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.’…
Category: FYEG/EU
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…
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…
The largest General Assembly in the history of the Dutch Greens
Over the past weekend, the annual General Assembly for the Dutch Green Party (‘GroenLinks’) took place in Utrecht (The Netherlands). Due to their new, immensely popular leader Jesse Klaver – as well as the general abysmal state of the world – the party has been growing for months. This causes unprecedented situations: 3000 attendees made…
As we pick up the pieces: 10 thoughts on Brexit
Like many, I’ve struggled to come to terms with the result of Thursday’s vote. So, here are some thoughts as I and many others try and make sense of the situation: 1. No one knows how to react, because almost no one saw this coming. Almost all the polls predicted a Remain win. All the…
The British EU Referendum – Cameron’s failed attempt of being a great politician
Britain seems to go crazy these days. We observe a country loosing its mind over an upcoming referendum deciding about nothing less than the future of this very country, disguised in a decision over whether to remain or whether to leave the European Union. In what follows I will lay out that and why I…
Some keys to understand what is happening in Spain from a Green perspective
For the first time in history, the Spanish political parties have not reached an agreement to create a government after the State level elections. After several months of political uncertainty and two failed attempts to invest Pedro Sánchez, the candidate of the so-called “Social Democrats”, Spanish citizens are facing a new political campaign. Why have…
Three days to go: ‘Remainers’ must push a positive case for the EU
Never has so much been risked for so little. It’s a sentence which reflects how I and many others view Britain’s current EU referendum. The stakes are so high – but the level of informed debate has been so low. It’s a toxic cocktail. I’m not sure how it looks from outside the UK, but…