Youth Protest in Serbia

And some thoughts for America

I went to Belgrade in July to try to understand the student-led protests in Serbia. There is much to process, and a pressing need of solidarity. Serbia is a country without the rule of law, and its young people have been taking risks for the better part of a year in the hopes of creating a future where they can live normally in their own country. They and those who support them are subjected, now, to arbitrary arrests. Those who care about the future of democracy should know about them, and should act in Europe and elsewhere.

Americans should know about these impressive political actions. I will try to write a longer chronicle of these protests, leaning on the work of Serbian colleagues, who have taken risks themselves and who have been with the students from the beginning. For now, I just want to communicate some features of these protests which struck me, as an American, as worth knowing about as our own academic year begins.

I am not going to claim that the conditions in Serbia and in the United States are the same. Serbs are not protesting so that we can learn lessons. But there are some realities of Serbian achievement which, regardless of what now happens in Serbia, are worth considering. We will not get far without protesting, and we will not get far protesting without young people. Here is what I noticed.

1. Youth itself. Student protests in Serbia began from the young people themselves, not just university students, but also high school students.

2. A fundamental cause. Protests have to do with a basic concern with the rule of law. This is why it so annoying when photos in our media are tagged as “anti-government protests.” People in Serbia are protesting for good government!

3. The specific harm. Opposition began from a specific event, the collapse of part of a railway station, which killed sixteen people. This led to vigils and to specific campaigns that recalled the people whose lives were lost. The deaths, tragic in themselves, were obviously connected to the core problem of corruption. The railway station had been recently rebuilt in cooperation with China, and no one would take responsibility for its flaws or for the disaster.

4. Coordination among students. The actions begin in Novi Sad, where the disaster took place, but spread throughout the country, among high schools and universities. The students created institutions that allowed them to communicate among themselves while at the same time avoiding repressions.

5. Cooperation with the public. Although the initiators were students, and the standing actions include boycotts and barricades of educational institutions, actions in public places were announced with the goal of inviting the participation of the larger public. These have been large and very successful. The general point about the rule of law is popular.

6. Variety of actions. Students organized vigils, moments of silence, large outdoor protests, blockades, boycotts, media outages, online mockery campaigns, bicycle rides and running relays across Europe, among many other things. Each works in a different way for different audiences.

7. Specific demands made to relevant authorities. The students demanded that the circumstances of the reconstruction of the railway station be made public, that protestors not be charged for crimes they did not commit, and that those who attack students be charged with appropriate crimes, and that university budgets be increased. These are demands that are sensible in themselves and would be imminently possible to fulfill by a government that observed the rule of law.

8. Recognition of democratic politics. Though this was not at all the students’ first move, they came to a consensus that they should engage in elections and support candidates. They demanded early elections to parliament and are seeking to propose their own candidates to run for office. Students will not run for parliament themselves but will select candidates among academics, artists and public figures who have supported their cause.

9. Support of students by universities. The students were generally supported by their teachers, professors, and school and university authorities. These are people who, upon meeting them, do not seem very different from their counterparts in the US or elsewhere: disorderly books on shelves, too many meetings to attend, scholarly specializations to promote and defend. And yet they took a side.

Resistance requires an openness to learning from others. And it also requires cooperation among generations.

Among all the American divides, the one that is perhaps hardest to describe, and yet which is very important, is that among generations. It is easy, and socially acceptable, for one generation to be dismissive of others. But opposition has to involve respect for people who are acting from their own generational perspective, even when that includes differences of opinion. Serbs did not have to be students to understand the students. And the students gave them something to understand.

No one in Serbia told me that their own experience was relevant to others; my preoccupation with America was my own. The mood I found in Belgrade was of national desperation: that the young generation sees no future in their own country without the predictability and freedom allowed by the rule of law, and that this could be lost for good. That is a desperation that is grounds for action, for risky creation action. Everywhere.

Fear changed sides