Transcriber: Giang Tran Kim Reviewer: Annet Johnson
Early nineties, I’m ten years old and I love soccer.
And the three of Milan,
these three, look at them how beautiful they are,
they’ve won again the night before.
I peer out of my wide back door window.
I see the dew on the grass.
It’s 7:30 in the morning.
I see my worn-out soccer ball halfway in our garden,
but I only focus on that gap between the brick wall
that separates our terrace house from that of our elderly neighbor
and the green hedge because there is my viewpoint on the world.
That’s where the neighbor sticks the newspaper, this one.
Before I tell you more about the impact of the neighbor’s newspaper on my life,
I would like to ask a pop quiz question.
With all these bright minds in this lovely audience that cannot be very hard,
but I want to make a deal with you.
If you answer correctly, then I will give you a beer.
But if you don’t, then all of you will owe me a beer, beers with an “s”.
So let’s try.
What does this downward trend stand for?
What is this line about?
I’ll help you a little bit to start with.
This talk is about inequality and the subject is the neighbor’s newspaper.
So help me out, what is it about?
The number of newspaper subscriptions?
No, it’s not.
Almost, but it’s not.
A second guess?
Sales?
No, it’s not.
All of you owe me many beers because it is the railway in our city.
It divides the northern part from the southern part.
And the expression “the other side of the tracks”
is very well known in this city.
If you take that literally, then it depends on where you are situated,
where you are geographically located.
But it’s less about your location and more about your socio-economic status.
In this self-declared egalitarian country
that for decades has declared to be, and preached to be, very equal,
some even say that we’re a paradise for life chances,
let’s just look at the facts.
This is my part of town:
20 percent with low literacy,
41 percent of the people feeling ill in my part of town,
high percentages of people feeling insecure and unsafe in the neighborhood.
Does that look like paradise to you?
Does it?
I don’t think so.
There is a very big gap between children growing up in my part of town
and their friends just a couple of kilometers away.
I would like that gap to be unique for this city
because then we wouldn’t have a very big problem in the rest of the country,
but it’s not.
It’s an iron curtain that runs through our society,
that actually goes from here to Rotterdam, from Eindhoven to Amsterdam,
and Groningen to Arnhem.
Lucinda Williams wrote and sang a beautiful song about this theme,
the “East Side of Town.”
My east side of town is actually the north side of town.
In my part of town, if you’re born and growing up there as a kid,
you get unhealthy 15 years younger
than your friends just a couple of kilometers away,
growing up in a rich family.
You die on average six years younger
than your friends just a couple of kilometers away in a rich family.
If that would, unfortunately, happen to me,
then you can blame my adoration and addiction to frikandellen,
because I absolutely adore the Dutch delicacy of recycled and separated meat.
But what on earth, can a kid born today and growing up today in Zeswegen,
in the neighborhood where I grew up,
what can that kid do about the two low wages of its parents?
What can that kid do about the prices of a pack of 20 frozen frikandellen
being cheaper than fresh vegetables?
What kind of kid do about that?
What can a kid do about the unhealthy mold in the house
rented from the Housing Corporation.
What can a kid born today or growing up today
in the northern part of this city do about that?
You think it’s strange that we in the northern part of the city
are a little bit suspicious about the institutions?
Is it surprising that we vote less often?
You think it’s strange that we are hesitating when it comes to vaccination?
Are you really surprised?
Early nineties, I run outside.
I grab the newspaper stuck in the gap in the hedge.
I go directly to the sports page,
Italian soccer, Serie A to be exact,
and they’ve done it again.
Those fantastic, beautiful players, they’ve won again.
My elderly neighbor, Mrs. Neighbor, obviously that’s not her real name,
but we call her that because of her very lovely tone,
and she’s very lovely,
Initially, she decides to stick the local newspaper
through the hedge after important matches.
But after a while,
she decides that her judgement on what is or is not an important match
is grossly inadequate and I agree.
I may have stimulated that thought when she forgot and just one minute later,
I was ringing her front door, seeing her in her pajamas,
asking her in a very lovely voice,
“Neighbor, have you already read the newspaper today?”
She replied wittily, “After I wake up young man.”
Since that moment, she sticks the newspaper,
each and every day, through the hedge,
between the fence and the hedge.
I’ve never had the chance to actually thank Mrs. Neighbor
and I would like to thank her.
She was actually the reason why I developed a love for reading.
I learnt sentences that I wasn’t aware of.
I learned about rhetorics.
I learned from letters to the editor.
I learned that reading was also participation.
It even took me on a journey.
Learning about places like Milan or other European cities
where van Basten, Gullit, and Rijkaard would have won.
If they didn’t win, I was less interested.
But because of the newspaper,
I would learn about other places in the world,
about the Netherlands, about my city,
about my neighborhood, and even about my own street.
Because of my neighbor’s newspaper, I learned about my own street,
things I didn’t know before.
So my alma mater is not the university I attended just 30 kilometers from here.
My neighbor’s newspaper is my alma mater, not the university I attended.
It taught me to speak a language I wouldn’t have spoken otherwise.
It taught me about places I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
It actually taught me about the word “inclusive”
way before that word became part of the public debate.
It closed the gap of reliable information and it actually gave me a voice.
I’m raising that voice now because it’s very important;
it’s now or never.
So I ask you,
wouldn’t it be a great idea if we would share the newspaper
via each and every hedge, fence, and smartphone?
I know that would cost millions, so there are some obstacles.
But wouldn’t it be at least a good idea
to put it in each and every fence, hedge, and smartphone,
benefiting young families with children that are growing up?
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to at least close the gap of reliable information?
Of separating facts from fakes, quality journalism from bullshit,
so to speak?
Wouldn’t it be at least a good idea to start reading the local newspaper
each and every morning at our schools and inviting our parents to read along?
And whatever you think or hold to be possible or impossible,
we must dream big.
We must win big because the challenge is big too.
The gap of reliable information is huge.
If we want to fill that gap, we have to act now.
Let’s face the facts.
Out of one resident in Zeswegen, the neighborhood in which I grew up,
ten residents of Welten in the southern part of the city,
one out of ten, have access to the local newspaper.
Therefore, one resident in Zeswegen,
who casts a vote and participates in a local election, equals four in Welten.
Is that sustainable?
Is that healthy?
Is it fair that therefore Zeswegen’s story is less heard than Welten’s story?
is it sustainable?
Is it healthy?
Do we think it’s fair?
I don’t think so.
The neighbor’s newspaper has enriched my life, it has.
It even allows me now to speak in a foreign language in my own city,
reaching out to academics on the other side of the planet,
and that is absolutely amazing, no doubt about that.
I salute you, I salute the people on the other side of the planet,
the academics on the other side of the planet.
But this is not about charity, this is about dignity.
This is not about individual life chances, this is about a collective challenge.
So not only academics on the other side of the planet,
but also essential workers on the other side of the tracks,
on both sides of the tracks
should have access to reliable information, to quality journalism.
Not only academics, but also cleaners, janitors, postal deliverers,
home care workers, like you see in this beautiful version
of the Night Watch of Rembrandt.
They should have reliable information too.
So we can complete our collective story with the unknown stories.
So we can fill the invisible blank pages in this wonderful local newspaper.
So we can actually teach you, academics and professors,
a language you don’t speak.
We can teach teach you about the stories you don’t know.
We can give you the knowledge you don't have yet.
So start spreading the news.
Today, now or never, start spreading the news
through all the fences, hedges, and smartphones of the world,
in all of our communities.
So I can finally say, “Thank you, Mrs. Neighbor“.
Thank you.
(Applause)