#remember colectiv

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.

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.