Leaving GroenLinks 2, from environment to diversity

30 november

Back in the nineties I did collaborate with a push to convert the political party that I was member of into a green party. By then I had stopped studying physics and had already started studying biology. My motivation, like the one of many -many- others was based in the increasing awareness that the environment was fragile, that nature was being destroyed, and that we could and should, reverse the trend. First it was all about the fast disapearence of places that I had explored in the Amazonas and the Andes as a climber and in the Caribbean as a diver. I saw wildness destroyed in real time. Soon enough it was also about self inflicted damage. My first big gig as data scientist was analyzing the effect of air pollution in the health of kids. I could see in my graphs that the exhaust of an oil refinery gave asthma to the youngsters living downwind. But Venezuela was and is an oil country and we researchers could do nothing but accept the facts. We had three refineries in the whole country and a bunch of kids with poor lungs wasn’t going to mess with the fundamental revenue of the country. Working in that project I gain an ulcer and the firm conviction of going into politics. Research and consultancy wasn’t influential enough.

So I was really grateful finding, few years down the road, a firmly established green party in the country that became my third home, The Netherlands. As soon as I could I became member and started participating in whatever I could. And almost without knowing I got embroiled in migrant politics. The politics of diversity, one would say.

Back in the early noughties, it was more curiosity than political will. My interests in GroenLinks were biased towards foreign policy and environment. But slowly I came to realize that diversity was, and still is, the unanswered question of our time certainly in Europe and possibly in the whole west. When I moved to Switzerland first and into The Netherlands after, society was tolerant and open at first, but more and more xenophobic as one scratches the surface. First I was shocked. Didn’t Europe leave that behind WWII? Then I was horrified, since it didn’t. And then I tried, again and again, to make my green party more effective in the matter.

I certainly failed that.

GroenLinks, and pretty much every other green party that I am aware off, is very similar to that Europe of the early noughties. It is open and interested in people that is different. You are received with a smile, and you hear again and again how a different perspective enrichen us. You do wonder, though, why most of the meetings are so full with white people. But then again, the begin is interesting and encouraging. It is later that you realize that there is so much distrust about people of color in a green party, as there is in the society at large. In any case, don’t trust me. It is very possible that my many frustrations as a member of GroenLinks pushing for diversity have erased my objectivity at analyzing the matter. Take a look at the facts along the past years.

Most of our successful politicians have came to their positions walking the structures of the party, like Jesse Klaver, or being imported into it by an influential group, like Femke Halsema. The crucial similarity is belonging to a network with influence, be it already existent, or be it created by your peers. Now, take a look at every other politician of color that has become elected in a GroenLinks list. Pretty much all of them have been invited -scouted as they like to say- into it. From Tofik Dibi to Kauthar Bouchallikh, passing by the many many local councilors of color elected in the last decades, not a single one has came from or with an influential network. All of them have been promising parachutists.   

At first look this might be an interesting strategy. Going back to the metaphor of politics as a boat, this is a good thing, you might think: GroenLinks ferries new people into politics, to refresh it. Probably the scouts that had scouted all this people along the years are convinced of their good works. Actually I know, because I know the scouts, and quite some of them are my friends. Alas, their view of politics is naive, self damaging and ultimately destructive of the migrants that actually work in the structures of the party. Politics is a tough hobby, and you need a support network. But the few persons of color that have manage to start creating such inside GroenLinks, have never been offered a place in any list. Instead, those places have gone to newcomers, that do (or do not) their thing for a term or two, and then run away, realizing how impossible is to break into the existing networks of influence.

Once upon a time I thought that this was our own fault. People of color inside GroenLinks were bad at playing the game. Perhaps we are too angry, and quite some of us are not that effective getting allies. But after all this time, seeing again and again how the party member that is active and is a person of color gets sidestepped by other persons of color brought in by scouts, I am convinced that the whole dynamic is perverse. Members are distrusted and not elected, new people is brought in without support. Members get frustrated, newcomers aren’t effective and the whole thing hoes on and on.

Just like in the society at large.

I am convinced that the ongoing movement of people into and out of Europe is the defining dynamic of our present and future society. Once upon a time I thought that the people that identified the crucial challenge of the environment early on and decided to go political on it, would be capable of recognizing the crucial challenge of masses migrating, and do politics about it. The green parties of Europe recognize that this is an important issue. By that, they are already ahead of many other political groups. But they are not there. Green parties have not created a platform for people of color to group and be political effective.

It might be that other groups will tackle this challenge. I certainly hope so.