Thank you for the flowers, and for the help to reject ACTA!
When I arrived in my office in the European Parliament today, there was a giant bunch of flowers standing in a vase greeting me. A note on it said:
Thank you for helping reject ACTA last week.
My assistant, who had been down to the mail room in the European Parliament to collect it, said that the mail room looked like a florist’s shop, with bunches of flowers on every flat surface, so I know that many of my colleagues who voted no to ACTA have also received flowers from grateful citizens.
Thank you! whoever sent me the flowers (the note was not signed). It is not every day that a politician gets flowers from citizens for what he has done in parliament, and I am very moved to see how many people have followed Rick’s suggestion to send flowers.
And if I was moved, I can only imagine how surprised many of my colleagues probably are right now, looking at the beautiful flowers that they have received. This is not something that happens every day in politics, far from it.
But in reality, the flowers that I got don’t belong to just me. The only reason we could win ACTA was that thousands and thousands of citizens took to the streets to demonstrate, and started contacting Members of the European Parliament to show that they cared.
Internally, we had been working since the beginning of the parliamentary term to do everything we could to eventually help defeat ACTA. This work on the inside was necessary to pave the way for a rejection, but it was the pressure from citizens and activists outside the parliament for the last six months that secured the victory.
The flowers that I received today belong to all of us, to everyone who has done at least something (big or small) to help defeat ACTA. This is exactly how it should be. Politics is best as a participation sport.
Thank you for the flowers, and thank you for the victory that we helped secure together!
…………
Picture by Henrik Alexandersson, free for publication CC0
Christian Engström, former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for Piratpartiet, Sweden
Christian Engström, Pirat 
[…] Engström, Pirate MEP, has written a blog post about it, and Pirate MEP Andersdotter’s assistant @Senficon has posted pictures, too. […]
Pingback av European Parliament Showered With Flowers Over ACTA Rejection - Falkvinge on Infopolicy — 9 juli 2012 @ 17:47
Awesomeness. Flowers + human rights + not harming poor people’s access to medicine = awesomeness.
As simple as that. 🙂
Kommentar av calandrella — 9 juli 2012 @ 17:49
ACTA nere för räkning för stunden, och nu kommer CETA upp istället… >.<
Kommentar av SBJ — 9 juli 2012 @ 21:37
What’s the logo on the message that came with the flowers?
Kommentar av asdf@asdf.com — 10 juli 2012 @ 11:14
[…] Läkare utan Gränser och själva demokratin har segrat. EU-parlamentet fullkomligen badar i blommor (skicka du med!). Men den globala rättvisan och människans grundläggande frihet har […]
Pingback av Tal till Piratpartiet år 2050: Demokratins slutliga seger. Del 1 – tekniker, terrorister och kontraterrorister « Calandrellas blogg — 10 juli 2012 @ 18:43
This is just completely awesome. Fantastic idea by Rick (or well, Roger Wallis had indirectly the idea first, or rather someone in the swarm who sent Wallis flowers, or then again of course, that was all based on the tradition of flower-giving, so the original creator probably lived hundreds of years ago… yeah, this with origin and IPR isn’t as simple as it looks like for the monopolists 😉 )!
Kommentar av calandrella — 10 juli 2012 @ 23:00
Congratulations on the ACTA vote. But read here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/eu-accused-of-pushing-antipiracy-agreement-through-backdoor-7932505.html
More is coming. The EC seems to be absolutely decided to have it
its way and the European Parliament, which they now have to
tolerate, is just an obstacle which must be outflanked.
Please, keep on!
Kommentar av Jarda — 11 juli 2012 @ 21:13
Yes, as long as people try to defend their right to democracy, these megacorporations with a massive amount of money and a lot of power will just try again and again to take the power from the people.
Its not a hard decision, whether you want democracy instead of giving the power to rich corporations!
Kommentar av ddddddddddddddd — 14 juli 2012 @ 20:02