Last night (Monday 3rd August, or as I prefer to call it, March #6), CEM held a meeting about our petition for a seventh scrutiny committee dedicated to the environment. The purpose of the meeting was to gather more suggestions on signature collecting, and to introduce individuals who are interested in the petition to each other- and based on those metrics, I’d say the meeting was a definite success!
This was a really encouraging meeting- all the folks attending seem really engaged about the petition, and about finding the best possible ways to promote it and gather signatures. It was also really great to have such a broad spread of civil society represented at the meeting- there were attendees who were students, artists, members of Christian action groups and lecturers… This is all really reassuring in terms of getting the message out across different communities!
There were lots of really promising ideas discussed- we’ve already decided as CEM that collecting signatures in person is an absolute no-go due to ‘Rona, and it was very helpful to hear suggestions from different people about how to encourage people to sign the petition online instead. We’re hoping this will largely involve getting the word out about our petition landing page- the url and link to this are included at the bottom of this post for anyone looking to share them (we’d be really grateful if you do!)
It’s been very heartening to see people responding to quickly and enthusiastically over petition ideas- especially given some of the recent disparagings of promiment City Council members on the possibility of a seventh scrutiny committee, personally I’m loving the reassurance that comes with people’s enthusiasm that we’re not actually ridiculous (or tokenistic…) for pushing for this (!!) We asked the meeting attendees if they’d be happy, either in the meeting or afterwards, to make a quick video on why they’re encouraging people to sign the petition (throughout August, we’re hoping to get a video from a citizen in every ward of Manchester City Council- if you’d be interested in making a vid for us, there’s more information at the bottom of this post). A massive thanks to the attendees who agreed either on the spot (which can definitely be somewhat daunting- I wimped out!) to make a video, and to the people who recorded a video afterwards- this really goes to show how engaged Manchester citizens are on this issue! Here’s a video from Pooja in Rusholme:
CEM’s most important aim continues to be to connect citizens in Manchester who are concerned about climate change- in line with this, the most important part of this meeting was connecting CEM supporters who all recognise that this petition is both necessary and important. Thanks so much to everyone who came- we’re really excited to work with all of you.
Resources for people interested in the petition:
We have a QR code you can share around, and a URL- these both take you to our petition landing page:
URL: https://climateemergencymanchester.net/petition-2
If you’d be interested in making a video for us-
firstly, thank you so much! If you could say your name, what ward you live in, and a little bit about why you’ve signed the petition and want others to do the same, that would be brilliant.
