Lefteast
In 2011, the mayor of Baia Mare caused a national outcry when he initiated the building of a wall to enclose the social housing units inhabited by Roma people. One year prior, non-Roma residents in the Horea Street area had protested against “acts of aggression and robbery committed by Roma neighbors.” The main pretext for […]
Note from LeftEast editors: In marking the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day in Europe on August 2, we reprint this article on anti-Roma racism in Europe and the struggles for the collective unification and liberation of Roma. The article first appeared on Roarmag.Org, and is shared here with permission. We also link a recent podcast with […]
This article is part of the multilingual ELMO series CEE housing movements resisting neoliberal urban transformations. The pursuit of international recognition of its urban policies turned into a major source of legitimacy for the Romanian municipality of Cluj-Napoca. The city has been designated the 2015 European Capital of Youth. Next year it made it into the […]
Note from LeftEast editors: We are publishing the press release of the Romanian Social Housing NOW! (Căşi sociale ACUM!) radical housing justice movement based in Cluj-Napoca. They organized a hybrid, online and physical, action day on 17th December, commemorating the eviction of 350 Roma people that happened on the same day 11 years ago. The […]
Note from LeftEast editors: This is a slightly edited version of an earlier text published in Hungarian by Mérce. During July and August, Mérce conducted more than a dozen interviews and background discussions with Roma and non-Roma activists, educators, academics and journalists to build a picture of how the Roma community in Hungary has been […]
We ask: Does the oppression of Roma need to be told as part of another narrative in order to trigger empathy and solidarity? And why does the Czech society keep thinking of and treating its citizens of Roma origin as the Other? […] Anti-Roma racism must be promptly addressed, because, when it comes to Roma, the largest minority in Europe, justice is catching its last breath.
Note of the LeftEast editors: The present text, which we co-publish together with TSS is part of a series of publications and webinars on the topics of social reproduction, (women’s) labour and migration in East-Central Europe and beyond. The video from the first webinar Responses to Covid19 and (post)pandemic: social reproduction, migrants and women in […]
A State of Emergency Decree was issued in Romania on the 16th of March and prolonged for one month on the 16th of April as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Decree suspended a series of human rights and activated the country’s derogation from the European Convention of Human Rights. Part I. People living […]
In moments of heightened crisis, such as today’s, one of the first strategies of a state is to defer its pretense of universal social solidarity, directing its energies towards the social groups it prioritizes but normally cannot single out. This same tendency often leads to postponing of its efforts to negotiate difficult social, economic, and […]
The racialization/inferiorization of Roma has been normalized over centuries and supported by social structures. Therefore, instead of organizing public protest against such statements, we rather tacitly accept and even mainstream these violent discourses. In this sense, the racialization of Roma is not a novelty. However, the way it is framed in illiberal political discourse excludes any other point of view, even if comes from the independent judiciary.