Protest is one of the public’s foremost political tools in a democracy. Taking to the street can change laws, bring down a president and transform the fate of a nation. But it tends to come at a price.
Sometimes governments want to cosplay the darkest periods of history, like in Poland in 2016, when the conservative administration declared a domestic crusade against abortions and even investigated miscarriages in 2020.
This move mobilized gigantic crowds and people took to the streets in droves, armed with signs and coat hangers to show their anger. The public’s foremost tool in any political system to find an antidote for government stupidity is to protest. That’s right, going out on the street can change laws, make presidents fall and transform the fate of a nation.
But it’s actually not always as glorious as this sounds. Yes, sometimes it can be a nice hot soup on a Van Gogh painting, but oftentimes it can actually get pretty dangerous and life-threatening. Not only among the millions who protested a repressive government at Tahrir square in Kairo, Egypt in 2011, where “Violent clashes between security forces and protesters resulted in at least 846 people killed and over 6,000 injured”. Not only at the Euromaidan protests in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in 2014, demanding that Ukraine stop answering to Russian political pressure and instead align itself with the European Union – which resulted in 108 civilian casualties and 18 police officers dead, after the government ordered authorities to attack their own people.
Violence against protesters is part of the game not only in authoritarian Belarus, not just in the struggling democracies of Georgia or Moldova, but also in France when one is trying to protest against the new pension reform, and the French riot police gets hold of you.
The French have a long history with student protests dating back to 1229. When students rioted after being kicked out of a tavern on Shrove Tuesday, resulting in destruction and violence.
Riots, revolts and popular movements have always been present in European history, but it’s in the eighteen hundreds that they start to take on the forms we recognize today, as labor unions start to appear. They introduced collective bargaining with their employers and started to influence government decisions in the labor area. Their mass movements are the reason Saturdays are off, and the 40-hour workweek was implemented. This was an especially fraught process, starting from over 100 hours a week. But this was not an easy achievement. Legal changes spreading in Western Europe in 1870 made the unionization movement stronger, and more active protest modes developed. The women’s movement also gained momentum at the time, developing a whole new art of mass protests.
Today, democratic countries have laws governing and regulating acceptable forms of protests, and the freedom of opinion, the freedom of association and free speech are basic rights. However, there is a lot of variation in how these are realized – or curbed across the continent.
Emma Reynolds is a climate justice activist who has worked with CliMates Austria and Fridays For Future for years, organizing campaigns with international organizations for climate and biodiversity protection.
Yana Sliemzina is a journalist and writer working from Kharkiv, Ukraine. They are an editor for the international version of Gwara Media, a regional outlet that reports on Russian-Ukrainian war and societal, cultural, and political processes in Kharkiv Oblast.
Martin Bright is the only guest we had so far that has a Hollywood movie filmed about him called official secrets, check it out! He has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, was Home Affairs Editor of the Observer and Political Editor of the New Statesman and is currently working for Index Censorship.
France protests: French riot police attack protesters with batons amid pension reform announcement
Climate protesters throw soup on Van Gogh painting
Why Poland is having huge protests
Egypt’s revolution: I saw the unimaginable happen
The Maidan martyrs: a decade on from Kyiv’s bloody revolution
Crying out for change: A short history of student protests in Europe
Réka Kinga Papp anchor
Daniela Univazo Marquine writer-editor
Merve Akyel art director, Eurozine
Szilvia Pintér producer
Julia Sobota captions and translations
Zsófia Gabriella Papp digital producer
Priyanka Hutschenreiter project manager
Judit Csikós head of finance
Réka Kinga Papp editor-in-chief
Csilla Nagyné Kardos office administration
Reedy Media of Kraków
Gergely Áron Pápai DoP
Nóra Ruszkai video editor
István Nagy lead video editor
Milán Golovics dialogue editor
Dániel Nagy dialogue editor
Victor Maria Lima animation
Crypt-of-Insomnia theme music
the Austrian Cultural Forum of Warsaw
This talk show is a Display Europe production: a ground-breaking media platform anchored in public values.
This programme is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the European Cultural Foundation.
Importantly, the views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and speakers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Published 26 December 2024
Original in English
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