The Suicide Building: now only for international students?
My housing association has a new brilliant plan, which is to no longer allow international students to rent a room in my house. This is because this association (officially a ‘foundation’ but they behave pretty corporate) considers it’s task to house only Dutch students. Non-dutch should find another solution. Well, thank you Idealis ( = name of the housing association, name means “ideal”) for not asking my opinion on this topic. Currently, out of 6 people, there’s only 2 Dutch in my house. But apparently Idealis dislikes the idea of people of different cultures integrating with each other. Instead, they would like all international students to live in one big multistory appartment building. We call this particular building the suicide building, because it’s so depressing. Actually already two people have jumped off – it’s very suitable for that.
Well, if they think they can continue with this policy change they forgot one important thing: the activist mindset of most people living in this cluster. Today we held a meeting on how to stop this policy. About 60 people showed up, which is not bad when you consider that about 200 people are living here. A petition will follow, we’re e-mailing, informing the media, lobbying, and if this turnes out to be not enough, we’ll start a court case. Under the Rome treaty (from 1957!), it’s forbidden to treat EU-citizens in different ways. That is pure discrimination. But it shouldn’t matter whether you’re from an EU or a non-EU country. Whether your home country is the Netherlands, Sweden, Mali, Laos or Guatemala, you’re welcome in my house. Unbelievable that large organisations such as housing associations apparently don’t understand that.
I strongly believe that social matters and environmental matters are deeply linked. As long as people are treated in an unfair way, this is where their energy will be focussing at – and not at protecting the environment. People are part of the environment and a first priority. In order to be able to protect the planet, people have to come together, instead of fighting each other. Meeting people from different countries and different cultures is a first prerequisite for this. I’m lucky that in my town, this is possible. We have students from 80 different countries. Integration between us should be actively stimulated, not inhibited.
Yesterday I watched the movie “Surplus”. In this movie, John Zerzan is being interviewed. He sais: “according to me, damaging buildings or possessions is not violence. Violence is only possible against people. To me, people who just sit in front of the television, drinking coke and smoking joints, are mindless. This inactivity, allowing all kinds of injust to happen, without caring, to me that’s violence.” Well, I don’t agree with many of his views, but a statement like this certainly makes you think.
