"Doing it yourself" - Dutch Socialist party councillor in Amsterdam speaks out

["Jurriaan Bendien" <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(an opinion article by Mrs. Remine Alberts, leading Socialist Party
councillor in the Amsterdam City Council)

I can't recall now exactly when she said it first. And whether it was during
mealtime, or while getting dressed, I am hazy about. However, the words of
my daughter were unmistakable: "I wanna do it myself !", she said. Depending
on how much time I had, I would let her muddle on by herself. Often she
would then say after a while, "You help !". Doing it yourself turned out to
be not so simple after all.

Doing it yourself, muddling through, helping - these things are all part of
the process called "growing up". In the same process, children learn their
possibilities, but also their limits. In the end, they have developed so
far, that they can indicate directly where they want help, and where they
don't need it.

Because of the possibility that things might go wrong, adults in our country
decided among each other long ago that for cases where physical force has to
be used, a special institution should be established: namely, the police.
Officially, one says that the police has a "monopoly on violence". And that
means, therefore, that nobody else is allowed to use violence against
citizens.

Some time ago an Albert Heijn supermarket hit the news, because two
assistants had apprehended a thief stealing goods from the store. They did
so with a considerable amount of violence. Of course, the thief should not
have stolen, but the actions of the two shop assistants were dubious. What
they did, tended into the direction of unilateral vigilante actions. But in
our country you are not permitted to take it upon yourself to act as judge
and meet out sentencing in such cases. We don't live in the era of the Wild
West here, and this is not the United States.

Very objectionable therefore was the response of Prince Bernard to this
event. Because, in fact, he offered to pay the fine which the two Albert
Heijn employees had incurred for their handling of the situation, and thus
he gave a signal which endorsed unilateral action in such cases ("doing it
yourself").

This week, another supermarket hit the news with a tragic story. This time
it concerned a woman who was supposed to have stolen goods. This time, a
whole posse of assistants chased the thief and apprehended her. They used so
much violence, that the woman later died. The first thing that occurred to
me was: "well, your Royal Highness, are you pleased with yourself now ?" The
thought that immediately followed in my mind was: "will Prince Bernhard go
and sit out a jail sentence together with the offenders ?".

Now of course you might think about Prince Bernhard that he's just an
elderly knoll who doesn't really know anymore what's what in the real world,
but point is that several Amsterdam city councillors and even the Minister
of Justice have not publicly criticised the Prince. Now somebody's actually
been murdered, as we could have known in advance. But, as was subsequently
established, she hadn't actually stolen anything...

For me, one thing is quite clear: let small children "do things for
themselves" - adults are often better off not doing so.

(translated from "'t Amsterdammertje", the monthly news sheet of the
Amsterdam branch of the Socialist Party, October 2003 - JB).




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