Cav's Place

A few other small related protests took place, both before and after last week’s march, but I’m not actually getting back to writing full “protest reports” and in fact I didn’t even search for that much additional information, so I’ll simply skip those. I won’t however, skip two particular events that took place this week and which should have helped us and the cause significantly, but ended up harming instead, greatly in case of the latter. Not that this is unusual or unexpected, unfortunately, but the kind of alliance which had been formed for this purpose did offer some reason to hope that some things could change, at least temporarily.

The first event I’m talking about is the United We Save Community Forum, which took place Monday. These Forums, which I heard were initially, in the autumn of 2013, called Plenaries, are meetings usually held in bars or clubs where the important decisions should be made. At first they were public and anyone could take part, but seeing as I knew I wouldn’t be able to say anything face to face I never attended one at the time, and eventually they stopped being public after the attendance had grown to unmanageable numbers. However, last autumn, after the elections and after the group had somewhat settled on this decision to break away from the administrators of the United We Save page and form the United We Save Community, it was announced that these meetings will once again be public and I have attended every one of them since, if only in order to be informed of what was to happen.
To return to what happened Monday, the 45 or so people who attended made it the biggest Forum in a long time, only the first one or two after they were made public again having perhaps a similar attendance, at least from what I recall. In addition, this was taking place two days after a particularly successful event, representatives of a number of major NGOs were present and the topic was clearly specified as deciding the next steps of this effort to protect forests, plus that one could have easily assumed that the attendants would feel more serious and responsible after the first part of the meeting was dedicated to the former general manager of the Romanian Geological Institute, who was present to tell us how he and others who refused to change their positions regarding the dangers of fracking and cyanide mining were abusively removed from their positions and how he has since survived what he sees as two assassination attempts, and which definitely seemed to at the very least be very determined attempts to frighten him into silence. As such, despite knowing the mess such Forums tend to turn into, there was reason to believe it will be at least somewhat different.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t, and after the first part mentioned above, which either way ended with a few becoming rather angry, people were once again talking over each other, adding topics or jumping from one to another, delaying discussing the May 16 protest until it ended up being pretty much ignored during the meeting itself and some volunteered to form a separate group and meet at a different time to discuss the matter. Worse, however, was that, in typical fashion, accusations started flying, a few activists vehemently attacking the representatives of some of the major NGOs and the meeting ending in what was pretty much a pointless scandal despite all the efforts of the more reasonable members. A dialogue group meant to bridge the differences between what Alex called the “disorganized” civil society and the “organized” NGOs was formed, but later events prove that, at least so far, it definitely failed in its purpose.

By “later events” I’m referring to all the arguments and accusations that still continue, but most of all to the way the great opportunity offered Wednesday evening, when several activists were invited on a prime time talk show, was turned into a terribly damaging mess. Instead of displaying a united front and making a clear and persuasive case for our objectives and the next steps to take while also explaining, as was agreed on Monday, that the specific demands released are still a work in progress and the less immediate ones are likely to suffer changes and clarifications as a result of the continued discussions between the “disorganized” activists and the major NGOs, what people got to see was a crusade launched by Maria, occasionally backed up by Hetti and one other person I didn’t know, against the WWF representative who was also invited, others who weren’t even there to defend themselves and pretty much everyone else who didn’t share their views to the letter.
To be more specific, this can be said to have started from point eight of the initial list of demands, which called for owners of protected forested areas to receive full compensation for being unable to exploit them for income, which certain activists vehemently oppose. Some oppose the very concept of private ownership of protected areas, or even of forests in general, regardless of the manner in which the area ended up under such ownership or of whether that happened before or after it became protected, demanding them to be nationalized with no compensation, while others claim to want safeguards in place to ensure that only those who own small areas and depend on them for survival and a basic income will receive compensation before such a proposal will be acceptable, but at the same time seem to oppose even discussing it so vehemently that adding such safeguards becomes just about impossible. And, of course, the fact that these proposals came from the Forest and Pasture Owners’ Federation and were pushed forward by WWF, who were after all the ones who fought for years to improve what was initially a dreadful Forest Code proposal, definitely doesn’t help, as quite a number of activists oppose having anything to do with the forest owners and a few, Maria most of all, seem to have a personal battle with WWF for quite some time.
As such, the message that those who were supposed to be the representatives of the activists, of this supposedly large coalition fighting for this cause, presented on prime time television, in a serious and quite respected talk show, was that there is in fact no alliance, but separate groups which try to pull the movement one way or another, infiltrating it and struggling to take over in order to impose their hidden agenda on those foolish enough to fall for their ploy. Therefore, the result was at the very least creating confusion, even the talk show host saying he doesn’t understand anything anymore and asking for more detailed explanations during a commercial break, and more probably sending many potential supporters running for the hills faster than any of our opponents might have. Which only proves once again something I keep saying, which is that we don’t need to look for people who may actually be infiltrated to undermine our efforts, because there are plenty within the movement itself who do an outstanding job of that without needing any outside help.

After all of that, and also considering some confusion with a protest against killing stray dogs which was to take place in the same spot and end 30 minutes before the one against deforestation was to begin, even some media channels mixing the two, we had good reason to fear that yesterday’s event will end up being a failure. Some, myself included, had been uncertain about it from the beginning anyway, but once others decided, rather on their own, to announce it, canceling was not an option, especially since such a course of action would have left room for interpretations that’d have been even more damaging. So people were asked to gather at the University Square fountain from 5 PM and everything else was left to be decided on the spot, depending on numbers and mood.
In the end, there was no march and I see that media reports tend to put the number of participants at around 200, which is in line with what I feared but seems too little compared to what I saw. There were some estimates of 300 or 400 from participants and while there I was thinking we were about 500 at the peak, including all those around the fountain and not only those who had come forward to more or less gather in front of it when the speeches and chants started, but I didn’t actually try to make a more proper estimate and 500 is in line with my initial expectations, before the mess, which may have influenced me when I was tempted to pick that number. I guess you can try to see for yourselves from the pictures I took, if you want.
After getting over a tense moment when one person who had also been responsible for some of the mess at the end of Monday’s Forum started accusing all NGOs of being corrupt and in league with the politicians and shouting that we need to separate ourselves from them, there may have been one opportunity, around 6:30 PM, when we might have attempted to leave. We were probably not enough to take to the street, but if the moment wouldn’t have been lost it may have been possible to use the sidewalk at first and then see whether more would have joined us on the way. Admittedly, it was lost in part because some gendarmes started carding a few participants around that time, informing them that they’ll be fined if they won’t leave and resulting in a tense few minutes before they seemed to have thought better of it, probably after seeing the energy dissipating and some starting to leave and realizing that the maneuver had been successful, if that had indeed been the purpose.
There were attempts to get back to the matter at hand after that, but between those who were leaving or preparing to, the few who saw it as a good opportunity to forget why we were supposed to be there and restart their personal battle with the gendarmes and the rest who tended to split off into separate groups and chat away more than before, they weren’t successful and the protest slowly died down, around 7 PM some of the known activists starting to say the call to end it should be given, reminding people to attend what is hoped to be a bigger one, on June 5. A few did try to keep things going a little longer, however, being eventually persuaded to give up by 7:15 PM, when the attendance had probably fallen in the dozens.