Interview with youth candidate - Sebastiaan Rood #13

Where does your interest in politics come from?

Due to circumstances, on my 17^e entered youth care. My first two months I lived in a crisis shelter for homeless youth, then in rooming houses. There, I had to fight for my rights. I succeeded because I was supported by committed people at my high school, and because I had a goal: I wanted to come out stronger and get my degree.

I am and remain grateful for all the support from my high school. Without them, I would not have made it. It also helped that I came in differently from many young people in youth welfare. I was already almost 18 and had prospects of going to college. When you've been in the system longer and are dealing with more setbacks, continuing to set goals and stand up for yourself is even more difficult.

I cannot help people in the fight, but I have set myself the goal of improving young people's perspective. I want to do this by giving them tools they can find support from. I wish every young person the support I received. That is where my passion for youth rights was born: I want to make a difference for young people.

Why exactly do you want to enter the municipal council in Utrecht?

Because GroenLinks is making a difference in Utrecht. GroenLinks starts from the people, not the system, bringing back the human touch. I want to contribute to that. For instance, I am thinking about housing, because it is really scandalous that you need almost nine years of registration time to find a house via Woningnet. Students can still get rooms, but what if you are not a student?

I would like to see a real strategy to guarantee housing in the future. One solution for the meantime is, for example, temporary housing in empty office buildings. Or young people living cheaply in older people's empty rooms, supporting them at the same time. That mixed housing is really to insane addition of the city.

It is important to get more young people on the Utrecht council. The council decides a lot about young people, but councillors are often not young themselves. I want young people to be heard in decisions that affect us. I want to give young people a voice, and in particular stand up for and on behalf of vulnerable young people, such as youth in youth care or LGBTQ+ youth.

What would you like to do for the LGBTQ+ community?  

There is still a long way to go to improve the well-being of young LGBTQ people. Being young, discovering your sexuality and gender identity, and finding stability during such a vulnerable time is intense. We young LGBTQ+ still commit suicide 5 times more often than our peers, and there really needs to be an answer to this from the municipality.

No young person in Utrecht should be forgotten. The safety of LGBTQ+ young people can be improved through more education. Schools should take responsibility here and the COC deserves better support. There should also be a youth centre for LGBTQ+ youth, where you can always go.

I myself am a bartender at the Bodytalk and Café Kalff is also a fine place, but they are pubs. What if you need a conversation during the day, or you're not a pub-goer? My wish for Utrecht is that there will be a place in Utrecht during the day where young people can really be yourself and meet each other, like The Hangout 020 in Rotterdam.

What connection do you have with Utrecht?

I was born and grew up in Hilversum, and Utrecht was always the big city I liked to go to, for instance to the Railway Museum. I also used to go to De Utrechtse Bazaar with my grandfather on Saturdays. By nine o'clock in the morning, we were already eating chips, much to my mother's frustration.

Utrecht is also where I met my first boyfriend, at the old location of Tivoli on Oudegracht. That was at Pann, a monthly heterosexual gay youth party that still exists. It felt like a safe first party where I could really be myself. We'd take the night train to Utrecht and then take the first train back to Hilversum at five in the morning.

I have been studying in Utrecht since 2010, and for four years I have lived at De Uithof. It is a bit of a bike ride, and one day I would like to move to a place closer to the city centre. But living on the edge of the city also has its advantages. You throw open the door and you have nature, space and freedom. And it's affordable. I consider myself lucky to live well in Utrecht, because that's not a given.

How did you become active at DWARS?

I went to college and wanted to do something with politics. My first encounter with DWARS and GroenLinks was first at a theme meeting on faith in the Jacobi Church. GroenLinks had a really good story there. And what really appealed to me at the time: people let me off the hook when I told them I was thinking about joining.

I was advised to look around especially. If the GroenLinks suited me then, I was most welcome! I felt at home and became a member. Then I also wanted to become active, and after attending two group meetings at GroenLinks Hilversum out of curiosity, I was hired as I group member. Being active at DWARS and GroenLinks allowed me to learn a lot.

On behalf of the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG), I am now on the board of the European Youth Forum, where we represent all young people at European level. My topics are anti-discrimination, climate policy and finance. The substantive priorities fit perfectly, and with a budget of 4.2 million, finance is another fun challenge.

What do you learn from the European Youth Forum and youth activism in general? And what do you think you can bring from this to the Council?

We help European youth (organisations) in their efforts, for example at the UN Climate Conference. It is precisely in a supportive way that you can sometimes have the most impact. When you step back and empower other activists, sometimes you can achieve the most.

That is also a skill I bring to the council: knowing how to connect people. There are so many organisations and everyone wants something different. But if you manage to create a common interest that everyone supports, and on which they focus their energy together, you can really take action.

I can also apply the knowledge I have gained internationally locally. From the Council of Europe, many rights of young people have been recognised at local level. But few people know that there are statements on this. I can say directly: young people have that right, how are we going to arrange it. You are so much stronger when you can arm yourself with knowledge about recognised rights, you can skip a step and think about how you are going to regulate something, not if.

Finally, what political lesson have you learned and how does that help you make a difference?

I have learnt that sometimes you have to go with the flow a bit more and try something out before you say something doesn't work. If you give something a chance and it does indeed turn out to work, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And if it indeed doesn't work, people can't say you didn't try it either.

If you move along a bit, people are also more willing to see where you are coming from. When you join a party whose ideals you already stand behind in terms of content, and which is already strong, by working together you can bring your own emphases into the limelight better. For me, those focus areas are youth and education, international and sustainable development, and LGBTQ+ rights.

You can take those themes into all the topics you face. Even sewage might have a youth dimension. My passion for these topics all revolve around a broader human rights dimension: no group is above others and no group should be forgotten. Young people are still too often forgotten, and I hope for your support to change that!