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...