A member of British Parliament is visiting upstate New York as a guest of an area Congressman.
Gurinder Singh Josan, MP for Smethwick, an industrial town in the West Midlands of England, is visiting the Capital Region this weekend as part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. Josan is shadowing Democratic Congressman Paul Tonko.
"We come over, four days we spend in Washington, DC, visiting various departments, groups and having various conversations, and then we go back to a district with a congressman to learn more about what goes on at community level," said Josan. "And I've been very lucky to be linked in with Congressman Tonko, and so I'm here now for a couple of days, just following him around, understanding how he goes about his work, representing the constituency."
Josan says even though the U.K. and U.S. are separated by an ocean, the people that live in his and Tonko’s districts share similar concerns – despite their size differences.
“So we as members of Parliament in the UK, we have constituency about 80,000 people, and these are obviously much bigger, but in terms of the community engagement stuff, the casework that's done, the engagement and this meeting today, that's very similar," Josan said. "It is about advocacy. It is about representing the communities, about understanding what's happening in your community, being able to take those issues back to Parliament, or, in this case, to Congress. And so there are a lot of similarities.”
Josan, a member of the Labour Party, was elected in July 2024 to lead the Smethwick district, where he was born and brought up.
His itinerary this weekend includes events, visits, and tours throughout the Capital Region.
On Friday, Josan accompanied Tonko at the Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence, Underground Railroad Education Center on Albany's Livingston Avenue. There, he observed the New York Congressman meeting with ALL(bany) Together Project Community Partners whose efforts to advance public health and climate solutions for the City of Albany had been funded through a $20M grant recently pulled back by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“So you know this issue here, we're talking about climate change, we're talking about community development," Josan said. "That's that. You know, climate change is a global issue, and we do have to deal with it. So government might have, might have canceled this funding today, but ultimately, the issues won't go away. They'll get worse. So and where you have a community which is so engaged and so much fighting for the facilities in their community that is so powerful, and I think the people of Albany are so lucky to have so many fantastic organizations who are willing to put the hard work in on their behalf to improve conditions here.“
