My values and goals

Ideologically, I am strongly left-leaning, because vulnerable groups such as small-scale entrepreneurs, children, the elderly, low-income earners, the unemployed, students, immigrants and solo households are repeatedly excluded from right-wing policy-making. The left is a party for all, which seeks a genuinely economically, socially and ecologically just society.

I’m a board member of the Helsinki LEFT, a chapter led by immigrants whose main language is English. Over 20% of Helsinki’s residents are immigrants whose mother tongue is not Finnish. At the same time, their human and worker rights are being weakened. The government and especially the Finns’ party pursue notoriously anti-immigration policies, spreading disinformation about immigration-related problems. The reality is that immigrants are vital to Finland’s future, and population estimates have stated that the number of immigrants will reach 40,000 per year.

The current government does not represent me or my vision for Finland and Helsinki. Now we are ready to throw away the development and equality we have built due to far-right and nativist policies. I find it demeaning to the people of Finland, and it does not respect Finland’s history and the values on which it has been built. Internationally, Finland is one of the most progressive countries in the world – I want it to remain so.

I have worked mainly with grassroots communities and actors in Finland and abroad on human rights, strengthening local livelihoods, gender equality, democracy and political freedom. It is important to remember that the same mechanisms and power relations underlie different phenomena globally, they just take different forms in local societies. So, for example, poverty is driven by the same economic ideology regardless of the country.

My political values and principles are defined by the idea of shared freedom. Shared freedom is not about owning the freedom of a particular group of people, but producing it through sharing and action. We are currently living in a very polarised time, which is reflected in the left-right divide. This arises because one group believes that the other group wants power that is theirs to possess and that is taken away from them, and this power is used to ‘subordinate’ the other group. In reality, the left has a fundamentally different conception of ownership and power. Leftist thinking stems from a diverse society where everyone can be who they are without using or benefitting from power at the expense of others. This idea of a shared and diverse society is at the heart of democracy, without which it cannot be equal.

Right-wing thinking sees state management as if like running a business, which means that all activities must produce economic value. Other public sector activities are seen as extra costs. Private market logic based on ownership cannot own society as a whole, otherwise it risks hijacking other functions that are important to society, such as culture, art, education or health care. Public and private activities must therefore be targeted at the right social, economic and ecological goals without unsustainable exploitation of labour or nature. The focus should be on responsible and democratic entrepreneursip, where wealth is not accumulated to the few.
I do not want to see vital public services such as social services, health care, education or civil society undermined in Finland. Cutting these will directly impoverish the welfare state, democracy and human rights that form the basis of Finland’s vision.