“I am because we are”

“I didn’t win a seat, but my god I’ve won a neighbourhood”,  writes Sonya Semmens on her Macnamara campaign. In an atomised society where “people see themselves not as part of a collective, but an individual — alone and powerless”,  electoral politics, Sonya argues, must serve the deeper work of rebuilding community.

This morning I took the dog for an early walk like I usually do, down the usual streets. 

Past houses I’ve knocked. Past the library where we held baby clothes swaps. Past the housing towers where we ran submission writing workshops with residents. Past the BBQs where we hosted our community “BurritoQs”. Past the church alongside the walk-ups where I had the best cake of my life.

I was feeling sad about [gestures at the world] when a man who lived directly opposite my giant face on a corflute for six months interrupted my pity party with an alarmingly cheerful Morning! Back in the routine! 

Then at Kerferd Rd, the couple with the massive dog stopped for a chat about roadworks (and unions). At Montague St the fellow who waters his nature strip waved hello. At the bakery, the cashier winked and said, Glad to see you, it’s definitely colder in Canberra, haha. Even the baker came out for a chat. It felt like a Richard Scarry book! The community I’ve worked my guts out to support was instead supporting me, leaning in to remind me: I belong.

(One second, I think I have something in my eye.) 

I didn’t win a seat, but my god I’ve won a neighbourhood. And today, as I sit down to write this article, it feels extremely bloody important. Because I’m going to make a case to you that what we’re doing is not “a campaign” at all.

I think campaigning is just the clothes our revolution is wearing. 

Hear me out.

Around the corner from my kids school there’s a 92 year old woman named Anne. She wasn’t on my doorknock list, but occasionally I have to knock on the wrong door to have the right conversation. Anne’s an old leftie, talkative and well-informed, and when I asked her how she thought things were going out in the community she told me this: No one cares anymore. There is no care in our community. She offered me a seat, a cup of tea, and I asked if she lives alone. She replied, I am completely alone. I realised maybe she hadn’t spoken with anyone in a while. 

Door knocking across the seat of Macnamara.

1. People in our communities are more isolated than ever

The social infrastructure of communities is falling off a cliff. Club membership is down. Being a committee member is down. Sitting on the Parents & Friends Committee is down. Church attendance and prayer groups are down, belonging to any religion is down (which is an estimated half of social capital, and the origin of civic leadership). Dinner parties, picnics and street parties are down. 

At the same time, there’s a hollowing out of civil society – including the collapse in trade union membership from 50% of all workers in the 1980s to just 13% in 2024. As a result, a massive decline in industrial action means the vast majority of people no longer have any experience of wielding collective power. Everything that reflects connection with other people is falling away. So people see themselves not as part of a collective, but an individual – alone and powerless.

Back in the early two thousands I worked with an international development agency, while Desmond Tutu was banging on about this idea, “Ubuntu”. It’s a Bantu concept that really made sense to me this year: I am because we are.

This is the work.

* * *

In leafy Albert Park there’s a street with two men at either end.

The first fellow works in the fossil fuel sector, for companies whose logos you know. He told me he’d worked all over Europe. While I was making ungenerous assumptions, he looked me square in the eye and said, I’ll vote for you if you promise me this – you’ll tax them. They’re getting away with highway robbery. I told him we literally would! That’s our whole thing! He wanted a placard, and sent an email to thank me for coming by.

At the other end of the same road, a young man opened the door to tell me he invests in housing instead of having superannuation. I asked him how he felt about removing tax incentives for people with more than two properties and he nodded with enthusiasm – Yes, I support that. Everyone should have a chance to get into the market if they want to. And I’m really worried about how the housing crisis is affecting people.

Ten minutes away in Elwood a man in his sixties is washing the car in the driveway. I get him talking and he says he’s in construction. I ask how business is going. He says it’s hard to price a job these days because he can’t guarantee materials, but that’s the industry… Actually there’s something else keeping him up at night. He’s heard some corporations pay no tax and send their profits overseas. I explain our Robin Hood tax plan for multinationals and he shakes his head in disbelief. When you came in here I had no idea what I’d talk to you about, he says, but you’ve just said exactly what I’m angry about. I contribute. So should they.

2. People aren’t afraid of radical change

We can move on from the “too extreme” debate, when we’re talking about policy. Macnamara is a bougie bayside electorate by any standards, and even here neoliberalism doesn’t pass the pub test any more. Everyone is watching the old world order unravelling – from martial law in LA, to the genocidal horror of Gaza, and even right here in Port Phillip with the council’s startlingly cruel proposal to fine rough sleepers. People may not be able to thread the needle of petro-fascist kleptocracy, but one after the other, they tell me the system is rigged, or f*cked. Or worst of all, they feel unsafe and can’t say why.

They know change is coming. They know it’s capitalism, or us. All they’re asking for is leadership with the guts to call it what it is – to name the cancer – and to tell us what the plan is. We want leaders with the chops, and the people’s trust (very important), to get it done. And until that arrives, voters want stability – not backwards slippage. Not Dutton. Not Temu Trump. In the face of unreliability, they’ll settle for the devil they know.

Change isn’t safe, so the people bringing it must be. Every single time I brought our radically redistributive platform to my neighbours in a calm, clear voice they were relieved to hear someone speak the truth. In many cases, in that moment, they put their faith in me. 

This is the work.

* * *

The first door I ever knocked in Macnamara was a woman in Balaclava who told me she didn’t have anything political to say. We get that a lot. This lady was up in one of those red-brick apartment blocks, so I asked, Are you renting? And she said actually, she’d just received a notice of eviction that day. She stopped half way through the sentence with the words hanging in the air between us, and then her face crumpled. And she started crying. She’d found something political.

In Port Melbourne, I ran into a couple who were suspicious that I’d come to see them. How did I know about them? What did I want? I said, If I’m elected, how would you like me to go to work for you? They told me I wouldn’t likely be able to represent them – they believed government officials were all corrupt, there’s a paedophile ring, our water and air is polluted, and planes are releasing toxic chemicals engineered to lower IQ. I listened carefully. I told them I agreed parliament was captured, but I thought it was captured by fossil fuel, which is indeed a pollutant (and pollution does lower IQ) – had they considered this possibility? They said they were pretty sure it went deeper than that. But they thanked me for listening. No one ever listens. And they’re really, really frightened about these things.

McNamara Campaign launch at the Pride Centre, St Kilda

3. Shockingly little information reaches people in the decomposing shitshow of a media landscape. (But disinformation does.)

I cannot overstate how few people know we’re offering the exact policies they want. 

And worse, you’d be shocked to know how many people have legitimate fears, hijacked by disinformation in dark corners of the internet you and I never go. Both those who are uninformed, and those who are cynically misinformed, are being failed by an information landscape that is so decaying it has stopped being useful – and started being really harmful.

Even legacy media is so hostile we can’t rely on them to communicate our messages either. And social media is frustratingly diffuse. We need trusted sources. The neighbourhood WhatsApps, the mother’s groups, the churches and temples, mosques and synagogues, co-ops, sports clubs, the peer to peer relationships, and a new generation of worker organisation. We need a conversation started in the places people gather… right at the moment these places are disappearing. In Macnamara, like other inner urban seats, they’re vanishing faster than ever. 

Yet the aching need for community is not. So we’ll have to build this social infrastructure from the ground up, as a movement. 

This is the work.

* * *

In St Kilda, I spoke with a dad who didn’t say much at all, just pointed at the Free Mental Healthcare dot point on our flier. That’s very important, he said. I told him how I’ve had to ask myself if my 15-year-old can be fixed in ten sessions. I told him none of us should be asking that question, especially about our kids. I was halfway down the street when his wife came running out. She pressed an email address into my hand, This is who our daughter sees – we’ll both vote for you. My son has an appointment tomorrow morning at 9am (as I write). I don’t mind telling you I’m so relieved I could cry.

And there’s the young mums at the clothes swap. They seem pleased to have a free cup of tea and a chat, and they bring bag after bag of tiny onesies to swap for something slightly bigger. We tell them about our free childcare policy – there’s unanimous support. Why shouldn’t it be free? Like public school should be! One mum nails the mood so perfectly my mouth hangs open, Politics is not on my radar… but life is. 

4. Soft support for the Greens is through the roof

I used to tell my campaign manager that if I had a polling booth strapped to my back, I’d have won the election before it began. But of course, we walk back out the front gate and leave people literally to their own devices, and whatever the feed or the press delivers them to muddy (or bury) the message. 

Somehow despite this, our national vote held. Despite the biggest investment in attacks against us in political history, despite an historic Labor swing, our vote held. And the reason it did, is because what we do in communities across the nation isn’t just campaigning – it’s building connections and relationships and trust over years and years. Through thick and thin. Through floods and fires. 

And this doesn’t end when the election does. If we’re serious about building community, these relationships must be for real. When Rev. Jon brings back raspberry baked cheesecake at the walk-ups’ crafternoon tea, I want to know about it! When rough sleepers are being treated inhumanely by Council, we won’t stay silent. We’ll get involved.

We’re not just campaigning. We’re belonging – together.

This is the work.

* * *

These are just a few stories of thousands of conversations we had at community events or on doorsteps in Macnamara. 

Aaaaaaand we didn’t win. Not even close! We knocked on 95,000 doors and built deep and enduring relationships across the community and we still had a 4% swing against us.

The day after the election a woman in Coles told me she’d voted for me, but put Labor first to keep Dutton out. I thanked her and put a dozen cans of refried beans into my trolley for our next BurritoQ.

The SL2s* in Macnamara must be at a record high, but there are no silver medals in politics. Thankfully for us, it was never just about politics.

 Town Hall on local environmental issues

5. It was always about community

There will be hot takes and deep analysis of this election in months to come. Maybe they’ll ask whether inner city gentrification is sending Greens-voters scattered throughout the regions. Or we’ll learn more about whether the right wing attack group, Advance, did anything but create noise and make money. 

What I do know is that our job is to turn neighbours into neighbourhoods. Co-ops and community dinners into coalitions of the unconventionally-aligned. And we must take the disorganised political energy boiling over in our communities, to create the movement we desperately need. 

This is the work. 

* * *

As for the politics, I’m incredibly optimistic. Remember when our Senate Seats weren’t safe? And then they were. This time our Lower House seats weren’t safe, but soon they will be.

Political success is the inevitable output of grassroots participatory democracy. Which is just another name for building communities. Which is the social infrastructure that preserves relationships. Which is the key – perhaps the only key – to saving humanity.

And that’s the revolution. One neighbourhood at a time.

* * *

*SL2s = A voter who is given a “Support Level 2” tag in our doorknock data when asked how likely they are to vote Green from 1 to 5 (with 1 being extremely likely and 5 being extremely unlikely).

Sonya Semmens is a community-builder and NGO worker, mum of two, living on the unceded Bunurong lands of the Kulin Nation. She was the Greens candidate for Macnamara in the recent federal election.

Feature images courtesy of Sonya Semmens.