Acties en oproepen

De Tweede Kamerverkiezing is in aantocht. Op 17 maart 2021 - en afhankelijk van de voorzieningen per gemeente ook op 15 maart en 16 maart – kunt u als stemgerechtigde uw stem uitbrengen.

In navolging van de Stichting Ocan oproepen aan zowel Caribisch-Nederlandse kandidaten als de gemeenschap, willen wij een aantal van de kandidaten aan u voorstellen. Stichting Ocan biedt graag deze mogelijkheid aan alle Caribisch-Nederlandse kandidaten die aan de Tweede Kamerverkiezing meedoen. In de komende periode kunt u ze beter leren kennen en waar zij voor staan en eventueel uw stem op één van hen uitbrengen!

Wij trappen af met mw. Lysanne Charles. Kandidaat nr. 13 op de lijst van de politieke partij Bij1.

Short biography:

Political ambition:

I have actually always been pretty politically conscious, having grown up in a family in which politics took center stage. My great uncle Maximilaan Nicholson was always very active in politics when I was growing up, and my great great uncle David Donker had also been involved previously, along with my grandmother Carmen Simmons once heading her own list and my aunt Christina Charles serving as a Commissioner and so on and so on. My brother Vito Charles is also currently an Island Council Member on Saba. So from young politics was a mainstay in conversations at family gatherings and so on. I became active in politics in my early teens on St. Maarten and headed the Youth Wing of the Democratic Party for many years. I would say that that gave me my first real taste of fighting for causes I believed in and engaging with people about that. Later I also ran as a candidate, also candidate number 13, on their list. I decided to join the list of BIJ1 for two reasons, 1) I believe in our mandate and our party platform, which advocates for radical equality and economic justice. For someone who has spent the better part of my adulthood engaged with activisms that seek to do just that this was the only party that made sense for me and 2) I believe in our party leadership and know that with one or more seats in Second Chamber we will already start to have necessary impact and shifts in conversations about our political constellation and matters that impact both the Netherlands and the BES islands and the CAS island countries and this is important. I wanted to participate in the national election because I believe that the tone for Kingdom Relations is set in the Second Chamber and over the years that tone has gotten progressively regressive and needs to change. In addition I could not believe that there exists a Permanent Committee on Kingdom Relations and that there are no Caribbean people in this entity. 

Appeal to eligible Dutch Caribbean voters:

I am championing:

I am championing the following three issues

- A radical equality and economic justice throughout the Kingdom; especially around social minimums, cost of living and health care

- Dismantling of the colonial hierarchies whose legacies continue to have impact in the Kingdom particularly around language, race, place of birth, etc.  

- Self - Determination and inclusion in decision - making processes at highest level for all inhabitants, including those of the Dutch Caribbean