He is known for being blood fanatic and attacking. Jimmy Dijk of the SP leaves the municipal politics of Groningen and starts as a Member of Parliament. With a mission. “I’m fed up with politics serving big business instead of the common man.”
He has a season ticket from FC Groningen and when his club Feyenoord plays, his hands are sweaty in the morning. Jimmy Dijk (37) cannot ignore it: he is a football fanatic. That sometimes wrings at home after a full working week. “I share the Sunday with football and with my girlfriend. That’s the biggest balancing act in my personal life.”
Dijk has been running that full working week for years. He has a full-time job in the executive board of the Socialist Party (SP). In addition, he has been a councilor in his hometown of Groningen for 12.5 years.
Or rather, he was a councillor. Last Wednesday he got himself excited once more on his Jimmy Dijks during the municipal council meeting in the town hall. There the public gallery was full of people from Paddepoel-Zuid and the Indische Buurt. They have been living in draughty, damp, clammy, moldy rental homes for ages. “The way people are spoken about and thought about. That they themselves are also to blame for that mold, that they do not ventilate, that they do not operate the heating properly. Fuck off, I think. The housing associations have simply not looked back at those houses for 15 years.
Benjamin of the family
Jimmy Dijk grew up in the Groningen village of Oldenzijl as Benjamin of the family: he has a sister who is 10 years older (she died 5 years ago) and two brothers who are 6 years older, twins. He speaks of a stable and pleasant childhood, although his parents separated when he was 8 years old. They continued to live near each other; eventually Jimmy moved to Winsum with his mother.
After high school he moved to Groningen, where he studied Social Pedagogical Assistance (SPH). During his internship he ended up as a youth worker in Paddepoel, Selwerd and Tuinwijk.
There he stared his eyes out. ,,In the afternoon we received young guys of Turkish and Moroccan descent and in the evening we had to try to set up something for young people who smoked cannabis who rubbed up against the Z-side.”
He remembers an Antillean boy who looked a bit unkempt. “I remember asking him what he ate. Pizza, he said. He had also eaten pizza the day before and nothing the day before.”
Jimmy was shocked by that, he only had the comparison with his own home. “I realized I had never been without dinner,” he says.
‘Parents I can fall back on’
Their home was not very luxurious, his father had all kinds of jobs – from truck driver to cabinetmaker and ship’s carpenter – so that his mother could get her French teacher’s certificate. “I am lucky that I have parents that I can fall back on, who have always told us to do our best. Not everyone has that.”
During that internship, something else caught his eye: people in red coats who knocked on doors in poor urban neighborhoods to find out what was wrong with society. SP’ers.
Jimmy dropped out of the SPH and switched to sociology. He was almost 20 and knew he didn’t want to just sit with his nose in the books. He sent an email to the SP. He wanted to do something for the party. He immediately got a response. Whether he had time in the evening to attend a party meeting.
Straight forward
His parents were not politically active. His father always voted PvdA, until the SP emerged. “My father is from Rotterdam and has worked in factories and construction there. He has seen the Italians and Spaniards come, then the Turks and Moroccans, and now the Poles, Bulgarians and Romanians. He thought they were being exploited, he thought it was ridiculous that employers reduced wage costs with cheap guest workers. And he saw very clearly that only the employers benefited from it.
He says: ,,My style of discussion, straight to the point, I got from my Rotterdam father. And I got the temperament from my French mother. At the table we had heated discussions about politics and faith and philosophy. I don’t mind disagreeing at all.”
His parents met on the beach of Bordeaux, where his father was on vacation. He kept returning: first on a moped, later in a Citroën Ami. One day his lover went with him to the Netherlands, they settled with relatives in Rotterdam and later bought a ruin in Oldenzijl that they renovated.
‘What do we do? Action!’
Jimmy Dijk entered the party center on Nieuwe Boteringestraat that evening in 2005, as a sociology student. He met twelve young people, including Eelco Eikenaar and Sandra Beckerman. ,,I had put on a nice shirt, but it was not a meeting, it was super firm: what are we going to do? Action! Then we went to café Kult and discussed the world.”
He got his bachelor’s degree in sociology, then went to work at Randstad Uitzendbureau, but hated it there. Friends of his owned café Van de Markt on Paterswoldseweg and he enjoyed working there; he earned half his salary there at Randstad. He also became a councillor.
After about six years in the hospitality industry, he was offered a job within the SP: education and training for party volunteers.
With what kind of ideals did you enter the SP?
“With big ideas, big ideals. You are 19 and you want to change the world. And rap too. We spoke to many people, including young people, who felt they were not being heard and wanted to solve the inequality quickly.”
And what is the state of society now?
“Well, that people no longer vote is because politics is no longer about anything. The health insurers are responsible for the care, the bus company determines whether a bus runs from Pekela to the city. We are in the wringer of the market.”
Doesn’t a person lose his originality when he is so fused with the SP?
“Yes, that is likely. If you spend too long among politicians, you become one yourself. That’s why I always go into the neighbourhoods, because the circumstances in which people live and work determine their thinking. It’s about making those circumstances more humane.”
What do you do besides all your efforts for the party?
“I do boxing, I run and I read a lot. Preferably political and social books or historical novels.”
What is your last read book?
,, Left is not woke by American philosopher Susan Neiman.
Are you woke or left?
“Left, or better: socialist, because socialists pursue universal values and shared interests. I think Woke is a very individualistic approach to minority groups. Woke emphasizes the differences between people and that causes division.”
You are sometimes accused of that, for example if you rant against Vindicat.
“I show contradictions, which is different from polarizing. I show that Vindicat gets a special treatment in this city. There is no other association or catering establishment that has a direct sorry line with the mayor after misbehaving. I don’t dislike Vindicat because it is an elite club, what matters to me is how that elite relates to society. This elite club regularly misbehaves and then the mayor says: ‘We have to keep in touch with Vindicat’. Yes, hello. Just explain that to a football club or a cafe where the police are on the doorstep in the event of abuse.”
I heard you box with a personal trainer. That’s not cheap.
,,Haha, yes, an SP member does not only have to do cheap things. In fact, I think there is nothing wrong with wealth, but there is with poverty. It’s not okay that there are people in our country who don’t have food to eat. The working class has been screwed hard for years. For the past 40 years, corporate profits have skyrocketed and housing and living prices are only rising. Do you know what I pay for a fucking cauliflower?”
Is that true? Have we not all just gotten better compared to 40 years ago?
,,No definitely not. We have working poor, because profits are going in the wrong direction. In the past, families could make ends meet if one parent worked. That no longer works. Can you imagine how stressful that is. In the northern urban districts, the average life expectancy is 8 years shorter than in the rest of the city. Healthy and happy aging is at stake and, in addition to the bad luck factor, politics plays a role in this.”
What have you achieved in the 12.5 years that you were a councillor?
“I have tried to bring people together to improve their living, working and living environment. Cleaners have been hired, market forces in home care have diminished, the common thread in the coalition agreement is that the market is no longer leading.”
And you will continue that in the House of Representatives, as spokesperson care?
,,Yes. That the Rutte/Kaag cabinet is considering increasing the deductible from 385 to 485 euros: it makes me angry again. Do you know that people then choose not to go to the doctor, with all the consequences that entails? Let them rake in money by raising taxes on the sky-high profits of companies and shareholders. Stop with all those managers in healthcare and get more hands on the bed.
A matter of long breath.
“As long as it is necessary. I’m sick and tired of politics serving big business instead of ordinary people who work hard and simply try to make the best of their lives.”
If the working poor are gone, does the SP still have a right to exist?
“Yes, because even if there were no more poverty, a society based on solidarity would still be better for everyone. The recent elections give me hope: more and more people want a different society with more solidarity and less market forces.”
————–
On Thursday afternoon, Jimmy Dijk was appointed to the House of Representatives in The Hague. He had invited his father for this. ,,The House of Representatives, that’s not a place for me, is it?”, his father reacted reluctantly.
He was there anyway.