Basically, Sibylla Dekker, our minister of "People's housing, zoning and environment" wants to liberalise 25% of the renting houses in the country(half of the houses here are renting houses), introducing more "free" market functioning into the housing sector. After 2009, 600,000 people stand to lose all legal protection against huge renting prices and the further increase of those.

And to make matters worse, this is accompanied by constant benefits for those who buy their house. Large benefits, in fact, I'm talking billions here.

Anyway, some more on the demonstration: I was there, together with some other comrades of the New Communist Party of the Netherlands and the Communist Youth Movement affiliated to it. In total there were about 5,000 people, which isn't bad.

The much-hated minister was on the scene too, although she didn't dare go up the stage to face the angry crowd. She remained in a tent behind the stage for an interview with some disgruntled renters. All she had to say for herself was that the flyers of the demonstration supposedly contained "misinformation". In the meantime, there was a columnist on stage telling a funny story, and when she took notice, she referred to Dekker as a "cowardly *****".

All in all, we had a great time. When the last band stopped playing, we jumped in to sing the Internationale together, and then we went to the party's office to chill out for a while. On our way, we went through a busy street, waving the hammer and sickle flags proudly. After tea in the office, we went for dinner at an Italian restaurant.

Finally, when there was only five of us left, we went for some well-deserved drinks and smokes.


People...


Yet more people...


You guessed it...


Waving our flags to the music in front of the cameras like a bunch of attention whores.


Speaker on the stage who referred to the much-hated minister as a "cowardly *****".


After the demonstration, marching through one of the busiest streets as if we own it or something. I figured it'd be okay to post this, as it only shows our backs. I'm in the middle with the dark blue coat, by the way.