“Guys, go home, it’s all to your own detriment to do anything crazy. Just think about it, talk to your family. I really trust in my heart that you will go home, you wouldn’t want to embarrass that, would you?”
A group of teenagers laugh. “No, no, of course not.” They cycle away. A handful of teenagers can be found on Osdorpplein in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening, a small family with a toddler playing in the dry fountain and about ten ‘neighborhood fathers and mothers’ and street coaches.
A call went around on social media: ‘Tomorrow OSD [Osdorp] 5:30 PM everyone welcome, the busy the better. Share!!!’ But there is a friendly atmosphere on the square all evening. Neighborhood fathers of mosques in the area are “keeping an eye on it”. They speak to boys who come to the square in groups. “We tell them to calm down and that nothing will happen here tonight,” says one of the neighborhood fathers of the El Mouahidine mosque, who does not want his name in the newspaper. “They then say, ‘Okay,’ and they leave. They respect us.”
That has everything to do with the way you treat young people, say ‘neighborhood mothers’ from neighborhood organization Dappere Dames Malika Frindi (51) and Yet (46, preferably no surname). The Brave Ladies are usually active in the Indische Buurt, in Amsterdam East, but sometimes they help in other places, such as Tuesday evening in Osdorp. “The police immediately approach those boys accusingly, I greet them with a smile – then you always get a smile back,” says Yet.
She just spoke to a thirteen-year-old boy, she says. What was he doing on the street, she asked him. “His mother was on holiday abroad and his father allowed him to go outside for a while. I said to him, honey, wouldn’t it be bad if Mom got a call tonight that you were stuck?” That works, she and Frindi think: “They see their mothers in us.”
Sometimes they get the answer: but I don’t do anything, do I? Frindi: “Then we explain that the police don’t care at all. If others do something and the police intervene, it doesn’t matter what you do, you will still be taken away.”
Action-reaction
On Monday evening things got out of hand at Plein ’40-’45: the riot police had to take action after heavy fireworks were set off and cars were pelted. The reason for the unrest was a woman in the city center on Sunday was injured was charged by the riot police and taken away on a stretcher. “Those young people responded to that,” says a street coach on the square. Also the neighborhood fathers and mothers NRC speaks of that incident as the reason for the dissatisfaction among young people who were involved in the disturbances.
The street coaches – they do not want their names in the newspaper – stand on Osdorpplein all evening and are sometimes approached by young people themselves: “Should we go home?” “Yes, boys, tonight.” They know the boys, says one of them, that helps. Their anger also stems from the way they are portrayed, he adds. “They were blamed for everything, the truth only came out later. But the negativity had already spread.” He is referring to the confrontation between young people from Amsterdam and football supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv last week.
That is also what Yet and Frindi from the Brave Ladies say. “They want the world to understand that it was action-reaction,” says Frindi. “And I understand them. But stirring up trouble is not a useful thing to do.”
Live blog Unrest in Amsterdam
It remained quiet in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening, with many street coaches on their feet. Share Email the editors
