The alderman never goes out for lunch during the week, so we do what she sometimes does: get soup. There is a soup shop near the city hall in Amsterdam and Marjolein Moorman (47) will walk there at 13.00 sharp. Red coat, high boots, wide smile. With two boxes of soup in a paper bag we walk back to the Stopera via Waterlooplein. Up stairs, through doors, past the empty offices of civil servants working from home, to her room on the second floor. Out of nowhere an employee appears with spoons and napkins and when she’s gone we sit across from each other at the table and I start to say maybe I shouldn’t be sitting there at all.
The alderman for education, poverty and integration wrote a book, that is the issue. In Red in Wassenaar Marjolein Moorman tells who she is, and how and why she became a politician. She starts with her childhood in the villa village of Wassenaar, with parents who were not rich but red. The red of the PvdA, and the red of the debts they invested in to offer their children the best opportunities. Marjolein Moorman, the oldest of three and a ‘serious and activist’ child, attends grammar school, is the first in the family to study, obtains a PhD and becomes associate professor of communication science at the University of Amsterdam. She would still have been if she hadn’t hit the submit button in April 2009. She had been applying for the Amsterdam city council, a member of the PvdA, for some time. Inside no time she became – as the first woman ever – party leader, opposition leader, party leader and alderman.
Great book, not one of those. Honest, convincing. She has also received ample attention for it; few newspapers and television programs in which she was not allowed to talk about how her childhood contributed to her view on equality of opportunity. Is success a choice, if almost all children in the class are tutored and you are not? And when your classmates turn left at the bridge after school to their detached houses and you turn right to your terraced house, what else do you call that dichotomy? Nothing wrong with those media appearances. Only, the municipal elections are coming up, and soon, in March. That is why the NRCeditor who writes about the Amsterdam politics against her: so just before the elections we want a level playing field, a level playing field for all politicians, without disruptive, external factors. So no interview about the book for now. And there Marjolein Moorman spoke, in an interview with Free Netherlands, again expressing her surprise. “Not every alderman writes a book, right?” That is also true, which is why I had asked her for a lunch interview.
So while I’m there, I’ll ask right away. Is her book an election manifesto with a cover around it? She bounces back: “Do you think?” Well, all her views are covered. About what is fair and social, about the chronic teacher shortage, about the ailing housing market. And she shares a lot. The VVD “looks away”, D66 “gets away with everything”, and meanwhile believes that the current neoliberal policy aims at “private wealth in exchange for public poverty”. Let me put it this way, she clearly shows color. She nods. “I’m a politician, aren’t I. So yes, this is also a positioning.” She asks herself the next question: “And why is it convenient now?” Because, she says, this is the moment when she wants to show “why I do it and what I want to achieve”. And how to attract voters? “Of course I want to, very much. In fact, if I want to keep doing this work, I have to get people to agree with me and vote for me.”
Personal story
But does the voter need to know a politician’s personal story to vote for it? “I think that far too few politicians tell their story.” The personal is political, she says. “Your own experiences determine how you feel politically. Which is not to say that you have to experience everything yourself to find something out. An alderman does not have to have been involved in debt counseling to implement a good poverty policy.” But why should the voter know Who is a politician? Is it important to know that education minister Dennis Wiersma did vmbo, but never dared to put it on his resume? Is it important to know that she didn’t put her eldest daughter in the underperforming, “one-sided” neighborhood school and had a “troublesome mind” about it? We didn’t know about Wim Kok, Joop den Uyl, Ien Dales, did we? “Yeah. Hedy d’Ancona, whom I admire, has always been candid about how her life has shaped her as a politician.”
Marjolein Moorman is also a scientist. Her PhD research was about the effect the context of a message has on the processing of that message. After her PhD, she researched the advertising and media world for Heineken, Hema and Albert Heijn. If anyone knows that a good story conveys the message better, then they do. However? Ask for you, she says. “Do you think I am selling my political message with my story?” Yes. “Ah. And do you think I shouldn’t do it that way?” Of course she can. She leans back in her chair, thoughtful. “And yet, when you put it that way, it feels very dirty to me. Like I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing. As if it’s a marketing ploy.”
Politics, she says, is a battle of ideas. “I want to share why I fight for social democracy. Yes, I want to reach and convince people, it would be very strange if I said just before the election: don’t vote for me.” And whoever wants to convince, I add, plays many registers. Yes, she says. “But swearing is not one of them. I didn’t think when my parents died and my brothers and I were left with a huge debt, I can use that for my political career. I had a wonderful life at university, but I chose politics because I didn’t want to be on the sidelines. Politics is not a career for me.” She weighs and weighs. Open question, she says. “Could it be that politicians are so often treated with cynicism, so often accused of effecting, that they withdraw, and show nothing personal anymore?”
Anyone who has read her book will know that she is now approaching the age at which her parents died, “I would be lying if I say I am not very concerned with that. I even calculated it. I will be 48 on March 1, my father will be 48 years and 46 days.” She plans to throw a big party the day she turns older than him to celebrate her still being here. Five years after her father died, her mother died, she was 50. On top of the loss of her parents, came an inheritance full of debt, all in all at least a hundred thousand. “It was sort of a job to manage the finances.” She was 25 and still studying. She calls it a “delayed grieving process” and a crash course in how debts multiply by themselves. “My father had payment arrears. A mortgage is waived after death, but not if installments have been skipped. So: interest, penalty. The life insurance had not been paid, so it did not pay out.” That period came back to her memory when she had just been alderman for poverty and the director of the City Bank of Lening – “here at the table” – wanted to explain to her what kind of bank that is. “I know,” I said. My mother borrowed her wedding ring there, and it never came back.”
“I don’t want to take anything away from anyone, I’m not saying everyone should have the same thing. I am not a communist”
lucky
‘That’s right,’ she says in full when I read from her book that the neoliberal market economy has done her no harm. She could turn from ‘dime’ to a promoted ‘quarter’, all debts disappeared in one fell swoop when she cashed in the options her mother had still received as a salary, and she sold her first house in Amsterdam at a profit and the following too, as a result of which she now lives with her husband, two daughters and a dog, where many Amsterdammers would also like to live, but cannot afford it. “As an individual I have only benefited from capitalism. So I can think: I don’t care. But I’m not in the game that way. I am convinced that it is better for society if things are not only going well for me, but also for others.”
In fact, she writes that she wants to “pursue equality through unequal means.” More for those who have less. That scares some people, I say. “Why? I don’t want to take anything away from anyone, I’m not saying everyone should have the same thing. I’m not a communist. I’m just saying that if you’re doing well yourself, which is often the result of luck in your life, because you’ve been able to develop talents, had a good education, had caring parents, then it’s quite nice to have something to give for someone less fortunate. In the end, everyone benefits from that.”
One more thing. If I were a political reporter, I would ask if she, like her predecessor Lodewijk Asscher – also PvdA, also party leader, also alderman for education – wants to go to The Hague. Or is that too career path-like? “You can ask me, you know.” Does she want to go to The Hague? Not necessarily, but I wouldn’t rule it out either. She laughs: “A bit political answer, huh?” She replies again: “I entered local politics because I want to help solve problems. So the answer is, no, I don’t have to go anywhere else.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 12 February 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of February 12, 2022
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