Lorenzo Martinico is a candidate in the upcoming by-election, who lives in the council ward he wants to represent and has been a member of the Scottish Greens for about two years.
He believes that the party is the only one that fits all of the things he cares about. He said that since “we are in the middle of a climate emergency we need strong climate action”.
In addition this is the only party for him which stands up for trans rights and human rights and “has a really strong voice on the Middle East”.
But closer to the ward of Portobello/Craigmillar where he hopes to become the fourth councillor (and second Green councillor) on 3 September, he said this is the party which has pushed hard on homelessness.
He came to live in Edinburgh as a student in 2014 just before the independence referendum. He now has a PhD in Computer Science, and most recently was involved in student housing cooperatives in Edinburgh. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh, working on foundational principles of computer security and digital privacy, and said he currently works for the Workers Cooperative Federation as we as a locally based cargo bike delivery cooperative.
He said: “I was quite involved in the student housing cooperative here in Edinburgh, and we campaigned quite hard to make that a solution to the student housing crisis, which was really affecting the city a few years ago.”
Asked what he would do about the housing emergency he said: “I think really the only thing that we need to be doing is building more housing.
“We’re just at a point where the you know Edinburgh’s population particularly is growing and will continue growing in the next few years, and we just don’t have the capacity to house people.
“But we also need to make sure that the units that we do have are affordable. So bringing in rent controls next year as soon as we have the power to do it, working on alternative tenures that can deliver long-term affordable housing. As I said, I was quite involved in housing cooperatives, and I think it’s a brilliant model that could scale up a lot more than it does currently in Scotland.”
The prevalence of purpose built student housing is of concern as he feels the number of students at university is falling. But he does not think that the blocks themselves are “necessarily bad”. He said: “I think I have a more subtle position here, where I don’t think that the blocks themselves are necessarily bad, but it is the way that they’ve been run – they charge incredible amounts of money to students, most of whom don’t live in the country. They don’t have any way to look for housing before they get here for university.”
He suggested that there is “a space to have a mix of tenures” with small flats and studio flats in the mix.
Recently the leader of the Greens in England and Wales, Zack Polanski, paid a visit to Portobello and roused the troops at a party event in Bellfield.
At the rally, Lorenzo had the opportunity to address the audience and in his speech he said: “I’m sure I speak for most of us here with the Scottish Greens when I say that we’ve all been really inspired by what we managed to do in the last year, and the genuine and positive message of hope you’ve been able to spread.
“Hope is something that is very needed today, at a time when a lot of people are afraid, afraid that they will not be able to get to the end of the month, that they will not be able to keep the roof over their heads, afraid that the world is changing too quickly and that they will not be able to adapt. I’m afraid too.
“There are so many things that make me want to shut down and pretend that everything is going to be okay. The rise of war, authoritarianism, catastrophic climate change, a rapidly aging population and the billionaire-owned mass surveillance system that we all feed with our data every day.
“I can barely grasp how these forces are going to affect us in the next few years. But some fears are more concrete than others. Seeing the rise of the far right, the way that they directly threaten people I hold dear, because they’re trans, disabled, or migrants, this is a fear that is more immediate and more actionable.
“So last year, with the Holyrood election coming, I knew that I had to do something to stop them. It wasn’t enough to run single issues campaigns or protests from the outside, as I’ve been doing for a while.
“So after a lot of considerations – actually not really, the Scottish Green Party was the only party that I could possibly contemplate. So I got really involved with the Holyrood campaign, and as you all know, we worked hard and we won. We won Edinburgh Central, and we got our wonderful four MSP selected.
“We’re now Edinburgh’s biggest party, and we stopped Reform from getting a second seat here.
“So I know we were hoping for a quiet summer to recover, but these elections are a fantastic opportunity for the Greens. If Isabella and I are elected, it will show people that last May wasn’t a fluke. Greens can win when we go head to head with all the other parties, and will put us into an even better position for next year, as we go into the local authority elections.
“Edinburgh could be the first city with the Greens at the helm. Even from opposition, our eleven Green councillors have been formidable in their achievements. They’ve stood up for climate and nature recovery. They make sure that polluters and weapon manufacturers cannot profit from our public spaces, whether that’s parks or advertising billboards.
“They’ve helped accelerate the development of council housing to address a horrific housing crisis, but also making sure that it’s not the most vulnerable tenants that have to pay for it. They’ve got us rent controls and participatory budgeting across the city, and in the background, they’ve worked hard to change the culture at City Chambers to be more collaborative and inclusive. But there’s so much more that we could be doing if we were in administration.”
Speaking in Bellfield which was Scotland’s first urban community buyout, Lorenzo was keen to promote that as a model for ownership. He said: “if I’m elected on 3 September, I will make it one of my main priorities to ensure we lay the ground for every neighbourhood to start their own Bellfield as a foundation for sustained community wealth building.”
The list of candidates in this ward is as follows:
- Ballantine, David Craig – Alliance for Democracy and Freedom
- Deepnarain, Niel – Scottish Family Party – Christian Values
- Gregson, Pete – Workers Party of Britain
- Martinico, Lorenzo – Scottish Greens
- McGilvray, Silas – Scottish National Party (SNP)
- McLaughlin, Andrew – Reform UK
- Olech, Peter – Communist Party of Britain
- Owen, Liss – Scottish Liberal Democrats
- Wyke, Jim Patrick – Scottish Labour Party
- Young, Haris – Scottish Conservative and Unionist
Where does he stand on rape? Green party appear to endorse it certainly are doing nothing to censure the MSP who thinks it is on a spectrum despite it being widely condemned. Is this candidate a British citizen and not on a visa? Greens only seem to mention climate when elections comer up. Whatever sexual preferences people hold are a private matter and provided they do not harm others or affect children there are two genders male and female and are assigned at birth.
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