Germany’s Green Party is in turmoil after local leader Ikram Chemlal, who has a Moroccan background, resigned from the party in the city of Bielefeld after serving as leader for only three months. Among her criticisms, which she told Welt, are sure to be felt on a national level, with her labeling the party too White, as well as an “elitist and academic party.”
The Greens have long been labeled all of those things, but coming from one of its own politicians and a local leader, the criticisms have national implications.
“The Greens in Bielefeld are a very white, elitist, and academic party. I felt like I was just a figurehead for migrants,” said Chemlal while speaking with Welt newspaper.
When making the statement, she was pointing to a specific incident involving how her party in Bielefeld treated former co-chair Cim Kartal, a city council member with a Kurdish-Yazidi background. He resigned from the party in mid-May after 23 years of serving, and complained of bullying.
Chemlal condemned how the party treated him, saying it reinforced views of the party that it is elitist, too White, and merely an academic party.
The Greens are notorious for having a party made up almost entirely of White people, and a voting base heavily geared towards wealthy and academic Whites, while promoting diversity and open borders. The latest resignation will only reinforce these views. It also appears that many of the Whites in the Green Party may promote diversity, but they do not necessarily want it in their party, and they do not necessarily want to give up their own positions and places of power to make way for people of color, which reeks of hypocrisy to many voters.
However, as Chemlal said, she is the second person of color who resigned in her own city, and Welt spoke with the first one, Kartal. What he had to say about the Green Party was not much better.
“You asked about diversity,” he told Welt on the phone, “then just look at the names and faces on the Green Party’s council list for the local elections in Bielefeld. The 35 seats are filled exclusively by White people. And that’s in a city where about 25 percent of the people are of BIPoC background.” He is referring to Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Notably, his use of indigenous does not apply to ethnic Germans, the indigenous people of Germany, as they do not count in his eyes.
Despite Kartal helping the party grow from six to 16 percent in the state elections, he said he felt they squeezed him out of power. “But I myself was not empowered internally, not strengthened, but constantly thwarted. In the end, there was bullying and personal attacks against me,” said Kartal.
Speaking to the paper in previous months, Chemlal, a former integration officer at the Bielefeld-Brackwede correctional, said that the Greens have traditionally focused on places where the Greens were already strong, usually areas with well-educated and wealthy White people. However, the party neglected districts with high migrant populations and districts with higher AfD voter shares. Her belief was to reach out to these voters.
Although being elected to her position with a large majority, her strategy was not welcome inside the party, she says.
“Even as an assessor on the board, I had already reached the point where I didn’t want to continue. This had already become apparent in November and December, after Dominic Hallau became a mayoral candidate. Something changed in the atmosphere. I felt like I wasn’t even part of the board,” Chemlal told Welt newspaper.
She was then offered a chance to join the party’s leadership.
“I thought things would get better and that a change of mindset was taking place when I was asked to take over as co-chair. But after I was elected, it became even more unpleasant,” she said, describing “hostile networks” that “actively supported my exclusion.”
She claims that she was sidelined, had press releases that were released with her name signed to them without approving them, and was belittled by party leaders.
“Decisions were made over my head without consultation. Press releases were published in my name without my knowledge, and invitations to campaign events were not forwarded to me,” Chemlal said. She also said she was “actively denied” access to the district office with her own key, among other complaints.
Notably, one of the minorities that achieved the most power in the Green Party as the former Agricultural Minister, Cem Özdemir, wrote about how youths with a migrant background treated his daughter in Berlin, including sexual harassment. He came under fierce criticism from the left, including within his own party.
“When she is out and about in the city, she or her friends are often unpleasantly stared at or sexualized by men with a migrant background,” he wrote in FAZ newspaper in an op-ed.
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