Riding the young red wave

Mikkel Warming is not your typical, self-promoting mayor aspirant. As the city's first man for a party so egalitarian that it even refuses to name a chairman, Warming has no intention of drawing too much attention to his person.

'We're doing this as a team,' he told The Copenhagen Post. 'When people vote for The Red-Green Alliance, they vote for the team, not for the individual.'

Nevertheless, the 36-year-old Vesterbro native has been very much in the line of fire for his party after his predecessor at the top, Per Bregengaard, finished his term in the party's rotation system, which only allows each politician to occupy a post for eight years at a time.

Despite its origins in Denmark's Left Socialist, Communist, and Socialist Workers Parties, The Red-Green Alliance does not seem doomed to the fate of the Communist regimes of the past.

In fact, the party has seen a 50 percent boom in membership this past year, as young voters have flocked to join its ranks. Nationwide, the party has increased its following to 3739 compared with 2524 just one year ago. As the only party with average member age below 40, the Red-Green Alliance is the youngest party in parliament.

'I think we're advancing, but I can't say how many mandates we'll get,' Warming said, adding that the party currently held five out of a total of 55 seats in the city council.

'Our vision for Copenhagen is to protect, maintain, and develop the things that make the city special,' he said. 'It should be a good city, good to live in, good to work in, good to move around in, and it should have place for many different kinds of people.'

The Red-Green Alliance claims that housing prices have soared so that there is practically no room for the poorest to live in the city anymore.

'It's social selection,' he said. 'The poor are pressed out and the rich move in, and that makes Copenhagen more homogenous.'

The party has proposed to have apartment buildings built in the city, to create 5000 new council apartments to rent out for the poorest inhabitants.

Warming said that instead of cluttering the richest in some neighbourhoods and the poorest in others, every ghetto, rich and poor, should be broken up to ensure diversity in the city.

He said he abhorred the current discussion about the city's problem of immigrant ghettoes.

'It's just revolting,' he said. 'First they force people together and isolate them in ghettoes, and then they turn around and blame them for living in ethnic enclaves and refusing to integrate. If I was an immigrant and had to listen to politicians constantly criticising me, ranting and raving, I would isolate myself too. I would lock myself up in my apartment and watch al-Jazeera all day.'

Warming proposes that the city's schools should be given more resources to tackle the challenges of integrating immigrant children and workplaces should be encouraged to hire and train more immigrants.

'Using force won't do any good,' he said.

The Red-Green Alliance's policies encompass radical changes in the city's environmental and transport situation, by creating more green areas, improving bicycle lanes and collective traffic, and implementing road pricing to restrict car traffic in the city, especially downtown.

'Two-thirds of the city's residents do not have a car,' Warming pointed out. 'A vast majority takes the bike. But because of the cars, biking in Copenhagen isn't healthy. In fact, it's life-threatening. It's been estimated that 400 Danes die every year from pollution-related health problems. That's more than one a day!'

Warming does not beat about the bush about ways to finance his party's ambitious social and environmental policies. Parking fees should be raised, road pricing should provide more resources, and if that is not enough, his party is willing to consider raising taxes.

'Right now, the municipal tax in Copenhagen is 0.5 percent below the average tax rate in the country,' he said. 'If we can't find the money anywhere else, then maybe we should consider bringing the city's tax load closer to the average.'

Warming added that he did not believe the conventional Liberal idea that well-off companies and individuals would flee the city if taxes were raised.

'If Copenhagen is a good city to live in, then everything else will follow,' he said. 'If people are happy to live here, experience shows that businesses and investments will thrive here too.'