OCCUPY CAMPAIGN

On March 2 and 3, an Occupy inspired campaign took place in the Jan van Galen neighbourhood. Occupy Campaign is not selling anything, nor is it a political party.

Occupy Campaign aims to bring politics back to their source: to the neighbourhood and the street. We have no influence on many important decisions in our lives, and our current politics havetaught us to accept this. Politics have been reduced to casting your vote once every four years. Occupy Campaign maintains that politics do not belong to politicians alone.

According to statistics from the previous election, 92.5% of the people in this neighbourhood did not vote for the current government! In other words, only a very small section of the inhabitants are actually represented by those in power. This is typical of the way politics are unable to truly connect with everyday life.

Politics are present everywhere – in everyday life in our own neighbourhoods. Your rent being raised or seeing the value of your house drop is political. Being filmed without your consent is political. Raising a child is also political. Sweeping the street, deciding where to shop for your groceries - these too are political. Taking responsibility for one another, listening, debating, caring, rent, food, work - all of these are the politics of society.

This campaign aims to emphasize that everyone already has a political voice. Our lives are political.

It is time that we ourselves engage with politics, without the political parties that are only concerned with maintaining their own dominance. For this is not just “a” world, it is our world. That is why Occupy Campaign focuses on the things that you are concerned with. What would you like to change? And just as importantly: how do you think you yourself could make those changes take place, and what would you need in order to do so? Occupy Campaign wants to support the Jan van Galen neighbourhood in taking politics into its own hands.

How did this happen? Residents in the Jan van Galen neighbourhood received a phone call with the following questions: What do you find of importance, what do you miss in current politics and what solutions do you imagine? There have also been manifestations taking place in the streets, where residents could see their own ideas and proposals reflected in the neighbourhood. We have also be informing the national media of the ways in which the Jan van Galen neighbourhood is influenced by politics, how the people of this neighbourhood wish to act upon this and which issues they would like to tackle in taking the political process into their own hands. During these two days we were present in the neighbourhood and everyone could speak to us about their vision of politics.

Occupy Campaign want to make enable politics to return to where they belong: your own life.

That’s where politics start, and what politics should start with.


Sincerely,

Occupy Campaign
Jan van Galen Neighbourhood