Us, them and our children

Josif Đurić, my grandfather, was born at the time of the Chicago demonstrations in 1886. As a bright boy, at the end of his fifth year, his father separated him from the Slavonian country and took him to Irig, 350 kilometers away, to work as a tailor among the Hungarians. After finishing his trade, he arrived in Zagreb, where he quickly found a job. The second surviving family photo shows him in the company of about fifty impeccably dressed men, with a carnation tucked into his jacket lapel. It was the May Day strike of tailor workers in 1907.

photo: private archive

He then moved to Budapest, where he established himself by opening an independent schneider, only to be caught by a sudden war with all mobilization, throwing him first on the Eastern Front, and then in a camp for defeatists of the K und K monarchy, which he somehow survived.

He was an active socialist, who at one point between Zagreb and Buda found himself in Berlin and London with the desire to end up in South America, more precisely Peru, given that the countries there are mostly constituted as people's republics born from revolutionary movements. At that time, all European countries except France and Switzerland were feudal monarchies. Serfdom and feudal estates on the territory of what was then Slovenia, Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia and Bosnia were abolished immediately after the entry of Serbian troops in 1919. That same year, after the bloody end of the Hungarian Revolution, the thirty-three-year-old Josif Đurić moved to the newly formed kingdom, the centuries-old dream of the southern Slavs about a participatory community that would be ruled by its immediate inhabitants in brotherly love and harmony, far from the constraints of all kinds of conquerors, colonial administrations and exploiter.

It is difficult to dream that anyone has anything to complain about, but the reality was different. Protests among this newly created population of different experiences and orientations sprouted like mushrooms after the rain, but many abstract that it was more or less like that before. If we look only at Serbia at the beginning of the 20th century, both dynasties had plenty of butter on their heads.

STUDENTI, OFFICERS, SOCIALISTS AND POLICEMEN

photo: Draško gagović

The first demonstrations in Belgrade, which ended in a conflict with the police with casualties, took place at the end of March 1903. They were unprecedented until then, which in terms of the number of participants (of which there were about 5000 at a time when the city had about 70000 inhabitants), which due to the fact that four demonstrators were killed in direct clashes in Terazije, seriously shaking the power of Saša Obrenović. A few days after the outbreak of the protests, the king staged two coups d'état, dissolved the Senate and the National Assembly and appointed his own people to the State Council and the courts. Only two months later and about a hundred meters away from the aforementioned events, he was thrown from the terrace of the Old Court, in whose premises he was previously judged by the conspiratorial hand of Apis's followers, to the general outrage of the world media.

Demonstrations were initiated by the students of the Great School - Dimitrije Tucović and Triša Kaclerović, the latter founders of the Social Democratic Party, joining the scheduled assembly of trade assistants, who were joined by workers and citizens. Thus, Belgrade and Serbia stepped into the modern world, in which politics is no longer an exclusive activity of privileged social strata.

Things with the protests were not better even under the newly installed ruling house. The history of trade union and strike movements in Serbia records a large gathering in Belgrade on Good Friday, March 31, 1906, on the occasion of a strike by waterworks and sewage workers, during which there was a conflict caused by the committee of Kosta Pećanac in collusion with the police. The commotion served as an occasion for the gendarmerie to open fire and injure several people, to which the workers retaliated violently. The situation got so out of control that the manager of the city, the minister of the interior Lola Pavićević, as well as Dragiša Lapčević appeared on the spot in front of the Social Democrats. In a letter to Tucović, Lapčević writes: "Clashes between the workers and the committee happened every day. Although it was possible to sense that the committee would commit accidents, we did not hope that it would happen on Good Friday (...) When we arrived, we had something to see: 5-6 thousand workers, beside themselves with rage and the gendarmerie ready to kill the platoon. Before our arrival, there was already shooting. At that moment, I understood the situation like this: if the mass is not removed, the death toll will be terrible and will be transmitted to all of Belgrade (…) Divac (Sunday, biologist and geneticist, translator of Darwin and professor at the Faculty of Medicine, one of the most prominent trade unionists and socialists of his time, first. aut.) before my arrival gave some kind of speech which the police interpreted in their own way, accused him and he is now in custody. But I am convinced that he will be released in court. All investigations are conducted in such a way that the committees are exonerated and the workers are blamed. But I will make sure that plan is broken."

DEMONSTRATORS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE

I was born the year Clay, before becoming Ali, took the title in Miami, the Beatles conquered America, and the Civil Rights Act went into effect, prohibiting discrimination against racial, ethnic, national, and religious minorities, as well as women, ending disparities in voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, workplaces, and public institutions. I grew up in Mutapova on Chubura and across the street from me lived Nata, whose husband was one of the pilots who took off on April 6th to counter the Luftwaffe bombing raids. Nata told me about her participation in student demonstrations in the XNUMXs, during which the gendarmerie on horses, stationed near Vuk, beat them all at sixteen. When the beating started, Đilas and the team would immediately sing the national anthem, and while "God's Justice" roared loudly along the Boulevard, the cavalry would retreat and retreat to their starting position.

The student demonstrations of the 1981th and Maspok roared past me, so I grew up in a relatively peaceful period. Therefore, the March demonstrations in Pristina in XNUMX were quite a surprise for my generation and, along with the appearance of Our Lady in Medjugorje, a display of mass protests that we had not known before.

At that time, continuous anti-nuclear and anti-globalist protests were held in Western Europe, which were often in collaboration with alternative political movements, close to the ideas of anarcho-syndicalism and direct democracy, often organized in squatter communes. Since I traveled extensively during the eighties and from '99. henceforth, they would follow me like a dare wherever I appeared. I had my baptism of fire in France at the end of November 1986 in Nancy, where I arrived before morning by train from Munich.

Coming out of the cage, I found myself in a nighttime environment filled with street lights that illuminated the field after the battle. It was the first day of student protests that set France on fire. The occasion was the controversial proposal of the junior minister for universities, Allen Devake, to reform the higher education system, which allowed universities to be more selective in admitting students and to charge fees. Given that France had the strictest matriculation exam in Europe, the introduction of additional entrance exams was seen by many as a means of class diversification carried out by the conservatives of Jacques Chirac, known as the Bulldozer. Reaction to the proposals was strong, with massive student protests and occasional strikes in support of their opposition.

With the student mobilization, which is also closely related to other proposals aimed at tightening immigration laws, things came to a head with the death of Malik Usekin, a student who was beaten to death in police custody on December 6, 1986. That death caused a massive outpouring of anger on the streets of French cities. The law was withdrawn two days later and Devake was forced to resign. I remember how on my birthday, the 4th of December, the crowd gathered in the Place de la Bastille and headed for Concorde, a distance of about four kilometers, and when the front of the column reached the square, the tail had not yet started. It is estimated that there were a million people in the column. Everywhere on the quays of the Seine, around the bridges, the main checkpoints in the city, every hundred meters there were pits full of soldiers armed to the teeth with reservists of the National Guard. It is characteristic that the leadership of the protest performed under the slogan 'This is not '68, this is '86!', refusing the support and patronage of interested political actors, with the explanation that the fight is not about a political but a class and status issue of the widest social importance.

At the end of September 1988, I shot for 15 days in West Berlin to Zusa, in whose crate in the attic of a building on the Karl Marxstrasse in Neukeln was the headquarters of one of the autonomist strike groups that participated in the demonstrations against the four-day Congress of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

It was there, apart from the direct and open confrontations with the German police forces to break up the demonstrations that were taking place throughout the city, that I first encountered inventive strategies of resistance. They include an action in which thousands of demonstrators, who normally wore black-on-black alter clothing patterns and Palestinian women around their necks, changed into the most fashionable colorful combination they could find in the closet and then, like yuppies on bicycles, caused a traffic collapse on Kudam. The confused cops didn't know who to hit when they all looked like a flawless bunch of Swabian straights who were running around downtown on some business. Thanks to my schooling in revolutionary socialism and many years of culinary experience, I made sure that before going out on the street everyone left their personal documents at home and gave each other conspiratorial names, I will keep in mind the presence of a handful of informers and cops in civilian clothes, as well as that we find something warm on a spoon upon our return. Since I was the only one who served in the army, I knew the importance of a chamber and a hearty meal after returning from the slaughter.

photo: Draško gagović

AGAIN IN BELGRADE

I overslept on the ninth of March. The night before I was at the Mega City 4 show in KST and came home around six. I woke up around noon, keva entered the room and said - Don't go out to the city., something is happening. And then the tanks took to the streets and I didn't care. Some of my team gathered at Terazije and spent the night sitting, starting a student protest because of the violence and the de facto introduction of a state of emergency, it was really nasty. However, the very next day, everything was diluted as if it were cedevita, although it stretched for three more days, with the resignation of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Radmil Bogdanović, and the scourging of Sloba Milošević performed by Dragan Đilas and Nebojša Milikić in the rectory, which was broadcast on TV. It was clear that he would never allow himself again people's event which is not in his favor.

The Vidovdan demonstrations found me in a united Berlin, to which I had come from Brussels, where the UN embargo caught up with me on the opening day of the exhibition. Jat's planes were grounded, flights to Belgrade were canceled and I had to make do with the hunting I had in my pocket. Zuze opened her door to me once again, and here I am, in the wasteland of the cleaned Potsdamer Platz, deciding whether to stay or leave.

I called the old man, he said stay, what are you doing here, everything is ok; I called Flavija - he says all the worse, he is about to fight. While everyone was burning leaves before the introduction of the visa regime so that they would never return, there was me, a merry man who, instead of a comfortable life in the Berlin pastoral for freaks of all colors, chose to return to Serbia under sanctions. Zilke, Zuze and Štefan accompanied me on that trip. As I watched them sitting in silence in the subway car on the way to the Lichtenberg station, I let it out of me - All this will disappear.. Sve. All that life that was created will be replaced by some other life. And there will be no conflict, no open conflicts like before. You are children of that system., formed as personalities in him and he has now come for you and will speak to you in the language you have been tuned into. Your rents will rise and you will withdraw from the center to the periphery.

I told Zuze that I would be back in 15 days. I am back after 14 years. Štefan picked up the trunks and ended up in the countryside, somewhere in the north, near the border with Denmark, he lives from agriculture. Zilke shot in West Africa. Zuze resisted for the longest time and lost her job at the age of fifty-six. She worked for years in one of the most famous bookstores, record stores and antique stores - which also published her monthly magazine - before suddenly deciding to close the space and switch to online sales in 2015. I've lost track of her ever since. Her last name is still on the intercom, but Poles answer the bell.

Upon my return to Belgrade at the beginning of July, I was greeted by massive student demonstrations. Žabar from a wealthy family from the north of Italy, who lived in one of Berlin's anarchist squats, contacted me at the house, so seeing the local noise on one of the channels there, he wanted to come and record everything. He was a skilled forger and forged a return train ticket to Belgrade. His brother-in-law was a famous surgeon who performed open-heart surgery in France, where he died in a traffic accident. He also had a makeup artist sister, who was a judge and whom he hated because of her coldness and unquestionable belonging to the plutocratic milieu.

We went every day to the protests that started from the Plateau near Filozofsko, we were even at the head of the column which, followed by snipers from the roof of the General Staff while moving through Knez Miloš, arrived within reach of Sloba's villa in Tolstoyeva. It was really tense. On the stage in front of Plato one night, Rambo gave perhaps the best performance I've ever attended, he was in his element and just poured non-stop. The appointment of Panić as prime minister forced reality into a tolerable framework, it seemed as if professor Marković's husband was ending his political mandate in December. Of course, he shamelessly stole the elections, like every time, and despite all that and mounting Arkan's votes in Kosovo, winning New Democracy to form a coalition, he barely passed the simple majority. It was 126:124. European observers and other exclusive foreign factors, the so-called Followers of the event, as usual, pointed out that there were some minor irregularities, but everything was a hoax, which became a standard recipe for bullying.

The Wolves of 1993 were a fiasco and ended in the brutal beating of him and Danica, and these were already indications of the regime's readiness to move into unequivocal terror, followed by galloping hyperinflation and anomie. That spring, there was an incursion into the Federal MUP, which was purged down to the last cadre, and Dobrica Ćosić was ousted from the head of state. Everything else was cosmetics in the game of Monopoly with the complete company, from grandfather Avram's convertible dinar, through the Saatchi & Saatchi campaign It's better with culture., to Dayton and the transformation from the Balkan Butcher to the Peacemaker.

photo: Draško gagović

BELGRADE IS HOLY

Therefore, no one hoped that another evident theft, this time in the local elections, announced in November 1996, would lead to an eruption of popular discontent. We chanted Serbia has risen.! Every village and hamlet like never before. It was so cathartic and sobering, like when you slap a woman who pickpockets you on the bus. Finally, we dealt with fundamental things - how we live, in what kind of value system. For the first time, I felt that irreconcilable energy that I experienced at the protests outside. A clear thought, a clear statement.

On the third and fourth day of the demonstration, which will last until April 1997, the Urban Dance Squad performed at the previously scheduled times in SKC, and in the period from 1992 to 1995, thanks to radio B92, which exploited them to the point of exhaustion, they became a symbol of local resistance to madness. They first scheduled one performance, but the rush was so great that they released another date. They couldn't believe where they had come. Both performances were epic, recorded and released by others as Belgrade Live! for Virgin. Both the performance and the album sign off with a frenetic version of "Helter Skelter", after which Rude Boy jumped into the audience of the former ballroom of the Officer's House, from which on May 29, 1903, the conspirators set out to liberate Serbia from autocracy. Somehow Tanya and Daniela picked up Tres Manos and we dragged ourselves around in the night like it was the best possible life imaginable. Then, during one of the protest walks near RTS, I picked up a woman from the curb with the words - You are coming with me now. and here we are 28 years later with a grown child at protests that are again dealing with fundamental questions - how we live, in what value system.

I miss Vukica Djilas and Zhonki, who were with me that evening as guarantors, heavenly godfathers. Many are no longer there, but the desire remains the same and spreads like a flame through the generations.

photo: marko dragoslavić / fonet

THE LIFE AND JOURNEY OF ONE DEMONSTRATOR

Since then, life, mostly thanks to work, has thrown me to different parts of the world, as well as Joseph. I opened an exhibition at the time of the protest against the Congress of the IMF and the World Bank at the end of September 2000 in Prague, along whose paths I moved together with Alexander Brenner and Barbara Schurz. Then, on the way to the second, in Liguria, I was greeted by the G8 summit in Genoa. The entire north of Italy, from Milan to Savona, was under a state of war and closed to regular passenger traffic, while violent protests lasted several days in the city itself, but somehow I made it through. In Budapest in 2015, I found myself with my family at the epicenter of the migrant crisis, which reached its peak around Keleti. I followed the entire route on the way out and back, the scenes were Biblical. I don't even count at home anymore.

Josif was 21 in Zagreb, I was 22 in Paris, my daughter was 17 in Budapest. I never saw the crowd as impersonal. Imagine when hundreds of thousands or millions of such stories and dares gather in one place. I once came across a Wikipedia page that lists by name all the inhabitants of Batajnica who died in the Second World War, with the listed fates - how and under what circumstances their lives were cut short. And it just broke out of me and I started to cry, reading everyone's sobs. And then I thought, it's only Batajnica, now imagine all the fates of the compatriots innocently killed in the war that was imposed on them. And I shook. That's why I go to the protests. That's why Joseph went, that's why his descendants also go, luckily there are a lot of us. We are sick of various usurpers and their associated scumbags, thugs and some kind of coterie, clowns and anime ladies who can never get enough as they take turns like on a tape. Jer - as it was written some 150 years ago in London by that one guy after whom the street in Berlin's Neukölln district is named, where there is a mansard apartment where I spent some of the most beautiful and fateful days of my life - society does not consist of individuals, rather, it expresses the sum of mutual relations, relationships in which these individuals find themselves. And that's why it's important how those relationships are established.