Activist: New grocer "Picnic" has a racist name

Former GroenLinks faction leader in Amsterdam-Zuidoost Iwan Leeuwin has taken issue with the name of the new online supermarket set to open in September. The store is named Picnic, which according to Leeuwin, is a historically racist term. Leeuwin wrote this in an open letter addressed to Michiel Muller and the other initiators of Picnic Online, posted on Facebook on Wednesday. According to Leeuwin, Picnic originally meant "pick a nigger", which was used in the "organized torture and killings of innocent African Americans in America. This act was perpetrated by cowardly recognizable racist key persons including entrepreneurs, police officers, lawyers, often dressed as Ku Klux Klan." Leeuwin closes the letter by asking why the initiators chose the loaded word and whether they would be willing to publicly distance themselves from the word Picnic. "It will certainly help the process of going through life together in the Dutch community." That the word picnic has a racist origin is an urban legend that appeared on the internet in 1999. The Webster's New World College Dictionary - 5th Edition says that the etymology of the word "picnic" is from the French "pique-nique", likely from "piquer" which means "to pick" and "nique" which means "a trifle." Leeuwin stepped down as GroenLinks faction leader in Zuidoost last month due to an unresolvable conflict between him and the the department management. He told Het Parool that he was leaving the party with a heavy heart, but saw no other way out. He is now the coordinator of the AD Netwerk Nederland, an organization that represents the interests of Africans in Diaspora. In October last year Leeuwin also took issue with a statue of former South African President and freedom fighter Nelson Mandela made by school children for the opening of the Nelson Mandelapark, saying that it looked too much like Zwarte Piet, a blackface character described as a helper to Sinterklas in a Netherlands Christmas legend and annual celebration. “I left the meeting in protest” he wrote on Facebook at the time. “Given the sensitivity surrounding Zwarte Piet this should never have happened.”