The Ecosprinter is excited to announce a new project with the Green European Journal where we will send one reporter to cover the UK elections this June. The reporter will be sent to the UK for a weekend to meet with people on the scene and try to make sense of what’s going on for…
Author: morgan
To abstain or not to abstain?
This question is accompanying me since the first day of my Tour de France. I heard it in Strasbourg, Lyon, Grenoble, Toulouse, Marseille and Rennes, in the back of a bus, in the supermarket as well as on demonstrations, my interviews with politicians and late at night in leftist bars. In the beginning, it was…
Meet Nils: On the Trail in France for the Presidential Elections
I’m Nils, a young European German Francophile. After living a year in France for Erasmus and an Internship, learning the language, being active at Les Jeunes Écologistes (French Young Greens) and making new French friends, I still have a problem: I don’t understand “The French”! How can a country with such a revolutionary potential, such…
The Shortcomings of Campaigning
Last weekend I spoke to a girl handing out flyers for GroenLinks (GreenLeft) in the city of Utrecht. She told me with genuine astonishment that there were people coming to the square, which was packed with campaigners, to get a sense of what the different parties stand for. To me it didn’t seem such a…
Looking Back at the Campaign
June 2016: there will be elections in nine months. DWARS’s freshly formed campaign team holds their first meeting. What are we going to do during the next three-quarter year and how? Before we started this, I had promised to bring a pie. ‘But,’ I said, ‘not without a reason. We need to have achieved something.’…
A Day in the Life of a Dutch Green Campaign Manager
Today Marije Ploeg has the floor. She is campaign manager at the GroenLinks (GreenLeft) department in The Hague. Before, she was the campaign manager in Arnhem, and she has been in the United States for a while and joined the BKB-academy to follow intensive courses about campaigning. She will tell us what she has learned…
Hitting the campaign trail with DWARS
It all began at the largest GA in the history of the Dutch Greens: one inspiring day which energized me intensely. And so, I offered my services to an enthusiastic volunteer, so as to actively contribute to the party campaign. By Skip Anker, a DWARS-member campaigning for the first time My first goal: go to…
Modern campaigning: Grassroots and apps
Let’s temporarily step away from the cynicism. Stop believing that people no longer take to the streets, or are unwilling to contribute through more than ‘clicktivism’; stop believing that time is long gone. Let’s blindly trust people DO want to roll up their sleeves and get to work. What kind of campaign would you set…
City of one function
One of the ways we call functional cities is monotowns. They are part our history for a long long time, since the industrial revolution begun. Nowadays 20% of all Russians live and work in the monotowns. Some time ago monotowns as such were vital and beneficial for country’s economic system. But now, after the crisis,…
The Dutch Green Party campaign in the City of Leiden
At the start of this semester I decided to take a gap year due to certain circumstances. I wanted to spend my time by getting involved in the election campaign of the Dutch Green Party. In Leiden, the local campaigners were still looking for a second volunteering coordinator. I became coordinator on short notice, and…