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Translations into English

Rainbow Oil Spills – A Three-Part Act Toward Liberation. Part 1, Rage.

There is a thriving community of LGBTQ+ people in Leiden, one that was once scattered and divided. The efforts of Leiden Pride, a local organization that aims at creating a safe space for queer individuals to connect and support each other, brought it together. It is the community we also belong to and that we want to empower in order

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Christian Henderson at the Leiden #Klimaatalarm protest: “We must stop the effects of the climate crisis being displaced onto the poorest” (video)

Sunday there was a #Klimaatalarm protest in Leiden also. It was organised by the Leiden Climate Crisis Coalition, an action platform with Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion (XR), #Leidenvoor14 and the FNV union. The second speech was by Christian Henderson. The spoken version is a bit longer than the written text below. I am a lecturer at Leiden University. I

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Yanick Monk at the Leiden #Klimaatalarm protest: “Police repression is a reality that we all must take action against”

Yesterday there was a #Klimaatalarm protest in Leiden also. It was organised by the Leiden Climate Crisis Coalition, an action platform with Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion (XR), #Leidenvoor14 and the FNV union. The fourth speech was by Yanick Monk of #Leidenvoor14. On this day last year, a black man named Tomy Holten died in a cell complex in Zwolle

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Chihiro Geuzebroek at the Leiden #Klimaatalarm protest: “If you are not angry, you are not paying attention” (video)

Yesterday there was a #Klimaatalarm protest in Leiden also. It was organised by the Leiden Climate Crisis Coalition, an action platform with Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion (XR), #Leidenvoor14 and the FNV union. The third speech was by Chihiro Geuzebroek. My mother learned about climate change as a little girl in school. I grew up knowing failing politics are a

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Marty: “Our feminism can’t be but decolonial, antiracist, anti-economic exploitation, anti-ableist, pro-migrants, and queer” (video)

Yesterday the Working-Class Heroines, the women of #Leidenvoor14, organized protests on four locations in Leiden on occasion of international Women’s Day. Here’s the great speech by Marty, which they held on the 5 Meiplein and again on the Haarlemmerstraat. (Mariët van Bommel also gave a speech, in Dutch) Women of Leiden, The words of my comrade are clear: This is

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Workaholic academics need to stop taking pride in their burnout

It is precisely by getting their priorities straight that established academics can, and must, set a better example, say Fleur Jongepier and Mathijs van de Sande. Ask any academic how they like to spend their free time and they’ll probably give you a wry smile. There’s no such thing as free time − not really. Free time is for getting

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Nazi-Fasci-Communism: the instrumentalized anti-communist Hydra we ought to dismantle

In September 2020, the City Council of Dalmine, Italy, voted in favor of a motion that, citing the horrors of the Soviet Union’s Gulags and famine, equates Nazi-fascism to Communism, and so requiring one to declare oneself anti-communist in order to use public spaces. This is an insult to the memory of the many Dalminesi Partisans. But not only that:

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“Citizens’ assemblies” are a reformist pacifier

Many left-wing activists have looked in amazement and admiration at the rapid rise of the international climate movement Extinction Rebellion (XR) in recent years. It organises itself in a basic democratic manner, occasionally blocks the centres of large cities and still gets a lot of people on board. Not all movements succeed in doing this! But is XR really as

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The imaginary democracy of the Left

While Dutch leftwing politicians quickly call to defend our beloved democracy from the attacks of hate, misinformation and conspiracies, grassroots movements like ours are not afraid to say that what happened at Washington DC on Wednesday is the manifestation of an issue inherent in our democracy: white supremacism. It is time for us to recognize that our democracies, in Europe

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Together the movements for refugee rights and climate justice must force leaders to open borders

Last Thursday the Actiefonds and LAB 111 organised a meeting “No borders, no nations!” about the Europan border crisis. In the invitation they wrote: “Last month the Greek refugee camp Moria burned down to the ground, causing more suffering and more moral outrage. The latest event in a long, sad history of human rights’ violations at the European borders, it

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