Why, after such magnificent anti-lithium demonstrations, did the blockade of Belgrade's Prokop railway station fail so ingloriously? The explanation is very simple: because very few have managed to find it. I mean, Procopius. It is known that the vast majority of citizens do not know where the place that is officially called "Belgrade Center" is, which shows the specific sense of humor of our great men. My sources say that at the time of this writing, on Tuesday, groups of people are still canvassing the city looking for Prokop with the intention of blocking him. They were spotted in various locations, from Labudovo Brdo via Rospi Ćuprija to Kovilovo.
By the way, on the margins of this unusual plot, I also noticed that, apart from those arrested guys, the main media stars of the Prokop guerrilla action were three girls from Novi Sad. There is also a logical explanation for that: percentage-wise, there are more people from Novi Sad than people from Belgrade who know how to find Prokop, since they still need him for something: that's where they sit on "Sokola".
Am I kidding? Kanda, but since the devil allegedly carried away the joke, here, I offer a somewhat more serious explanation of the Prokop fiasco. It is true that the name of that location "Prokop" is directly associated with mining, but people still know that no lithium mining is planned on Prokop and around it, so even the most successful blockade of Prokop - otherwise, in reality impossible - would not drive it out of our lives. the famous Rio Tinto, let alone our lovely rulers. Go ahead, people, block the mines if you're up to the trouble! It's simple: neither in politics nor in any other more complex human activity, we don't do something just "because we can" but because it makes some sense.
On the other hand, speaking of Prokop: not only the Sokolovi take off from there for the capital of Vojvodina, but the "Cira" also departs from the same place for various cities: for example, after six or seven hours of comfortable driving, which is slightly faster than walking, you can arrive by train to Niš, almost a "free city" from the recent election phantasmagoria. After weeks and weeks of legal and political struggles, a city government has just been formed in Niš, a progressive one, of course, thanks to the strained, to put it mildly, and more precisely the method of precise (post) election mechanics to the majority - which the progressives, wherever two and two always four, actually lost. Tight, but unambiguous enough. Or at least the match would have to be replayed due to a draw.
Anticlimax? Without a doubt. But I see that Dr. Milić, the leader and symbol of the Nis resistance, does not lose his composure. We did all we could, Dr. M roughly says, but political violence won a shaky and quite possibly short-lived victory. Because there is actually no cover in credible electoral legitimacy. Is Dr. Milić: 1. "sold soul"; 2. political naive and dilettante; 3. someone who sees things more realistically and in the long term, politically and dialectically more mature than other actors, like a serious sociologist, not a surgeon?
That brings us back to Prokop (after 6-7 hours of pleasant rocking). Here, says Milić, we had magnificent demonstrations in Belgrade, and then blockades, and what did those blockades achieve? Less than nothing. They even - this is not what Dr. Milić says, but I am adding - completely pointlessly and frivolously took away the political seriousness and importance of the previous demonstrations.
Wouldn't it be similar with the demonstrations in Nis, if there were any? Would the progressives hand over power because a couple of thousand mostly decent middle-aged people in light evening clothes would go for a while in front of their quarters to shout and then think in the pubs, or - even worse - play a parody of street fighters by squatting on some bridge or the highway until they get tired? You can think. The mountain would shake for several days, and Nis would be born. This one is forcefully progressive. That's why the opposition took another path, perhaps a more deliberate one, no matter how slow it seemed like a Prokop ulcer.
It's about this: measuring on the street only makes sense if you're stronger, or at least equal, on the street. It doesn't have to be sheer physical strength. It can be determination, seriousness, civic and political awareness, as in Serbia in the winter of 1996-97. Yes, the citizens had then soft power which could and succeeded in overpowering the rigid Milošević, so to speak, a figure of the Soviet school. But there is no such Serbia anymore, it was devastated by thirty years of wandering, self-delusion, and decline. It can be all that plus literal strength, numbers, superiority - as in October 2000. That is not yet in sight.
In other words, dear antilithiumians, ask the idlers and exhibitionists to at least leave that Prokop alone. If they were serious and knew who was carrying their head, they would have blocked that old, real railway station at one time - with the aim that it would never cease to be so. So even today, everyone would easily find it when they need it.
