Cav's Place

I’d like to be able to say that something’s being done regarding the manner in which green spaces are being massacred in my Sector, as that was bad before and has now gotten significantly worse after the Sector 3 mayor was reelected with over 60% and also has the full support of the new mayor of Bucharest. Sadly, the known groups and activists don’t seem to be taking on the matter, so there’s nothing to state here about that and not that much visibly done either way. A few locals and some of USB’s local councilors are trying to document as much as they can and file complaints for possible lack or violation of approvals, but there’s no significant public action or any real call for anything of the sort and, either way, work continues unabated and trees 30 to more than 50 years old are being hacked apart and chopped down at a truly frightening rate.

I’d also like to be able to add something new about the proposed new public gatherings law I was mentioning in the previous post, but there has been almost complete silence on that as well, even the page created for it having no new posts since July 11. Alex included it in a post about the issues that will be tackled in the near future, but even that promised method of submitting comments is still nowhere to be seen and when I asked him about it he said it was decided to delay releasing it and any other actions regarding this are likely to wait until autumn… Which seems very strange from where I’m standing, because while it’s true that summer is a bad time to get any significant number of people together to do something visible and the real fight regarding this issue will probably come after the Parliamentary elections, a project such as this shouldn’t simply be formally submitted and then pretty much forgotten about.

But to get back to actual public events in Bucharest, there was a sort of flash mob yesterday, between 11 AM and 11:30 AM, across the road from the City Hall. It was also posted on the group, but was actually organized by an NGO that actually filed a notification for it and came to an agreement with the authorities, which obviously also meant the participants were fenced in on a stretch of sidewalk, but this time those fences were actually useful in at least stopping the larger balls from ending up in the street, as long as they didn’t bounce or get thrown over them. Unfortunately, one went over the other fence and into the river.
The reason for this protest was that, after one of the first statements made by the new mayor of Bucharest after taking office was that she was bothered by Kiseleff Boulevard being shut down to traffic over summer weekends in order to open the area to people wishing to play sports, she wasted little time in moving from words to actions, canceling the Via Sport event, which was currently in its seventh year. At first she proposed alternate locations, such as parks, but the entire point of the event was to take over a central road and hand it over to people, the motto being specifically: “Stop traffic! Start playing!” So, when the organizers didn’t agree with her proposal and their approvals were in order, she decided the markings must be repainted on that stretch of road and that will take a long time and the location can’t be used for such events during that period.
As such, a first visible response was this event, people being asked to come and play right across the road from the City Hall during working hours, albeit only on the sidewalk. There were obviously never going to be many participants, being on a weekday during working hours and also in the summer, so somebody else tried to create another event taking place in the same spot at 8:30 AM, but I heard pretty much nobody showed up then, while a few dozen people did attend the 11 AM one. And I was one of them, though other than wearing my running pants instead of those I usually go out in and stretching a little and awkwardly lifting myself up on my arms on that fence by the river a couple of times, I stuck to taking some pictures.

As for the Certej issue also mentioned in the previous post, after last week’s good news came the bad on July 27, when it was shown that work continues in spite of the court sentence and people were asked to file complaints, the call being taken up by known groups and activists. The police did already investigate to confirm the obvious, but it remains to be seen what, if anything, will actually be done about it and whether it’ll actually have the desired effect.