#remember colectiv

[transylvanianphotoessays]

Romania. 2017 That was #Colectiv . That was the end of 2015. It was like after a few days of heavy rain when a river starts flooding. Then sunshine comes out and the river recedes to its banks in a few hours. 2016 was a cloudy year with plenty of sunshine but it grew darker by the end of the year. Finally it rained heavily at the beginning of 2017 and this river, this generation I am part of, started flooding the streets as it never did before in its lifetime. I am proud of my generation and I am not usually proud of it.

I am proud because we gave it all we had. 600 000 Romanians protesting peacefully during February in the whole country. That’s something glorious. Those people who faced the snow and the cold of the Eastern European winter are my heroes - the poster I ripped out of a magazine and stuck on my wall.

Romanians are spontaneous. If something goes wrong, they rush out and try to fix it. They can focus all this energy at once to get things moving. Unfortunately, our spontaneity is demolished by lack of breath. We can complete the short run. We can’t manage the long run. If things get solved in the short run then we are winners. If not, we regretfully quit.

This February was the start of a long run. There are some warriors out there who can keep up this kind of battle. I knew that we won’t make it all together. Even I am not hardwired for this. But I’m content. I’m happy that so many came at the starting line. The sprint along the first 100 metres was amazing. But the finish line is several revolutions ahead. We will join again this nerve racking 5000 metre race. This is #Rezist .

[transylvanianphotoessays]

Cluj-Napoca. Romania. 2015 #Colectiv was distinctive. This tragedy reached out to the soul of a generation. It was the spark in #Colectiv which the ignited the silent voice of so many people of different ages, entire families and circles of friends.

Four days after the tragedy, the news was split in between the cause of the circumstances of the fire and the most recent situation of the victims in our hospitals. However, there was too much silence in the administrative palaces. This was not a time for tranquility but for urgent decisions which were clearly not coming. It meant there was going to be noise on the streets and that was certainly what came next.

Last night the gear was shifted in Bucharest’s University Square. It had been such a long time since Romanians had filled the streets to ask for justice. Finally, if there was a time to speak that time was now. It was time to tear down that wall of denial our leaders were casting in their final attempt to avoid public pressure.

And the demonstrations in Bucharest sparked further protests in the whole country. During the next, new demonstrations started in the main cities of the country. Demonstrations against the prime minister. Against the minister of internal affairs. Against the parliament. Even against a very silent church. There were plenty of (obvious) reasons to be sad and (many more concealed ones) to be enraged by.

God provided us with a conscious and, after all that happened and all that we heard about it, this same conscious was permitting us to be deeply concerned. A handful of people caught in the inescapable flames from #Colectiv club were part of our generation. Me and M. belonged to this generation and now we were together with it. Nobody could deny our legitimate solidarity with those who died and the others who were still suffering. By choosing to mourn and to protest, we were doing what was right. This is not the Romania we want, neither is this “the day we give in” for it will be “the day we die”.