Photo Guy Ackermans After the lunch break, some five hundred employees and students make their way to the Forum building from all corners of the campus. They carry cardboard signs and red papers and have red felt squares pinned to their clothing for this walkout.
Assistant Professor Zoë Robaey (Philosophy) addresses them through the megaphone at Forum. She explains why this demonstration is necessary and wants to practice some slogans. ‘When I shout “show some guts”, you shout “stop the cuts”.’ Those present shout for all they are worth. They have a little more trouble with the slogan “Hey ho, OCW, don’t flush my course down the loo” (Hey ho OCW, spoel mijn vak niet door de plee). There is some giggling, but on the second try, everyone joins in. The original plan was for a big national demonstration in Utrecht today, but it was cancelled at Mayor Sharon Dijksma’s request. This demonstration is a ‘plan B’.
The procession in Wageningen of some five hundred people slowly makes its way towards Atlas, with, among others, Robaey and colleagues Sven Da Silva, Michiel Köhne and Charlotte Koster leading the way with rector Carolien Kroeze. Together with FNV official Annelies Coppelmans, they mobilised the WUR community to protest the austerity measures. The crowd is so big that the tail end of the procession is still waiting at Forum when the head arrives at Forum.
Creativity
In addition to the ‘No education; no future’ and ‘eduCATE, not eduCUT’ slogans on the cardboard signs, protestors have also finetuned their slogans to match their domain. ‘Even my microbes can think bigger than this!’ or the very current ‘Cancelling protests, is that what democracy looks like?’
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There is some doubt when the head of the procession arrives at Atlas and starts walking up the ramp. There is some fearful whispering of ‘Are we really doing this?’ from those who fear the group may enter the building. Still, everyone follows. The procession halts at the corner of the ramp. Robaey, Da Silva, Köhne and Koster start singing ‘Eppo Ciao’ (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous protest song Bella Ciao and education minister Eppo Bruins) through the megaphone, which is repeated several times.
When the last protestors arrive at the ramp and take their places in the grass, they call on Köhne to start ‘Eppo Ciao’ again. He obliges, and the protestors sing and clap along. Rector Carolien Kroeze remains silent but looks on with approval.
Plan B
The group resumes their walkout towards the Forum building via the back of the Atlas building. Along the way, the protestors repeatedly shout: ‘Show some guts; stop the cuts’ and ‘Hey ho OCW,don’t flush my course down the loo. Upon arrival at Forum, the crowd thins. The majority return to their job or go home. Some seventy people go to Orion to watch the live stream of speakers who were set to speak at the demonstration in Utrecht.
‘This is quite a nice turnout for a plan B’, some people say. The local spokesperson for FNV agrees. ‘I would have been happy with fifty people’, he says, after the protest. ‘I really didn’t expect these numbers. We announced this plan just this morning. The turnout shows that there is genuine concern over this issue.’
Protest group WOinActie has announced a new date for the national demonstration: 25 November on the Malieveld in The Hague.
