Fun fact: in the 80′s the Dutch Unemployed Union held ‘fridge raids’ to protest against poverty.
They’d find out when a politician of big boss who upheld poverty and starvation wages was speaking at some public even, then they’d carefully break into his house with a LOT of people and they would eat EVERY piece of food in his house and leave the empty dished behind without taking anything else.
Direct action at its finest.
i’m not familiar enough with the dutch unemployment union – did they get their demands met? did the politicians cave?
The Unemployment Union was a really cool group in the 80s!
One of their main tools besides protesting was ‘payment strikes’: refusing to pay for things that the government should be providing to every human being and taking those things by force if necessary. So if the unemployed did not get enough money to buy food, they’d get 400 people together, enter a city hall and demand all the food for The People. If they were fined, they’d collectively refuse to pay that, etc.
They were hard tough fights but they were fights for the right to exist with dignity.
Not all actions had direct effect but they had some major successes. The ‘doorsharing rule’ (a rule that said the government could cut your benefits if you lived in the same building as someone else on benefits) was struck after actions by the Unemploment Union and others. They also succesfully resisted assigned work without pay for the unemployed.
However, the Union no longer exists and both rules have resurfaced after the 2009 crisis and are now a reality in the Netherlands. 😦For those of you that read Dutch and wanna learn more, this page lists several Unemployment Unions that existed in the 70s and 80s: http://www.bijstandsbond.org/geschiedenis/boekwbva/kortegesch.htm
I don’t know how good the content is but I recognize a lot of names in there so that’ll give you stuff to google and to put in Delpher.nl. Unitas did several eating actions if I remember correctly though most were not reported in the media and they did a lot of other cool shit.
If you search for Werklozenbond or ‘proletarisch winkelen’ in Delpher you’re sure to find stuff.On a side note, while yes, since 2009 (and frankly it started before that) a lot of the more social laws in the Netherlands are being reversed. (Like the one that offered students a loan to go to school which would be forgiven if they got their diplomas.) The ‘doorsharing’ one isn’t as dire as it sounds. It still sucks but it’s not exactly the way it sounds here.
It only really applies to rent benefits (not sure how this works in other countries, but if you make below a certain amount of money and you rent an apartment that is below x-amount to rent, the government will give you a certain amount of money to help you pay rent). You can only ask for these benefits if you live in a place that has its own front door. So renting in a flat is fine, but if you rent a room in someone’s house you can’t get any money to help out, unless it’s like, for instance, a garage with its own front door.
Honestly this policy wouldn’t be an issue (if they don’t try to cut it), if there were enough social housing buildings left and they weren’t being sold off as just houses… As it is now you have to either get lucky or get on a waiting list where it can potentially take years to get a place.
I’m gonna assume you mean huursubsidie? Well, that’s a thing but the Dutch government also cuts your real benefits based on the income of people of other people living in the same house. This is the ‘kostendelersnorm’ which started 2015. This does not effect individual renters with an individual commercial contract but it does effect woongroepen and others groups that have a single group contract with their landlord. Since woongroepen have long been the cheapest and most independent way to rent if you can not afford a whole home, this effects a lot of people.
QueerAnarchism 