COLUMN
GIVE EXPATS RED PENCILS TOO What are you doing on Wednesday 16 March? An odd question to open a column with, true, but it’s a question I ask everyone living, working, hanging out or walking around Rotterdam Central District (RCD) and its surrounding streets, squares and neighbourhoods. I also pose it to the expats labouring like fugitive shadows on the other side of all those reflective office windows. This question stems from a fury I’ve been feeling ever since 19 November. My girlfriend and I had just been to see The French Dis-
R C D
patch. We were strolling towards my house at the edge of RCD when we found ourselves in the midst of riots on Coolsingel. It was frightening. On my newly refurbished downtown boule-
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vard, and elsewhere in RCD, an angry mob was going around doing – well, what? After two years of Covid measures, we are all struggling. But that doesn’t give anyone the right to trash the neighbourhood where I live, work and go about my business or to hurl fireworks at poor police officers. A lot of talk in the days that followed centred on the silent majority. Expats are part of that © Ralf Emmerich
silent majority too, if you ask me, and they too are outraged. Yet we hardly see or hear from them in the public discourse. Is there anything they can do about it?
Eduard Voorn is a freelance
I’d be happy to answer that. I’m going to vote on 16 March. How about you? In
journalist with a focus on
the Netherlands, we vote with red pencils and not by torching electric scooters,
economics, and first and
no matter how recklessly they may be parked on the pavement. Will everything
foremost a Rotterdammer.
come up roses after we tick a box red? No, because we live in a land that forges
He lives in the villagey outskirts
coalitions to work together in a process of give and take.
of Rotterdam Central District, eats his pizza at Bird, raises a
But right now, I’d like to single out the expats. There are quite a few working in
pint at Biergarten or Weena,
and around RCD. Rotterdam is an international city, after all. Give them a voice.
gets his caffeine fix at Lebkov,
Maybe they can inject some novel perspectives in our deadlocked public and po-
catches the latest flicks in Pathé
litical debates. The handful I know are engaged, intelligent and have a different
Schouwburgplein and sees
angle on our problems (or should I say challenges?). I propose setting up a special
Scapino at Theater Rotterdam.
red ballot box for them in the creative heart of RCD (Biergarten) in which to drop
His kids were born in the now-
their ideas, written in red pencil, about what could bring us all closer together.
famous Mecanoo architectural
Sans fireworks, but over a round of frothy Gulpeners. That way, we could genu-
firm’s first project on Kruisplein.
inely get everyone involved in RCD and Rotterdam as a whole.
M A G A Z I N E
