internet question: GL meetings online AND alive

A question for the experts out there:

I want the possibility that GL meetings can be visited online. The idea would be to have a computer with camera in the meeting, so that people that want to attend, but is far away, or has to stay home babysitting... could log in and attend the meeting from home. So, I want to simply setup a videoconference system, so that members prevented to show up in the vergaderzaal could follow it (and participate in it) from elsewhere.

That would require some software. I can imagine several possibilities, but probably there are some of you people that do this already (for fun, or for your jobs). Any suggestion how to set it up?

Perhaps needles to say, this idea comes from the situation at the Kleurrijk Platform. We want to involve "multicultis" that are active locally... but it is hard to get somebody from say groningen to come regularly to meetings in Utrecht, or in A'dam. The participation drempel would be lowered if we have a videoconference system. Not to mention travelling costs... both in money and in pollution! I suppose that the idea could be useful for other landelijke werkgroepen... maybe some do it already?

I'll be looking forward to reactions...

The L word

Leadership, leadership! We need another leader. Or we need more leadership. Or we need less leadership? The L word becomes -very fast- a lastig word. Or rather a boring word.

After some initial words of satisfaction, and then after the cold blooded analysis of numbers from David Rietveld, it is clear that Groenlinks has been defeated in the last election. Does that have to mean that the relevant issue is the leadership of Femke? I hope that the antics of Verdonk and Rutte give us the needed soberness to evaluate what happens when we focus on the poppertjes. A sorry state of affairs, that is. The VVD today follows the known dictum: “When in confusion, run in circles and shout” What they are shouting is leaders, leaders! We need a better leader! Or: I'm the leader! I'm the leader!

Are we going to follow suit here?

Yesterday I wrote about coaches and ceos. The intended point is that a political party is nor a football team nor a business. Moreover, Femke (in principle, but only her, also the party top) has deserved our support for the course that she set up. Part of the decided strategy has not been successful, at least not in the elections. So now is time to evaluate what went wrong, and what changes are we willing to do. Then it makes sense to see which team is going to carry those changes, if changes we decide to have.

I am strongly convinced that we need more clarity in our political activism. But let's not allow ourselves to get convinced that clarity boils down to single words. Coaching or Leadership, Coalitions or CEOs are merely headlines of a discussion. What we need to think is in the content of the discussion. Let's help the partijbestuur to organize that sotto voce coming discussion on our ideas in the coming year, let's see who is willing to walk into the partijbestuur from december onwards. As you dutchies say, there is enough work to do in the winkel. Not the time to run in circles screaming for the head of somebody, rather the time to use our own heads.

The C word(s)

Coach, coalition, CEO. All C words. It looks like we wonder a lot about them recently. We groenlinksers, that is.

To start with the Coach -or CEO-. The metaphor of the football team is apt. If the team plays nicely, but win no match, the owners are due to change the coach. So: are we intending to change coach Femke? Should we?

The word CEO comes next. In a business is the CEO the main strategist and coordinator, able not only to give the right vision of future strategy, but also able to coordinate the capabilities of the company. It is true that an amount of disgruntled groenlinksers are around, asking for more left, more action, more clarity, more environment, more... It looks like this group is not happy with the way Femke leads our boat.

Both C words, the coach and the CEO, are no good for Femke's future as groenlinks leader.
But what about the coalition word?

It seems to me that an undercurrent of groenlinksers, far larger than the ones that publicly criticize Femke's leadership, is just waiting. Up to the moment in which finally a coalition will start working. It seems clear that the CDA-PvdA-SP combination has a big chance, at least right now. But what about in some weeks from now? Or in some months? What about the old view of groenlinks as hinge party, capable to play a definitive role in some sort of CDA-VVD-GL alike coalition (very unlikely) or even in a CDA-PvdA-GL alike one... What about that chance?

It could all boil down to nothing. It could be that the current combination gets a fair shoot at government, or a rightwing coalition ends up in power after a long negotiation night. Who knows? What I have heard too frequently lately is that, up to the moment in which the chips will be down in the table, GL is not ready to close the account Halsema.

No nice result for groenlinks... shall we go back to our bases?

Seven seats is a defeat. Whether we like it or not, we have been rebuffed by the electorate of NL. The ones that abandoned the -sinking- ship of the PvdA did not jump in our trendy and wind-powered boat. Neither choose they for our hybrid auto. Our potential electors preferred the delivery bus of Jan Marijnissen, -probably powered by cheap and good old diesel- which indeed delivered many -many!- new seats.

Even the “allochtoon hope” went for the chauvinistic SP. Multiculturality a la groenlinks -if there was any doubt- is dead in allochtoon netherlands. The ethnic voter of NL decided, if Focuz got it right, for the unique guarantee of left wing that they could see, and that was the SP.

So, what can we learn from the SP? For once, I am not the one to propose a left radicalization of Groenlinks. For sure we will have this discussion in the party, when, from January onwards, the bestuur will tackle a beginsel programma. But there I stand on the side of Cees Vendrik, Bart Snels and Femke. I see no progressive option to the libertarian ideas that were sketched in Vrijheid Eerlijk Delen, and implemented in our election program. That is the way to go.

My question, then, is not where. But how. And with whom.

And that is where we have a big fu--ing lot to learn from the SP. Who is going to carry our ideas to a future, winning election? No other than groenlinksers. My answer, then, is the kader. Today in the Volkskrant an SP prominent remarks that the SP counts with as many active members as all other parties together. That is what we have to learn from the SP. Not their ideas, but yes to their activism.

My experience in the past four years as active member of groenlinks is that we have a party seriously focused in our leaders. Werkgroepen that have no relevance to the current work of fractieleden (european, national or local level) survive in the shadows of the irrelevance. If the kader organizes something, is to back up our leadership. But the -libertarian- initiative of a self standing groenlinks member is hard to find. Surely, groenlinksers have all busy agendas and are all involved in many clubs. But do we coordinate that broad spectrum of activism with the politics of our party? Hardly. Does our party uses the immense societal experience of groenlinks members? Seldom. So far, that has not been our style. We have preferred the silent and elegant work of the good expert, or the good activist, able to carry her -or his- agenda in scarce contact with his -or her- party.

Groenlinks does not profit from the expertise of her members.

My way to go, then, is to focus in a party that can really activate her members. A party that recognizes and uses the potentialities of our ledenbestand. Not only to fill seats in a debate with fractieleden, but to discuss, to carry actions, to give flyers. The groenlinksers, the huge amount of groenlinksers that are active in this society, should come our of the closet. And our party should welcome them.

For a reverse of this defeat.

The country looks at hers navel... and we loose: The chauvinism of the SP and the PvV carry the day.

To think in the composition of the next parliament, go back to the referendum on the european constitution. Against the advice of most big parties, the treaty was rejected. At that moment we were faced with a sub-estimated current of opinion. When deciding for a treaty -not even a constitution- that seemed to give more power to Brussels, the majority of the country defied their political leaders and said no. In one way or another, that referendum brought the traditional understanding of NL as an outgoing and globalized country to an end.

The Netherlands is a chauvinist country.

Now, turn to the results of yesterday election. The winners, even if they are not likely to take part in the coming government, are the SP and the PvV. It is not a coincidence that both were opposed to the european treaty. It is neither a coincidence that both are conservative parties, even if at odds in ideology. Think in Groenlinks again, and remember that our election program was -by far and large- the best international minded set of proposals. Consider our far reaching internationalism. It is no surprise that we loose this election.

In an anti globalization climate, Groenlinks is the looser.

So far we have been focus on intelligent renovation. Our imago, trendy and modern, speaks of a sophisticated reform, not of a conservative revolution. The higher newcomer in our list of candidates is an internationalist. But for electing NL, internationalists are not priority. The winning slogans of the elections are “less power for brussels” and “less islam for Holland”. Both ideas are misleading and mistaken, and nevertheless, election winners.

We are told that groenlinks will discuss her ideology from january onwards. But perhaps our ideology is not so much the problem. Perhaps what we should learn, and discuss, and take lessons from, is the country in which we live. This elections will not change my mind about the need of international engagement. But it surely will make me think about the relevance that this particular issue has for The Netherlands today.

If you care for ideologies, this country is polarizing. The big increase in votes is in the far left and in the far right. But the political ideas of a population of 16 million persons do not change in five years. The big parties are loosing ground, since long time ago. The image that Netherlanders have of Netherlands is being slowly but constantly changing. And the winners of this round has one thing in common. Both want back to the past in which this country, their country, was united and powerful. As in other countries of the world, and in other times, the discredit of social and christian democrats opens the space for nationalism.

The country splits in the ideas... and we loose: The PvdA to the SP and the VVD to Wilders.

The past Sunday I assisted a debate in the Kwakoe podium, in Amsterdam, to discuss the groenlinks program with migrants, mostly from surinamese background. For a while I chatted with Cees Vendrik, before the debate started. Cees told me that one of the most clear results of the “Fortuyn revolution” was the irrelevance hat the content has today in the politics. A similar comment comes from Tom de Graaf today in the Volkskrant. He claims that the politics of today pays attention to performance and not any longer to contents.

So it shows the results of the elections.

If anything is clear is that we live in a divided country. Few years ago the election was carried by the populist right, and today is carried by the populist left. Groenlinks, in the center not being populist but surely leftwing, had loosed votes. Against every poll, the party of Wilders has won even more seats than us. So what we are looking at is a big movement against the neo conservative policy of the CDA, which express itself in his own “garantie op links”, the SP, instead of Groenlinks. And a resilient and relevant movement to the right, which votes Wilders instead of voting VVD.

In this environment, Groenlinks is the looser.

It could be that Cees, or De Graaf, are right. In a political environment in which performance stays on top of everything, Groenlinks has no chance. Our standpoints are nuanced, and surely not populist. We do not want to change that, and we will not. But under this analysis, we are doomed to the slow decrease that D66 faces today.

There is, though, a different analysis. It is hard to believe that Jan performs so much better than Femke. But it is possible -or at least discussable- that Jan is more clear than Femke. It is not about standpoints, and it is not about performance. It is about clarity.

Clarity is what the two big winners of this election share. We can argue against the SP and the PvV with hundred arguments, but there is no doubt in the voter what they stand for. Against muslims and against Balkenende. Well to the right and well to the left.

Irt might be that this country is hankering for performance. But it has rewarded ideological simplicity... at each extreme of the spectrum.

werkgroepen at groenlinks utrecht, III: meeting day

Werkgroepen dag

One of the things that I checked in my walking around werkgroepen inside the Utrecht afdeling is that we count with several clubs that are well aware of the existence of other clubs... but do not have much contact with them.

Of course, one might ask why a groenlinkser busy with environment activism should have anything to do with groenlinksers migrant organizations. Actually, most active groenlinksers have a really busy agenda, and groenlinks activism is one among many other activities. So in principle is always a bit difficult to get an active member to do a bit more, outside her -or his- sphere of actions. Nevertheless, one could always imagine that groenlinksers can profit from meeting other groenlinksers.

To give a couple of examples, the Linksom redactie is always on the lookout for activities that can be reported in our ledenblaad. Many times we are too slow to find what is going on, not because nothing is going on, but because we don't know who is doing what... and when. Or there are werkgroepen that consider the possibility of organizing a politiek cafe, but have little contact with the werkgroep politiek cafe.

So it is easy to imagine that werkgroepen could profit from knowing each other. But how? What would be the activity that would be attractive for werkgroep members, would not take a lot of time, and would offer a net gain of experience?

Thinking along this lines, I have a simple proposal. Imagine a saturday/sunday afternoon. After lunch and before dinner, there is a window of couple useful hours. Along this time, werkgroepen are called to the partijkantoor. For welcoming we could hear in -say half an hour- a little talk on current bestuur plans. Then, each werkgroep is asked to give a five minutes presentation of their actions. Considering that the afdeling utrecht has some seven different active clubs, we are 45 minutes later. We have some half an hour left, and that can be used to shoot questions around.

With this setup in mind, we have a two hours session, in which clubs of active members of groenlinks will know what their collegas are busy with. More interesting than that, we would have associated names with faces, perhaps even some telephone numbers and emails would be exchanged. Surely, everybody knows that there is such a thing as a cultuur werkgroep. But would you be able to greet one of her members in the street? Or, would you know whom to contact when hearing about organized Zuilenaren that are busy with air pollution? Yeah, to the fractie... but whom from the milieu werkgroep? Would the milieu werkgroep care to know? This trivial questions, if properly answered, could help in making groenlinks utrecth a better oiled machine... or a well connected ecosystem, if the technological metaphor is unpleasant.

werkgroepen at groenlinks utrecht, II: internet

I am convinced that well functioning werkgroepen of groenlinks must have their own internet site. The afdeling utrecht has done some work about it. So far it is possible to surf the site, and eventually come to descriptions of werkgroepen, mostly updated, with at least the contact data from the werkgroep contact person. The question is if this is enough. And if the asnwer is not, then what should be in a werkgroepen site? It can not be too much, because not all werkgroepen have the time, nor the expertise to keep a full site well updated.

Accordingly, I have here put together a list of site-items that I consider minimal for a werkgroep-site. It is my opinion that the afdeling should offer them as a possibility to the existing werkgroepen, and also offer the (minimal) expertise to keep this information updated. If you read further, there isn't more than what a normal werkgroep already does, or have. The proposal then, is to organize the existing way of working, the existing organization, and the existing products of werkgroepen, in internet. A party should be transparent, and werkgroepen are fundamental in the good life of a party. So, take a look at this list, and react! Should more be asked/offered? Or less?


Minimal internet for werkgroepen

Text

Description of the group
History
notulen (if produced)
Last produced documents
photos

Invitational

agenda of activities
meetings dates
contact data

Linked

internet sites
other organizations
relevant parts of government
contact fractielid
other politicians

Interactive

possibility of being member registered online
discussion pieces with possibility of reaction (?)
blogs (not per se from members)
own forum, or stored discussion list (only for online members?)
standardized email list, possibility of register online (accessible archives)

21 minutes and integration

Out of a comment form Michel Klijmij, I remember that at least in this weblog, I have never written what I understand as “integration”. Obviously my readers know that I don't care that much about integration-as-writing-in-Dutch. And from my previous post it is clear that, at least for me, integration is not emancipation, nor emancipation is integration. So: what is integration?

I must recognize that my idea comes from a meeting that occurred in De Balie, say four years ago. There was then a day organized around migration. Speakers from academia were invited, and eventually their work was published in the Journal of Population Economics, I believe. A scientific meeting for researchers from migration studies happened in the days before, and the event at De Balie was an open discussion with the public about their results. Of course, at some moment the researchers were debating what was to be understood by integration. Different opinions were exchanged, and surely the cultural view was discussed. Surely some scientists defended the view that an integrated foreigner is the person that shares a big deal of the culture of the country in which he lives. Then the scientist expend some time trying to figure out if such a thing as “the culture of a country” can be defined. Not surprisingly, that was a confusing discussion, without agreement. Finally, a Dutch researcher,with a PhD in Belgium and currently carrying research in Paris brought some order, or at least some sense, in the fuzzy discussion about culture: “integration should be measurable, and there are three areas of public policy that we can evaluate and measure. We can count how many people has a job, what are the education levels, and how is the situation in the housing market.” Simply said: how you work, where you live, and what's your education level.

Since then, I keep this criteria in mind at talking about integration. A person is integrated in a society if he or she studied, works and lives in ways that are comparable to the rest of the population of the country. If you want, call it fair participation: you are integrated if you fairly participate in the labour, educational and housing markets.

Ok. That was integration. Now, let's go back to the enquete 21 minutes. The NRC claims the saturday that integration is a concern of autochtonen, not of allochtonen. Would that be true? Indeed, if you compare the attention that integration gets in the autochtoon population, you get 29%, a high percentage indeed. Turks give this category 15% relevance, Marokans 21%. Let's assume that those percentages are indeed statistically different. Now... what about integration regarding work, housing or education? Are those issues relevant for the allochtoon population of NL? There the answer becomes fuzzier. Averaging, allochtonen care for education as much as autochtonen, 20%. Then, about housing, it looks like the black neighbourhoods issue is not really an issue: autochtonen care 6% and allochtonen care 7% about housing. But hey, werkloosheid does matter. Autochtonen think of it as a rather irrelevant problem, with 5% of attention, in the position 15 of a list of 17 issues. But allochtonen are concerned as much as 13%, putting this issue inside the top-ten concerns.

So what is here to be learned for groenlinks, and our priorities around “the allochtoon question”? Well, it is certainly a good choice to make discrimination at the working place the central issue in the campaign directed to young allochtonen, as the choice of our campaign is. Once again, a vague word such as integration does not raises the attention of people. But being out of a job, that matters. As the politicologist Jean Tilly has repeatedly said, the strive for integration should be focused on socio-economic questions, and not any longer on cultural assimilation. The cultural flag, a very right wing (and racist, with copyright to Tofik) flag, is not ours to rally for. Lets stay in track with our left agenda, and keep busy with labour. It is not emancipation, and it is not even the economy (stupid?)... it is your job.

21 minutes

The enquete 21 minutes is out. Does it matter for Groenlinks? Well, let's answer this question in positive. It does matter. Three reasons, among many:

1) From the undecided voter, groenlinks is the party with more chances.
2) The acherban from Groenlinks is the more restricted.
3) Groenlinks is the party that has lost more votes from the allochtoon population.

Lets go in these points:

The undecided, and our restricted interests

The perspective that 21minutes gives will certainly make the strategic council of groenlinks happy. Indeed Groenlinks is the party that retains most former voters. Only the CDA enjoys our 52% of re-incident voters, meaning that 52% of the people that vote groenlinks in the previous elections, will vote groenlinks again. The estrategic inset of groenlinks campaign was to preserve our voters as a first priority, and in the view of 21minutes, the strategy works out. Now, consider the challengers that such strategy produce. From the people that does not know yet what to vote, a huge majority considers GL as their likely choice (41%, followed by 37% of the SP). The question remains: If we have such a big potential in the undecided voter, does it make sense to campaign for the people that votes GL always? My answer would be no, not really. It seems that GL has still to want to get all those votes waiting for us to be obtained. It seems to me that groenlinksers are just too confortable in our position as small party, with a restricted set of interesting issues. Consider the conceptual spread of the groenlinks acterban. There is no other party with an achterban that cares for less issues than us. My thinking here is that we have to dare to be more ambitious, both conceptually and strategically. Reading what dutch people care for, groenlinks certainly cares for much of the same: more solidarity, better social care, better environment. But we should want to become a real alternative to the PvdA.




The bleeding allochtoon voter, and the Kleurrijk Platform

The bleeding, and not the bloody. Once upon a time, or say, in the last national elections, Groenlinks enjoyed a luxurious position with the allochtoon voter. We were indeed the party which allochtonen wanted to vote for. No longer. We are the party that most votes preserve, as I said above... but we are also the party that has lost most votes from the allochtoon population. The allochtoon blood from our party is bleeding away. And that is a serious problem. It seems to me unneeded to argue that a by-product of the fortuin revolution is the hardening of our society in regards of the allochtoon. So I would expect that allochtonen would, if anything, fly over to the ranks of groenlinks. That has not happened. Instead, we have loose them. Why?

Well, several answers are possible. As vz of the Kleurrijk Platform, I recognize that our werkgroep, if anything at all, has diminished its importance inside Groenlinks. In the last four years we have disagreed with the crucial decisions of our party regarding concepts and strategies towards the allochtoon question. We did not, and do not believe that integration can happen through emancipation. We though then that this was an unfortunate political choice. And we disagreed with the choices that this campaign has made. The multicultural issue should not be framed as a tolerance issue. Migrants in this country do not wish to be tolerated, nobody does. The migrants, as the 21minutes enquete shows, strongly care for the core issues of left wing parties: social security and economical inequality. Groenlinks does not need to become a allochtoon populist party to regain her votes, groenlinks needs only to work her own, left wing agenda better.

But of course, it is just too easy to claim that because groenlinks do not agree with the Kleurrijk Platform, groenlinks has lost the allochtoon vote. From my viewpoint, the Kleurrijk Platform in the particular, and the active migrant groenlinkser in the general must be much more assertive inside the party life. Inside groenlinks we are bad politicians. We have allowed our kader to bleed away, and we have failed to convince our partijgenoten of our views. From the viewpoint of the Kleurrijk Platform, improvement in groenlinks starts by improvement of the migrant politician inside Groenlinks.

global ranks

With the new number of Foreign Policy comes the sixth version of their globalization index. This one corresponds to data from 2004. Surprinsingly enough, NL comes lower this year. Well, perhaps is not a surprise, because NL goes on loosing her position in the top ten globalized countries. Two years ago it was number 4, in 2005 number 5 and now we go down to number 6.



But given that politicians have discovered once again global warming with the Stern report, perhaps this graph is more interesting. Look at the position of NL in respect to production of pollution



So...not much to be proud of... will the elections result change this? One can always hope!