Community Voices is an interview series where Michael Avila and Ani Kanakaki speak to a range of folks from the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland about the work they’re doing to bring about positive change. The series, formally known as #AtsUsNai, is produced in partnership with AvilaMedia and funded by the Community Relations Council‘s Media Grant Scheme. Their latest interview is with Malachai O’Hara, a community activist and Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Northern Ireland.

*Note: Due to ongoing restrictions due to Covid-19, ‘Community Voices’ will continue without filmed interviews*

Many of us perceive politicians as distant and not firmly rooted in the communities they represent. However, there are those that go above and beyond the call, taking pride in defying stereotypes.

Councillor Malachai O’Hara, now the Deputy Leader of the Green Party and a Belfast City Councillor, is one such politician who has worked in the community since the early years of Northern Ireland’s peace process. This grassroots approach permeates everything he does in politics today.

Malachai, or ‘Mal’, as he is affectionately known, never specialised in one particular area of community work, but has thrived tackling multiple issues affecting Belfast’s communities, from addressing legacy, socioeconomic deprivation and promoting mental health, to advocating for LGBTQ rights and curbing climate change.

Malachai said that he has had this social justice ethos as early as the age of 10, when he conducted a presentation in school on Nelson Mandela. This urge to build a better society is something that has evolved naturally over the years and has been honed throughout his professional life.

He has also been dedicated to undertaking cross-community work in some of the communities one might think would be the most hostile to him. What he has found in his time working in communities is, no matter what the community you are working on behalf of, once you are accepted in, you are a part of it.

After the connections I have made throughout this city, I feel welcome pretty much anywhere I go, and that’s a testament to the great sense of community and people we have in Northern Ireland.

Social justice

Malachai has worked in a variety of roles as a community worker, health practitioner, activist and campaigner.

He began his early years working for the Belfast Trust delivering sex education programmes in the community. He then moved to Ireland’s largest LGBTQ organisation where he managed a range of health programmes for almost eight years. He had a stint at Beat Carnival on the Shankill Road, where he facilitated various art and Peace IV programmes which utilised the arts as a means to transform issues of identity and further reconciliation in West Belfast. He later joined the Greater Village Regeneration Trust as a health worker.

In all areas, he aided communities to make improvements in promoting mental health awareness, sexual education and well-being, while addressing issues of socioeconomic deprivation on a cross-community basis.

Though Malachai, as both a Catholic and a member of the LGBTQ community, had his reservations working in some of these areas – especially in the early years after the peace agreement – he said after a few sessions, he was accepted right in. He relayed that it was his own prejudices he had to get over rather than perceptions coming from the ‘host’ community, which was profoundly transformative for him moving forward.

Malachai found the catalyst for real change in the grassroots was getting people to see that their issues are the same:

While, yes, they may fly different flags and hold different cultural traditions in each community, everyday issues are the same – feeding one’s family, paying bills, health and education. If you could get people to the point of realising that issues were synonymous in both communities, people really started to make amends and build commonality.

Though he has entered the political arena, he is still active in the community. In his work through the Council and partnering with the Spectrum Centre on the Shankill, the community has pulled together to establish a soup kitchen to serve vulnerable people during the Covid-19 crisis.

The LGBTQ community

Before his ascension into politics, Malachai had been working tirelessly with the Rainbow Project – Ireland’s largest LGBTQ organisation – prior to running for election in 2016. He began his work with the organisation in the health services, promoting awareness around mental and sexual health.

During his time at Rainbow, he would become the Vice Chair of the Equal Marriage Campaign, which would ultimately find legislative success in 2019.

Mal stated that while attaining equal marriage is quite the achievement, issues for the LGBTQ community do not stop there. He explained that ongoing issues to address include equal access to services, health inequalities, hate crime, gender recognition and self-identification.

One segment that significantly lags behind others from LGBTQ backgrounds is the Trans community – especially in terms of progress towards equality. Despite this, Belfast can proudly boast of having the Belfast Trans Resource Centre – the only such centre in Western Europe. Malachai says if you want an example of grassroots community organising, then look no further than here.

Malachai co-hosted the ‘Alternative Queer Ulster’ rally on the steps of Stormont in 2018. This event served as a platform for people within the LGBTQ community that normally don’t feel they have a voice and allowed people to speak out individually about issues affecting them.

Mal also listed education as another systemic roadblock in addressing LGBTQ issues, with widespread bullying of LGBTQ students in schools:

Imagine having to show up at a place that is unsafe for you to be for 2/3 of the year that you simply cannot avoid – that’s the reality many LGBTQ pupils live with. We need an inclusive curriculum and sexual education that is fit for purpose in all schools. Most importantly, we need to make sure our schools are safe for everyone, of every walk of life.

Malachai’s early years working in grassroots health education and advocating for LGBTQ rights have placed him well to speak out and help tackle these issues.

Mental health & suicide

Mal views the current measures put in place in Northern Ireland to address mental health and suicide as completely inadequate. He said that while NI has more suicide cases per capita than any other part of the UK or Ireland, we spend far less money on mental health than any other region.

What exacerbates level of suicide in Northern Ireland is the combination of the legacy of the conflict and the highest levels of poverty in the UK. He said that, while the conflict wholeheartedly was a negative thing, for some people affected the most by it, they feel there is a lack of the sense of community that was present in those days. The conflict also kept out some of the negative effects of consumerism and individualism that permeated the West in those years, which has also made some people feel further isolated.

Having personally struggled growing up in Northern Ireland as a member of the LGBTQ community, Malachai is well aware that this issue disproportionately affects this segment of society. Studies have shown that a quarter of the LGBTQ population have attempted suicide and a third have self-harmed at some point in their lives – a stark reality to say the least.

This led Malachai to join the board of the Lighthouse Charity, which addresses issues of suicide awareness and prevention in North Belfast. He’s still involved in the board today and advocates daily for more mental health services in his Council role:

When you see numbers like that in a country already going through a suicide epidemic, its unfathomable that mental health services are continually underfunded. We now have more than 4,000 victims of suicide since the beginning of the peace process, meaning more people have died through self-harm than throughout the entirety of the conflict.

Some of us can remember the investment that was made here to end ‘our Troubles’ – imagine the same effort was made to end this ‘these troubles’.

Environmentalism

Malachai joined the Green Party for a reason. As you can guess, he is also passionate about the environment. He sees improving the environment as a social justice issue.

According to Mal, air pollution affects communities that cause the least amount of it, the most. It is typically working class areas of urban Belfast – who don’t have the same access to cars – that are affected by commuters that work in the city and live elsewhere. These communities also typically lack trees and green spaces. This has a knock on effect on the health of people residing there too, increasing the likelihood of respiratory disease and further exacerbating what can already be a dismal environment to live in.

If you think air pollution is something to take lightly, heed this statistic:  A recent study by Green Party activists concluded that of over 130 areas tested for nitrogen-dioxide levels across greater Belfast, 28 of them are in violation of the European limit. For a mid-size city in a small corner of an island, this is quite telling.

On a positive note, Malachai said that there is cross-party support for addressing this issue, which is vitally important and perhaps one of the issues that can bring the parties together.

The Green Party is now advocating at the Council level for the ‘pedestrianisation’ of Belfast, expanding and improving mass transit and making the city more walkable with green spaces to improve air pollution. “We need to get over the ‘cult of the car’.”

To Mal, this is just doing Northern Ireland’s part to tackle climate change and improve the health and well-being of its citizens.

The future

We can take a lot from Malachai O’Hara. He has refused to reduce himself to one particular area of societal transformation, taking on a variety of obstacles to help Northern Ireland move forward. He genuinely believes in a society dedicated to inclusive growth:

For too long we have viewed ‘growth’ in terms of economic growth. What does it matter if the economy is growing if the community isn’t? We need to be empowering communities, not exploiting them.

He also illustrates the crossover between community activism and the elected political arena. The two aren’t always easily separated:

My experience in the grassroots is my motivation for getting anything done in politics. I got fed up with shouting at the TV – ‘Do something!’ In my new role, I always try to think back on the impact the policies I advocate for will have on local communities – if it’s not benefitting them, then what’s the point?

Well, Malachai O’Hara is doing more than ‘something’. Belfast is blessed is to have someone with the capacity and experience of Councillor O’Hara shaping its future.

AvilaMedia is a social enterprise running community and research projects across Northern Ireland. If you’re interested in being interviewed for the #AtsUsNai project, you can get in contact with AvilaMedia here.