Waarom ik me verkiesbaar stel voor de Europese Verkiezingen 2024

Een gesprek met Anna Koolstra, een van de jongste kandidaten die op 6 juni aanstaande verkiesbaar is voor het Europees Parlement.
Netherlands,

Story by Anna Koolstra. Edited by Joost Backer
Published on May 31, 2024. Reading time: 3 minutes



Politiek is voor mij de manier om mijn idealen te verwezenlijken in de maatschappij. Elke dag zie ik overal waar ik kijk dingen die niet rechtvaardig, niet duurzaam of niet sociaal zijn. De hoge kosten van het openbaar vervoer bijvoorbeeld. Of als mensen vertellen hun huurwoning nauwelijks te kunnen betalen. Daar wil ik wat aan doen en ik heb het gevoel dat dat mogelijk is in de politiek. Wat ik er ook bijzonder aan vind: het moet met anderen, het kan niet solo. Onderdeel van onze democratie is dat we met elkaar in gesprek gaan over onze problemen en potentiële oplossingen. Ik vind het te gek om met mensen aan de slag te mogen om de wereld een beetje beter te maken.

Toen ik begon met werken op mijn 22ste, werd ik door mijn collega’s streng toegesproken. Ik was altijd al wel maatschappelijk bezig zoals bijvoorbeeld met duurzaamheid (fossiele investeringen beperken), kansengelijkheid (lesgeven op scholen in achterstandswijken), maar had me nog nooit verbonden aan een partij. Toen ik tijdens het werken bij de Rijksoverheid weer eens een grote mond had, zei een collega tegen mij: “hoe kan je zoveel meningen hebben en niet lid zijn van een politieke partij.” Hij had gelijk. De volgende dag kwam ik met een printje naar mijn werk dat ik lid was geworden. Dat is nu zeven jaar geleden.

Heel veel mensen zijn voor mij belangrijk. Ze inspireren, motiveren, bekritiseren, helpen mij verder. Het zijn er teveel om op te noemen. Maar laat ik er twee uitlichten: mijn vader heeft me van jongs af aan wel altijd gepusht om alles uit het leven te halen. Er bestond geen half werk: of we nou samen muziek maakten of een stevige discussie hadden. En hij moedigde ook alles aan wat op mijn pad kwam. Toen ik zestien was gingen we samen naar een open dag van een United World College (UWC). Dat was een school voor vrede en duurzaamheid in het buitenland. Ik ging uiteindelijk naar Bosnië-Herzegovina. Hij was de eerste die zei dat ik dat moest doen. En die ervaring heeft mij echt gevormd: ik heb daar zoveel geleerd over mens en maatschappij, kritisch na te denken en hoe vorm te geven aan idealisme.

De ander is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Zij is een geweldige politicus: jonge vrouw, links, principieel, verbaal enorm sterk en gesteund vanuit een hele grote groep mensen opgekomen. Zij inspireert mij: zij wil ook de belangen van burgers weer voorop stellen en de macht van het grootkapitaal inperken. Dat wil ik ook: op wonen, werknemersrechten, klimaat. En trouwens: zij was ook 29 toen zij voor het eerst politiek werd verkozen. Dat ben ik nu ook. Dus de sterren staan goed! Ik hoop dat veel mensen op 6 juni, de laatste vrouw, Anna Koolstra, op plek 20 van GroenLinks PvdA stemmen.


How does this story make you feel?

Follow-up

Do you have any questions after reading this story? Do you want to follow-up on what you've just read? Get in touch with our team to learn more! Send an email to
[email protected].

Talk about this Story

Please enable cookies to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Share your story

Every story we share is another perspective on a complex topic like migration, gender and sexuality or liberation. We believe that these personal stories are important to better understand what's going on in our globalised society - and to better understand each other. That's because we are convinced that the more we understand about each other, the easier it will be for us to really talk to one another, to get closer - and to maybe find solutions for the issues that affect us all. 

Do you want to share your story? Then have a look here for more info.

Share Your Story

Subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter

Stay up to date with new stories on Correspondents of the World by subscribing to our monthly newsletter:

* indicates required

Follow us on Social Media

Anna Koolstra

Anna Koolstra

Topic: Liberation




Get involved

At Correspondents of the World, we want to contribute to a better understanding of one another in a world that seems to get smaller by the day - but somehow neglects to bring people closer together as well. We think that one of the most frequent reasons for misunderstanding and unnecessarily heated debates is that we don't really understand how each of us is affected differently by global issues.

Our aim is to change that with every personal story we share.

Share Your Story

Community Worldwide

Correspondents of the World is not just this website, but also a great community of people from all over the world. While face-to-face meetings are difficult at the moment, our Facebook Community Group is THE place to be to meet other people invested in Correspondents of the World. We are currently running a series of online-tea talks to get to know each other better.

Join Our Community

EXPLORE TOPIC Liberation

Global Issues Through Local Eyes

We are Correspondents of the World, an online platform where people from all over the world share their personal stories in relation to global development. We try to collect stories from people of all ages and genders, people with different social and religious backgrounds and people with all kinds of political opinions in order to get a fuller picture of what is going on behind the big news.

Our Correspondents

At Correspondents of the World we invite everyone to share their own story. This means we don't have professional writers or skilled interviewers. We believe that this approach offers a whole new perspective on topics we normally only read about in the news - if at all. If you would like to share your story, you can find more info here.

Share Your Story

Our Editors

We acknowledge that the stories we collect will necessarily be biased. But so is news. Believing in the power of the narrative, our growing team of awesome editors helps correspondents to make sure that their story is strictly about their personal experience - and let that speak for itself.

Become an Editor

Vision

At Correspondents of the World, we want to contribute to a better understanding of one another in a world that seems to get smaller by the day - but somehow neglects to bring people closer together as well. We think that one of the most frequent reasons for misunderstanding and unnecessarily heated debates is that we don't really understand how each of us is affected differently by global issues.

Our aim is to change that with every personal story we share.

View Our Full Vision & Mission Statement

Topics

We believe in quality over quantity. To give ourselves a focus, we started out to collect personal stories that relate to our correspondents' experiences with six different global topics. However, these topics were selected to increase the likelihood that the stories of different correspondents will cover the same issues and therefore illuminate these issues from different perspectives - and not to exclude any stories. If you have a personal story relating to a global issue that's not covered by our topics, please still reach out to us! We definitely have some blind spots and are happy to revise our focus and introduce new topics at any point in time. 

Environment

Discussions about the environment often center on grim, impersonal figures. Among the numbers and warnings, it is easy to forget that all of these statistics actually also affect us - in very different ways. We believe that in order to understand the immensity of environmental topics and global climate change, we need the personal stories of our correspondents.

Gender and Sexuality

Gender is the assumption of a "normal". Unmet expectations of what is normal are a world-wide cause for violence. We hope that the stories of our correspondents will help us to better understand the effects of global developments related to gender and sexuality, and to reveal outdated concepts that have been reinforced for centuries.

Migration

Our correspondents write about migration because it is a deeply personal topic that is often dehumanized. People quickly become foreigners, refugees - a "they". But: we have always been migrating, and we always will. For millions of different reasons. By sharing personal stories about migration, we hope to re-humanize this global topic.

Liberation

We want to support the demand for justice by spotlighting the personal stories of people who seek liberation in all its different forms. Our correspondents share their individual experiences in creating equality. We hope that for some this will be an encouragement to continue their own struggle against inequality and oppression - and for some an encouragement to get involved.

Education

Education is the newest addition to our themes. We believe that education, not only formal but also informal, is one of the core aspects of just and equal society as well as social change. Our correspondents share their experiences and confrontations about educational inequalities, accessibility issues and influence of societal norms and structures. 

Corona Virus

2020 is a year different from others before - not least because of the Corona pandemic. The worldwide spread of a highly contagious virus is something that affects all of us in very different ways. To get a better picture of how the pandemic's plethora of explicit and implicit consequences influences our everyday life, we share lockdown stories from correspondents all over the world.

Growing Fast

Although we started just over a year ago, Correspondents of the World has a quickly growing community of correspondents - and a dedicated team of editors, translators and country managers.

94

Correspondents

113

Stories

57

Countries

433

Translations

Contact

Correspondents of the World is as much a community as an online platform. Please feel free to contact us for whatever reason!

Message Us

Message on WhatsApp

Call Us

Joost: +31 6 30273938