Kleurrijk Platform Amsterdam

Kleurrijk Platform Amsterdam

Past tuesday I attended the first meeting of what hopes to become the new multicultural werkgroep in Amsterdam. A group of people, after their work in the gemeenteraad elections, want to give continuity to their efforts for a more colourful politics, and have decided to become a party organization. If things go as they should, Groenlinks Amsterdam counts with a motivated group of people willing to tackle the allochtoon issue.

Hard to imagine a better moment for this development. As we know, the previous local elections were a success of sorts. We did increase wonderfully our participation in local governments. There is no doubt that Groenlinks is a force to be reckon with in the local politics, surely for the coming four years. But if we count votes, the message is less clear. We did not increase significantly our share of the vote. As I have argued in a previous column, is not that we won, but it is that our political enemies have lost. Now, we could endlessly discuss this analysis of the results, but one fact remains above discussion. Eighty percent of the allochtoon electorate voted for the PvdA. Not for us, then. And we being the party that better represent allochtonen, as we ourselves think, the question remains hot: what went wrong? Why these people is voting for others?

Along the few years that I have as an active Groenlinks member, many answers have been offered here in my columns and in the discussions of the landelijk Kleurrijk Platform. We are not clear enough, we tailor the approach evolved from other minorities to the migrant minority (such as talk about integration as emancipation), we do not have politicians able to counter argue the right wings bullies like Ali, or Verdonk. But beyond this reasons, there is a more basic one. As a party we do not have allochtoon members. Or we have far too few.

In this context is that the start of the Kleurrijk Platform Amsterdam is a welcome development. The meeting that I attend invest time and effort in think which groups must be reached in Amsterdam. That is a needed line of thinking. And again, not a lonely one. In Utrecht the partijbestuur has decided to appoint a bestuurlid only focused in the attraction of nieuwe doelgroepen. And both in Rotterdam, Amersfoort and Utrecht we have appointed wethouders directly related to the multiculti portfolio.

So lets hope that in the dynamic entity that Groenlinks is, the thinking about allochtonen, and their inclusion in our kader keeps a priority. And beware; we need not to follow the ethnic model here. Both the wethouder and bestuurlid of Utrecht busy with the allochtoon issue are white nederlanders. Also the discussion leader of the meeting that I attend in Amsterdam. There is certainly nothing wrong with this reality. Taking the allochtoon question seriously, and investing party energy in answering it, do not need per se that black skinned people direct the process. What it needs is that the allochtonen themselves take our party seriously and come and join our debate. Groenlinks has increased her presence in the local governments, and that undermines the idea that the PvdA is the only chance that an allochtoon has to participate in politics. Our homework now is to support the initiatives of Utrecht and Amsterdam.