Rachel from BioRegional's paper recycling company and Sue, our Director. Dues-paying church groups, charities and trade unions joined together to discuss asylum and immigration, the living wage, the London Mayor elections next year, and active citizenship in general. It was a great contrast to the preceding weekend of decadance in the countryside. The meeting also got me thinking about Green political strategy and grassroots change...

Greens commonly say that we don't want to seize power to effect change using the strong hand of government, in the way that political parties traditionally do. Rather, we aim to build a grassroots political base that will transform society and to use power (i.e. elected posts) to empower this process. There is a tension between this and the efficacy of power, which our Green MEPs, London Assembly members and even councillors have exercised with great effect in the past 20 years. Maybe we don't have time for such an idealistic political strategy? Climate change is close to the tipping point (or perhaps already past it), people are suffering from low wages, poor working rights and an unjust asylum system today - surely we can't wait fifty years to transform society?

The London Citizens coalitions (South, East, West) suggest otherwise.

We heard about groups doing amazing work on the ground. For example, the Friends of Lunar House group have been improving the asylum reception centre in Croydon by helping the users and staff to participate in its management, and by stepping in themselves to offer arrivals a friendly face and a cup of tea. The Jesuit Refugee Service are exchanging asylum seekers' vouchers for cash, allowing them to spend their money at the cheaper local markets and on transport rather than at supermarkets; they are now asking people to exchange their own cash for vouchers to help more people take advantage of this service.

Neither of these two initiatives could come from the British Government. Labour, the Conservatives and our civil service are too centralised and top-down, too detached from the day-to-day realities of the asylum system to respond adequately. Working through Labour sub-groups like the Co-Operative Party, activists might be able to effect some small change in the party's policy despite the undemocratic structures they face. But why not roll up our sleeves and involve ourselves in coalitions like South London Citizens, whilst also going after elected positions that we could use to really support the grassroots work? This way we can effect important changes on the ground today, and feed this back into the political system to try and effect wider change.

The more we build a culture of participation from the ground up, and the more we can support this and remove barriers from positions of power, the more chance we have of effectively tackling some of the big problems we face in London, in Britain, in the world.