Groenlinks' week, monday

The summer is definitively marking its entrance in our latitude, so accordingly people work harder and harder, in the last jump before the long summer holidays. The same for groenlinks, of course. The week that is just ended had every single day a groenlinks meeting.

The tale begins the monday, in which by first time I joined the campaign commission of Groenlinks Utrecht. Our club is responsible of creating and coordinate the campaign for the local elections of March 006. Great expectations indeed. In Utrecht GL is one of the biggest parties, currently the second. A election strategy has the challenge of capitalize our presence and at least maintain an surely increase our share of the votes. A challenge and an extremely interesting task for me. In my past years active in GL, I have been concentrated in the internal party. Now it's time to get out and learn about our voters, their desires, their ideas, and their expectations. And accordingly our meeting started talking about different ways to see our electorate. Is the GL voter a cosmopolitan? Or a postmaterialist? Shall we instead focus in labor segments, thinking that GL voters are frequent in the welfare sector? Or should we base our campaign in neighborhoods that traditionally have voted GL? Can we learn something about the use of free time? Do our voters goes to a concert or to a park?

As you can see, the discussion here involves fundamental convictions of a politician. If you are a populist, your main aim is to please your elector. In the other extreme you should lead your elector. And a whole range of alternatives rage in the middle of these options. Interestingly enough, all options start with a good knowledge of who is your supporter. So discussing how do we classify our electorate reflects our fundamental understanding of our job as politicians. Our discussion is not closed, yet. What we reviewed were different ways to classify people, as for their convictions, or they profession, their living quarters or their conception of free time. And surely I incline myself for a sort of alternative viewpoint. Surely this discussion is interesting, but ultimately it might not matter that much who votes for us. What matters much more greatly is how clearly are we going to get our standing points across. Groenlinks is the party that dares to doubt, we say. It’s difficult to have a clear-cut message. The challenge for our campaign commission, then, is rather illustrate why politicians also have to doubt, instead of knowing who is going to vote for us.

Lenie Scholten, Kees Vendrik, Bas Roufs and Rene Boesten (from left to right) In the starting night of De Werkvloer

Tuesday and wednesday

The tuesday was one of the more successful days that I had had in GL yet. Since couple of years I have been clumsily tried to get involved in the economical thinking of our party, without success. The Kleurrijk Platform and the Utrecht fractie in the gemeenteraad were not interested in the discussion of allochtonous entrepreneurship. The europa workgroup did not have too much interest in discuss european economics neither. And the economical network did not work publicly. But finally, some six months ago Bas Roufs, Rene Boesten and I started a workgroup directed to the medium and small business (see previous post). The tuesday was the starting evening, say the public debut of the workgroup) and some thirty persons heard a panel of politicians and entrepreneurs. Definitively inside our party there is the growing conviction that more attention to economical questions must be given. The first hurdle, then, is passed with success. Thirty persons gathered for a nationl workgroup is a rather big amount. Now comes the real work. We will focus in an array of issues, hoping to produce discussion and position papers. Interested to participate? I am in charge of the innovation agenda and the coming reform of the social security system (in aspects relevant for small entrepreneurs). Rene will organize the discussion on sustainable development and social responsibility of entrepreneurs, and Bas will be busy with the green financing and the jump from freelancer to business owner. Other themas? write us a line! werkvloer@groenlinks.nl


Wednesday finally came, and the redaction of the Linksom meet in the house of Ad Uiterwall, our director. The Linksom is the newspaper of groenlinks utrecht, and, as far as I can tell, it is another successful example of continuity. The number that we discussed will be the fifth since we started as new redaction. Before our newspaper lacked regularity, due to a shortage in human resources. But the meeting of the wednesday proved to me that simply going on with a project brings success. The new redaction started with seven members, and was reduced shortly after to three. Nevertheless we went on, and after the regular publication of four numbers mostly made by us, articles from other members are flowing in. And our redaction also has three new members. Gewoon doen (just do it) is a well known dutch saying. And for what respects to the linksom, that remains true.

and some more!

some of the audience...

Going out of the meeting at 22:30... summer in Nijmegen!

thursday and friday

Thursday in nijmegen

The week coming closer to an end found me waiting for delayed trains in Utrecht station, evening of the Thursday. Eventually I make my way to a meeting of the multiculti workgroup of Groenlinks Nijmegen. As the ones that know me knows, the multicultural issue inside greenlings, and more seriously, in GL Utrecht, is one of my sore spots. In the almost three years that I am around the party we still do not manage to get to the headlines of the national press, continuously covered by hysteric rhetoric against foreigners in general, and the supposed failure of the multicultural society. Groenlinks has another view on the matter, but surely in Utrecht we have not been able to strongly get it across. Not so in Nijmegen. GL forms part of the local government, and the multicultural movement enjoys the presence of a well-coordinated group of Groenlinksers. I attend one of their meetings to discuss a product of the multiculti Utrecht workgroup, our “multicultural manifesto” (want to read it? www.scicha.org/GL/doc/multiculti.doc). And it was a lovely evening. I surely got sharp questions. For example one of the manifesto viewpoints is to get rid of the concept of static coexisting different cultures. Instead of multiculturalism, we would prefer to think in a polymorph society, in which each individual has a complex and probably unique set of allegiances to different concepts and countries. All good and well, but Sabrina Abdoelasier, my host and coordinator of the group, ask what about beleid then? Without “ethnic stickers” that can be tracked by policy makers, it would become very hard to evaluate the results of policy directed to minorities. Fair point, I would say. In any case this evening proves again that GL enjoys great expertise and capacities in her afdelingen. If only we, locally active members, would be more in contact with our peers in other cities…

Friday! Friday!!

Finally the end, coming with a smile and relax. Not a real discussion meeting, but after dinner I could enjoy the help of Gijs Termer, in working out some images for one of my shames inside groenlinks, the webpage of the Heerlen group. Already quite some time ago I promise to put it online, but a very busy agenda has prevented me so far of doing so. Well, one can always hope that it will be soon online, and in this blog I’ll be able to make propaganda for the link. Not yet, though. So I end up the week with more hope than reality to offer. After all, hope matters as well...