Hey, the table sticker was there again, at the table this time Khalid &Sophie. On Tuesday evening, climate activist Jelle de Graaf clung to the talkshow table of Jinek. A fellow activist glued his head on Thursday The girlwith the pearl from Vermeer. Another, himself stuck to the wall with onehand, tossed another can of tomato soup over his glued skull for shock effect.”Shame on you”, you heard a bystander squeak in the video.
The Mauritshuis – that is where the painting hung – wanted to pay as littleattention as possible to the campaign. So the talk show did just that. And ithad clearly scaled up since Tuesday. Also at the table are two makers ofclimate documentaries, Bram Vermeulen ( Frontline on Thursday) and NicolaasVeul ( The climate explorer on Friday). Furthermore, a climate activist andtable lady Wouke van Scherrenburg who had finally wanted to put a “decentvegetable dish” on the table at home, but immediately jumped into the car (!)to talk about the “world that is on fire”. She’d watched Jelle’s stickingaction on the iPad, she said, and had been clapping all by herself. The otherlady at the table, Anniko van Santen, thought that the message was ‘diluted’by the extreme means used by climate activists.
Bram Vermeulen, who has just returned from Greenland, where the sea has notbeen freezing for 25 years, had to look back with Jelle at the table for “afragment” of Jelle on the table. Jelle was invited to that table on Tuesdayevening to talk about the actions and their usefulness. If you ask him aboutwhat we have to do, just practical, he will get abstractions about ‘the fossilfuel industry’ and Prime Minister Rutte who is best friends with the directorof Shell. No, that’s what it’s all about. Who oh who do you ask at the talkshow table to tell us what we can, no, should do and (especially) not do?
Weeds don’t exist
Why did we actually make hoeing a community service, you wonder after seeingthe movie Code Green (HUMAN). Confusing, because you just see everyone in anorange work suit as half-criminal, and for the workers in the green, it’s notparticularly a boost either. Marjoleine Boonstra follows the men (and onewoman) who work for social development company Pantar in Amsterdam. They donot hoe as punishment, but in “freedom”. They are ashamed at first, saysforeman Theo about the newcomers in his shack. A few have spent a few yearsbehind bars, but most have gotten stuck in life through other twists andturns. Addiction, confusion, loss of work and home. “The work is not importantin the first months.” Arriving on time, getting discipline, getting a routine,that’s what Pantar is all about. If they have a feeling for working in a greenenvironment, so much the better. Theo points the men to the fireweeds underthe honeysuckle, plantain and arugula. “There are no weeds,” he says. “That’swhat people make of it.” Just as the people turn green into a landfill, thegrabs of the green workers get more rubbish out of the bushes than weeds.
The most beautiful scene is the one with Pantar’s new director ‘Werk’, SaskiaFloore. The boss of a team of 70 people who again manage 700 people comes oneday to hoe between the blackberries and the roses. She is a greengrocer. “Hardwork,” she discovers. How Leslie then explains to her how to do it, hoeing.And how concentrated she looks at how he shows it.
Anton, Amina, Leslie, Luuk, Edwin, Alexandar each have their say. They telljust enough to make you want to know a lot about them. But that doesn’t last.Perhaps the green workers in the orange suits prefer not to be known.