#romani issues

[wolpertingerantlers]

Tomorrow (May 16th) is Romani Day of Resistance, the 24th is the Feast of Saint Sara la Kali, June is GRT (Gypsy Romani Traveller) history month, and August 2nd is Romani Haulocaust Remembrance Day.

Please keep us in mind and do research for other more important things than fandom. Also start keeping your fandoms out of our tags.

[big-scrungus]

Guys... It’s international Romani Day. you know what that means?

TODAY IS THE DAY TO SET FIRE TO THE HIPPIES WHO APPROPRIATE AND BASTARDIZE OUR CULTURE WITH GREAT VENGEANCE AND FURIOUS ANGER, THOSE WOULD POISON AND DESTROY MY BROTHERS AND YOU KNOW OUR NAME IS THE ROM, WHEN I LAY MY VENGEANCE UPON THEE. 

[wolpertingerantlers]

Can I be a little serious and Rroma on main for a second?

WE ENDURED ACTUAL CHATTEL SLAVERY.

Not Indentured servitude or whatever parne gadje want to call it. But actual chattel slavery where a human being is an object or livestock that can be bought and sold or killed on a whim. Tell me does this:

The social condition of slaves was pitiful. They could be beaten, sold or killed at the discretion of their masters. If a free person married a slave, he or she attracted the free one to the slave ranks, as well as the resulting children. Depending on his own interest, the master could allow the slave the right to marry, including the right to annul the marriage without his knowledge and to break up the family.

If a slave killed another person’s slave, he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was not carried out, the one who killed taking the place of the one killed. Among the groups of gypsy slaves, some were recruited to be appointed group leaders, also known as Juzi domnești. These judges were assigned to the counties and their main task was not to let any slave leave the county and to look for those who had run away and hand them over to their masters. Those who fled were given the harshest of punishments, such as walking în the streets while the passers-by were encouraged to spit on them, hanging by ropes in the stables over animals or being tied up and thrown into the raging waters with the promise that if they survive, they will be freed. In  winter, they were thrown naked în the snow or frozen rivers. Gypsy servants from the manor courts made up the staff of servants, seamstresses, maids and randais. The utterly inhumane treatment of slaves was experienced in the gentry families from the earliest ages, with fathers encouraging their offspring to whip and torment the children on their property. Physical violence against servants was not only carried out by men, but often even women in the gentry practised these cruel acts. Young Roma girls were forced to have sexual relations with their masters.

Sound familiar? It should to Black Americans and American Indigenous people.

What if I told you this was happening for 200 years before the Transatlantic slave trade? Romani chattel slavery spanned 500 years(from about the 1370s to 1856). It is tied with the enslavement of Black Americans for the longest continuous period of chattel enslavement in the history of the world. This is to the point where the term for us in many countries is based on the Greek word for slave, Tsigan.

And just like Black Americans, once we were "freed" Romanian authorities and politicians gave us nothing to support ourselves. We weren't even legally allowed land or stable businesses on which to support ourselves. Often they went to re-enslaving us into prisons, gold/silver mines, and later, SELLING US TO LITERAL NAZI's to die. We still endure systemic in Europe and to a lesser extent America (there IS in fact an anti gypsy task force). Our women are raped and our men are killed by the police and it's seen as nothing but getting rid of vermin. Our children are stolen from us to be adopted into proper white families. Most of us are uneducated and illiterate because of inherent bias in our schooling.

So no, your Irish great-great-great- great grandfather who was an indentured servant in America has no clue what it would be like as an actual chattel slave.

This is what Gypsy Soul and Blood is. This is why our culture is important to us. This is why gypsy is a slur. Why your gypsy fortune teller costume and gypsy curse should be considered as offensive as minstrel shows and blackface.

Opre Roma! Opre Kale! Opre Indigenous Americans! Opre Palestine!

[big-scrungus]

A message to Wiccans who try to incorporate Romani culture in their usernames and/or witchcraft.

First of all if you’re not Romani don’t use the term gypsy. It’s offensive.

Second of all we don’t really do paganism aside from a few outliers so there goes your “Gypsy magic”

Most of us are Christian  and a small amount of Atheists (like myself) 

I already know what you’re going to say in rebuttal “But Joey i am 1/5 Gypsy on my grandmother’s side!”. I say bullshit to that. Come back to me when you can speak the language, Cook a pot of Sadma, Pull a fender to pay the rent and know what Prikaza means, in this case it means you. 

Get fucked kiddo.

[returnofthejudai]

do you know of any blogs similar to this one about romani issues

I would recommend big-gadje-world or chirikli, the latter of whom has answered some of our questions about Romani issues. Please respect their follow rules if you choose to do so. If you have unanswered questions, check their archives first. 

[firsttraintovictoriaville]

A Word on Magda Maximoff(Or how Hollywood doesn't want a perfectly good Romni)

The character of Magneto has gone through a lot of variations throughout time just like any othe comic book character and movies tend to distort that even more, the basics of a character can't change however. Magneto was sent to a concentration camp for being Jewish and it was at said concentration camp that his powers were awakened. X-Men First Class even showed the touching story of his powers and his mom.

In the comics however, Magneto's powers get awakened due to his love for a Romani prisoner named Magda. He falls in love with her and their love is what awakens his powers and allows them to escape to the camp.

Magneto is a villian as his views stand in direct contrast to that of the X-Men. He views mutants as superior to humans and thinks they should be treated as such.

Magda was completely human. And Magneto loved her more than anything else on this planet. He even had a child with her. This child, their daugther was killed by angry villagers because they thought Magneto was a monster because of his powers.

Magda could never look at Magneto the same way and soon left, however by the time she left him she was pregant with twins, Pietro(Quicksilver) and Wanda (The Scarlet Witch). Magda dies in childbirth. Magneto begins to develop his hatred for all of humankind.  

Pietro and Wanda are very important characters to the world of Marvel. Wanda's sons Billy (Wiccan) and Tommy (Speed) are both part of the Young Avengers, the youth branch of the Avengers and therefore connects the Avengers superheros to the X-men once again.

Pietro's daughter Luna, is the result of his marriage to the Inhuman Crystal. It should be noted that Luna is a complete human like her paternal grandmother Magda.

The character of Magda had so much potential, she is connected to every branch of the Marvel comic book world. She is everything one could want in a movie. She is a mother, a love story, a abandonment story, the meaning for Magneto's anger. There is so much that could be done with her.

Hollywood never gives her a chance despite all that her character could do and be worked with. Magda is one of the most influential fictional Romni of all time and yet the most obscure.

[drshaw]

What does the group „One Million For The Freedom of Press in Hungary” have to do with the events in Gyöngyöspata, and Romani people in general?

I just finished translating the latest statement of our group "One Million For the Freedom of Press in Hungary". Thanks for everyone who bothers to take a few minutes to read this.

"The public summons for the events in Gyöngyöspata on the wall of One Million For The Freedom of Press in Hungary seem to have created some incomprehensions about how is this group connected to those events and what needs to be done in this situation. In the following lines, I’d like to share my own dilemmas with those who bother to read this text. I would love if we could talk about this in a calm, civilized manner.

Last Wednesday, Mandíner’s riporter asked me why I was participating in the protest against the Ministry of Home Affairs. I was asked if I would be there as well if it were about the attacks BY Romani people. They didn’t publish my answer, so I’m writing it down now.

In today’s Hungary, there are two paralell universes about the Romani situation. First, we are all Hungarian citizens. There are Hungarian citizens living in every street of Gyöngyöspata, Hungarian citizens in Hejőszalonta, Olaszliszka, Tatárszentgyörgy, in the II. and VIII. districts of Budapest. We have the same rights and obligations before the law. Every single citizen should have the same rights, just as every single opinion should have the same protection. When Milla stood up for the Freedom of Press, we did it so nobody’s opinion could be censored. There’s no difference between the cenzorship of opinions, and the cenzorship of the people who form those opinions. When we stood up for the respect of human rights and against ethnical distrimination, we actually did nothing, but demanding the same respect for each and every single opinion. Why is this still such a difficult question? Because, as I mentioned before, there’s a paralell universe, where being a part of the same political community is overruled by ethnical, sexual, and religious differences. If people get punished not for being criminals, but for being Romani, if people get assaulted because they love each other and belong to the same sex, there’s no such thing as equal justice under law.

If we tolerate that there are exceptions from equality before the law, what is going to protect us from thieves, corruption, abusers of all nationalities, religions, sexual orientations, rich or poor, weak or strong?

If people can get away with harassing Hungarian citizens for being Romani, then everyone can get this acquittal, from cucumber thieves to oligarchs.

Gyöngyöspata is just a symptom, but not the disease itself. The disease is the lack of equality before the law, and the dysfunction of the instituations that should guarantee this equality- the police, the court, the press, and ourselves. Gyöngyöspata is not important because „we have to protect the Romani people”. Saying that would be like giving an antipyretic to a patient with pneumonia. Gyöngyöspata is important, because we need to protect every single Hungarian citizen’s rights, the rights that are completely disregarded in every moment of this alternate universe we live in today.

One Million For The Freedom of Press in Hungary was created to protect one of the most basic human rights- the freedom of press and speech. But that’s not the only basic human right in jeopardy. These basic human rights are connected to and exist because of each other. Violating one of them is like tearing one thread of a spider’s web- the rest of it goes down with it. We can’t just pick one of the many rights that need to be protected, one that is the least divisive and generates the least conflict. We can’t say the momentarily, the freedom of press is the one we’re interested in. Unfortunately. Cause this way, it’s so much more…messy. But maybe we can use this as an opportunity to learn what is the right thing to do and the meaning of civil responsibility, if last week’s insanity would ever be repeated.

What do you think about it?

Balázs Bodó"