Newsletter 2

Dear supporters

We’ve had an incredible response – more than 6000 of you have already signed up to support the appeal, with tens of thousands of hits on the website and groups springing up across the length and breadth of the country. Please continue to share the appeal with everyone you know – http://leftunity.org/appeal/ – our success depends on as broad a discussion as possible in the coming months.

50 Left Unity groups have now been set up, covering large areas of the country – please see our map of groups and contact details at http://leftunity.org/groups/ to find out if there is one in your area. If not, why not set up a group of your own to take the discussion forward? Please email content@leftunity.org if you’re interested.

Some of the London Left Unity group organisers – From left to right, Nathan Rogers [Lambeth], Gioia Coppola [Deptford], Chris Hurley [West London], Moutassim Elharith [Bounds Green], JimJepps [Camden] and Suzy Gillett [Kennington]

We would like to draw your attention to an article we were sent from Jenny Ross, the point of contact for our Manchester group, on the process of becoming a group organiser and the potential of the project: http://leftunity.org/notes-from-the-northern-trenches-of-left-unity/ – Jenny has captured a spirit that can be felt across the country.

We are getting a great deal of written contribution adding to the debate – please continue sending us your thoughts at content@leftunity.org. We would particularly like to receive reports and photos of what has been going on in your local groups, as this will form the basis for the formation of the organisation. 

We’d like to encourage people to register for the People’s Assembly – a lot of the spaces have already been booked so please get your union branch or campaign to put you forward as a delegate or sign up as an individual – http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/2013/02/peoples-assembly-against-austerity-saturday-22-june/

There are a number of events taking place in the coming days that we’d like to draw your attention to – in particular the numerous bedroom tax protests taking place tomorrow across the country – please see our campaigns map at http://leftunity.org/campaigns/ and our calendar at http://leftunity.org/calendar/. Please also get in touch with your local group contact about anything you can do to help with anything going on in your area!

Bedroom tax stickers are still available from the website – please visit our ‘Bedroom Tax’ campaign page for more details: http://leftunity.org/bedroom-tax/

A broad-based organising group has now come together to facilitate the development of the Left Unity appeal and to support the local groups, as well as organising communication (this newsletter) and the website. Together with the group contacts we will be working towards setting up a national meeting to bring all of our opinions together democratically.

If you would like to give us a startup donation to help with running costs (more bandwidth and even leaflets!) we now have a paypal link on our site. if you would prefer to send a cheque, you can make one out to Left Unity and send it to our London office at 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX.

Thanks for your support! This is all quite overwhelming so please bear with us as we try to keep track of it all.