a new coalition

Most of us tends to understand political parties in terms of their ideological position. Even with the overlaps and switchs that had happened and undoubtedly will go on happening, being for a stronger or a weaker state, or supporting the redistribution of capitals or not, mark relevant division lines in political families. Yet it is possible to understand political parties not only due to their ideas, but in respect to the groups that they represent, or whose interests articulate.

In that sense, it is easy to portrait at the traditional left spectrum representing the worker. And accordingly, it is easier to understand the ongoing crisis of the traditional left wing parties by the segmentation and emancipation of that old container concept, the worker. Interestingly enough, a relevant part of that class was formed by the migrant worker, who in the past decades has reasonably integrated in the society at large. The interesting following up question then, is which segments of the society are to be represented then by the ascending new left parties, or, in particular, the greens.

Traditional analysis has identified the so called post materialist and cosmopolitan people as the main group that votes for green parties. Post materialist in the sense that mostly are persons that have come from the traditional left wing, communist materialism, and without abandoning all their tenets, are open to alternative ideas. It is not surprisingly that this group is generally well educated and well off, belonging to a medium or medium high socioeconomical class. As we all painfully know, greens are parties of yuppies. Yuppies with a social conscience, but yuppies. Yet, or perhaps precisely due to our ideological baggage, it is meaningful to expand our societal coalition. Consider the other groups that were represented by the traditional left and that have been left politically orphan. In the shifting realities of 2020, it is time for the greens to build relevant coalitions with people of color

At least in west europe, that relation between PoC and green parties has been, to say the least, troubled. Naturally we see diversity as one of our ideological pillars. Yet we have definitively failed in attracting relevant groups of PoC people into our rank and file, not to mention to our elected politicians.

The dynamics of PoC as electorate is complex and ultimately impossible to resume in one coherent group. We are talking about migrants of several generations, with as diverse cultural backgrounds as possible, without even considering differences in economical position. Yet, in the past, a great deal of the migrants where assimilated in the traditional social democratic parties. The breaking of that association is related to the emancipation of migrant workers, but not only. The further neoliberalization of the social democracy has left many migrants and PoC without a real representative in the relevant parties.

Besides this, the fast spread of the BLM demonstrations in countries with little or no police violence against PoC is a very clear message to any politician, or strategist. there might not be relevant police brutality in The Netherlands, but discrimination, ethnic profiling and institutional racism are realities in the life of a young person of color in The Netherlands 2020. Not only the ideological relevance of diversity has been underestimated, but the appeal of the issue to a broader public, suddenly willing to demonstrate for a cause, apparently far away from their direct interest.

I believe that the few persons of color that green parties have manage to include in our files along the past decades is the main reason why those demonstrations have taken us by surprise. Interestingly enough, all the demands of this demonstrations are demands close to our ideology and political strategy.

I think that it is high time for green parties to recognize that their future is directly related to our capacity to increase the participation of PoC in our organizations.

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