The disobedience was already well underway at the end of Sunday morning in the Intercity Direct from Amsterdam to Rotterdam. A group of people in their late thirties is sitting in the compartment without face masks, cans of beer on the table, a rolled joint in hand. „We’re not gonna take it”, rocks a phone. “Stop the lockdown,” one of them wears on her T-shirt.
The four – they do not want their names in the newspaper – are going to a corona demonstration in Rotterdam. One of them informs the others about an app group conversation. Is everyone coming? Heavy rain, gusty wind. “You have to be willing to do something about it,” responds another. In the app it sounds pleasantly rowdy: “The only thing that is going to destroy something today is the wind.”
The protest was followed with extra attention this weekend: in mid-November a Rotterdam demonstration against the corona policy resulted in violence, riots and destruction on the Coolsingel. In addition, the police announced a strike on Friday for this Sunday. The police unions are at odds with Minister Yesilgöz (Justice, VVD) about the collective labor agreement. They demand an approach to the high workload and a better salary. During the demonstration, the unions stated Friday that “no police would be on the street for four hours to monitor public order and safety.”
About 7,000 protesters
That worked out in practice. On the Binnenrotte, the square where an estimated 7,000 demonstrators gathered from noon, police officers were posted along the edges. Several police vans were ready in surrounding streets, just like along the march route. The procession was escorted by officers. In addition, prior to the corona demonstration, a few dozen agents themselves took action on the Willemsbrug for their collective labor agreement requirements.
“About thirty or forty colleagues have been deployed, where that would normally be a group of 450 riot police”, says Gerrit van de Kamp, chairman of the police union ACP. The police considered this minimal occupation indispensable, also because of a threatening action by Feyenoord supporters. “It was important not to let those groups come together. That worked. But in future actions, our commitment may be even smaller.”
The atmosphere among the demonstrators, adorned with yellow umbrellas and the rebellious inverted Dutch flag, but also the extreme right-wing prince flag (orange-white-blue), remained calm and pleasant. On the Binnenrotte, a next demonstration was already announced and called for to use the municipal elections to “remove” “VVD, D66, CDA, PvdA, Groenlinks, Volt and the ChristenUnie” from local government, which the public applauded. The speaker was not concerned with ‘local politicians’, because ‘they no longer understand national policy either’.
Read alsoThis report from last fall about orgy of violence in Rotterdam
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