Stories from the old box - Hessel Hoekstra

The best activities Leiden-Haaglanden has never organised

Over the past five years, DWARS Leiden-Haaglanden has organised lots of activities. Some more successful than others. There are successes we do every year, such as the hippie barbecue and the Sinterklaas activity. Of other activities, it is clear that they are not worth repeating. But some activities were once conceived but never implemented for various reasons. Here is an overview.

How do you tame a troll?

This activity has been there in earnest. It was to be a theme night/panel discussion on Internet trolls, cyberbullying and online threats. The plan had originated in spring 2017. Thierry Baudet had just been elected as a member of parliament and at that time people began to realise what kind of views the Forum frontman actually had. Sharp opinion articles exploring his thinking appeared and they were not mild. Forum supporters' reactions to these articles were also not mild. Following death threats, a then DWARSer even had to go into temporary hiding.

We thought it appropriate to reflect on what the causes and consequences of social media in relation to politics are. We had arranged a venue and some interesting speakers, including a prominent figure from the Pirate Party. The date later turned out to be very bad: 17 May 2017. A few days earlier, the formation attempt for a cabinet with GroenLinks, VVD, CDA and D66 collapsed. And for that reason, Jesse Klaver was supposed to organise a meetup in The Hague. We thought it wise to cancel the activity.

Six months later, we tried to organise the activity again, but unfortunately it never came to anything concrete.

Action on canal pollution

Leiden, The Hague and Delft are cities bursting with canals. Unfortunately, these canals are hugely polluted by chemicals and waste, which is very bad for the plants and animals that live there. To respond to this, we had the idea of doing an action around this. This action was not carried out for several reasons.

Let me put it this way, we really wanted to throw one of our board members into the canal and were looking for a nice excuse to do so. Pollution of the canals was in the news at the time, so we thought it would be a nice occasion. The idea was that we would throw the board member in question into the canal and say to passers-by, "Do you think it's weird that we throw him into the canal? You don't throw rubbish in the canal yourself, do you?"

Unfortunately, this idea came sometime in October/November, and then the weather was not great for swimming in canals. Should the current board want another excuse to throw a board member into the canal in spring or summer, here you have one.

Hippieklaas/Femiklaas/Tüterklaas

For several years, the department's Sinterklaas activities have been a huge success. Part of that success lay with the ironically leftist version of Sinterklaas we celebrated. Instead of St Nicholas, his socialist brother Commieklaas came along to provide the collective with presents and treats. With winged statements like, "Hello proletarians of all countries. Are there any naughty capitalists here?" and songs like Karl Marx went out cycling and Hear the ghost haunts Europe this activity was a guaranteed success.

For several years there had been an idea to have more leftist siblings of Sinterklaas visiting Leiden-Haaglanden. A feminist version, for example, or a hippy. Originally, Sinterklaas is not from Spain, but from Turkey, and according to a former treasurer, they like tüteren in Turkey. Perhaps St Nicholas could send his brother who would announce his arrival with quite a bit of tüter.

Unfortunately, with Hippieklaas, Femiklaas and Tüterklaas, we could not create as strong an image, and Commieklaas was such a huge success that in recent years it was decided to simply invite St Nicholas' socialist brother every year.

These were three activities for which there were plans during my time on the board, but which never got off the ground. Perhaps this will give current and future board members some good ideas for activities for the future.