2. Filip Rogiers
As a journalist for De Morgen, Knack and De Standaard, I wrote social features for years. I used to walk the streets, I grew impatient when I spent too long in the office, I had to be among people. Listening to their concerns, what they're passionate about, what kind of future they dream of.
Last year, I traded the newspaper for the classroom. I became a teacher, a profession that is just as social and much needed. Especially in Brussels, this beautiful city, this changeable city, this young city. Commitment, you see, was always in my genes. As a journalist, I have seen how beautiful but also how fragile democracy and the social fabric are. I come from a large family that nowadays we would call vulnerable or fragile: my father was the sole breadwinner; my sisters, my brothers and I have only been able to study thanks to social grants and other benefits from the welfare state built among others by socialists.
This city, this country, and Europe need builders again, not breakers. They need dreamers, not cynics. Unfortunately, there are far too many of the latter these days. 'Everything of value is defenceless', wrote the poet Lucebert. Everyone in Flanders and Brussels who has a "human profession" notices this: teachers, healthcare staff, child carers... Too many social services are under pressure, too many civil society organisations see their operations curtailed. Good education, affordable care, sufficient greenery, and healthy air: they should not be a privilege for the few, they should be a right for all.
Here and now, we are much too careless about people, human rights, and the planet. Democracy should never be taken for granted, human rights should be protected and cemented every day and there is only one planet. This is not the time to remain on the sidelines, neutrality kills. We have to act now. I have a leftist heart and that heart bleeds at the thought of new-fangled fascism knocking at our doors. Brussels needs builders, Brussels needs socially and ecologically progressive forces. That is why I support Hannelore Goeman and Vooruit.Brussels with all my heart and mind.