It did come to pass that I ended my dutch lessons, and I reached some sort of equilibrium in my not-so-new-anymore life in The Netherlands. The next step, of course, was to find a way into the local politics. It turned out to be a no brainer, since The Netherlands had a green party. All my political participation so far was at the left side of the spectrum, so I had become more and more aware of the deep connection between whatever left ideals might be, and environmental sustainability. I even helped prepare the Venezuelan delegation to the now epic Earth Summit in Rio 1992, where the term sustainable development was coined. In The Netherlands I knew that if I was going “to do” any politics, it should be linked to the environment. And so, the Netherlands had GroenLinks, and I was happy to join.
But GroenLinks is no more.
It is also true that I fall out from Groenlinks already few years ago. The work that I carried inside, at local, national and European level was more frequently than not focused on migration. I did collaborate with the writing of several election and ideological programs, coordinating workgroups busy with IT support, cadre formation or economics. But I always came back to the core question of our years, in a Europe that becomes more diverse by the second. How do we include our differences, how do we find valuable places for both newcomers and residents? how do we fight back the rising tide of xenophobia? Slowly but surely I reached the conclusion that GroenLinks was a left wing party with a strong green stance, but never the party to represent, or even support, the great cultural diversity that The Netherlands enjoy. So eventually I quit. Yet I stayed a loyal voter. I do not believe that there is a better political option in Europe, or in The Netherlands. So even if a member no more, I keep voting GroenLinks. But that is not possible anymore.
I know that the history of GroenLinks and other Green European parties is the march from the extreme left to the center. The green parties main actors and founding mothers and founding fathers were persons disenchanted with the soviet oppression of east Europe, which could see what older communists could not: the soviets were not the solution. So they started their alternative left parties, and linked them with the cause of the environment. In that perspective the recent fusion of GroenLinks with the dutch social democrats is not surprising, but it is part of the good old pattern.
But that is nor my case, nor the case of my generation.
When I came of age as a political agent, the social democrats, both in south America and in Europe, were long ago discredited. True, their ideas were not so different than ours, but their internal politics, their demagogic stances and their eternal flirting with the liberal right made them totally unreliable. So for me to be member of a social democrat party is equivalent to give up any chance of meaningful change in exchange for the possibility of having power. Definitively not the way that I believe can create a fairer society.
And yet, my former fellow party members precisely think the opposite. Recognising the not so different ideologies, they decided to join forces, to create at least a chance of winning some elections, of fighting the ever growing demagogic right. For all what I know, they might even be right.
But it does feel like my old political home has been sold.
Frustrating... But you're right, sticking to your values.