The facts: at this funny thing which is an “ALV” or algemene ledenvergadering or General Members Meeting I want to talk about discrimination, more specifically, about MY discrimination, the one I have been subject of the past 6 years in this lovely corner of the lovely Netherlands call the Garden Quarter- South (becuase there’s also a north one).
I submitted my points for the agenda and they were added, somewhat, at the very end of it.
I was awarded the WEALTH of TEN minutes to talk about discrimination, about the legal proceeding against the other members for wanting to charge me money for damages I did not do and about my request to the local authorities for intervention to protect our complex (which is a national monument) against the selfish, somewhat natural, instincts of the owners and of the lazy, somewhat natural, instincts of the bureaucratical entities which such monument should actually protect.
TEN.MINUTES. Wow!
And why at the end of the meeting? What do you push, at the end of the meeting, when everybody simply wants to get to his beer, her wine, their koppiekoffiee? Well, that’s the time for things you really do not want to discuss about. And that often get postponed until the following meeting because: “oh, jammer, there’s no more time left. Well, we’ll talk about it in SIX MONTHS, at the next meeting”.
SO: I asked, at the beginning of the meeting, to discuss my point sometime IN the duration of the meeting, say in the middle or about?
No can do, my discrimination will have to wait for the last ten minutes of this meeting and share its time and attention with other, just as relevant, mattters.
NOW: one year before mvr. Louise Van Zetten, Haarlem council member and party leader of “Haart voor Haarlem”, which should have called: “You for Us”, asked to talk about my “buitenspoorige gedrag”, my out-of-line behaviour (I would like to add that I do not have an “in-of-line” one but it’s small thing).
The very same asked, just like I did, at the beginning of the meeting, to anticipate the discussion of her point, which she was graciously awarded.
She was the very same that, one year before that, did not wanted ME to talk about HER behaviour (a story for a coming page) because that “onzin”, and also not “chic”, in the immortal words of the chic-addicted Prof. Anton Van Doorn, then-prez of the association.
So: Louise: yes, Carlo: no. Maybe it’s just old-fashioned chivalry, you know, these people as so style-addicted…
Oh, and by the way Mvr. Van Zetten, in a classic politicus style, just read a letter in which she spread quite an amount of lies and, finally, dressed them with a comparison of my behaviour with that of the NSB.
For those (including me, at the time) who have no idea for NSB means it’s not the acrononyme for Radio Nikkei, nope: it’s for Nationaal-Socialistisch Beweging, better known as the local NAZI party.
INteresting fact: the Dutch nazi party was the second largest in the world after the German one, cute isn’t it?
And when I try to reply the local meeting, board and members, very quickly decided that no, it was better for me not to reply, otherwise people might have listened to some truth and get accustomed to it, it’s safer not to let that happen. Hence I was kicked out of the meeting.
NOW: how is that for “discrimination”? Well, like cherries, they are never enough and, indeed, after refusing to let me speak before the end of the meeting the members of the board of this association decided not to mention my request in the MoM because, you know, it might sound like we discriminated the guy so better simply glide over the whole thing. They might have tought: “It might look bad on our CVs that we ACTIVELY discriminated the guy who wanted to talk about his discrimination”, and they are right to think that.
And that’s, dear kids, is exactly what discrimination is about.
And that’s also what, dear kids, will be shared online, in glorious audio so that you can hear it from THE MAN itself!
Stay tuned!
The full text of her intervention is attached below
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