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Hello, I'm not 100% sure if this post fits here, but I figured it might be interesting and (possibly) of use to some people. Namely, for those who don't know, there are major protests going on in Serbia since November, which has caused monumental changes to the society here, and I feel like many aspects of these events align strongly with anarchist principles. With that in mind, I'd like to give a brief rundown of what happened just to give some context, and the effects it had on the society in terms of self-organisation, given that these are real events with real people participating.

1. Corruption and deaths

I'll be brief here. The Serbian government since 2012 has been run by the mafia. By that I mean both things like that the government exerts huge power over everyone employed in the public sector (and abuses it constantly) and things like the fact that the biggest illegal cannabis plantation in Europe was accidentally discovered in Serbia, and the officer who discovered that got suspended and nobody was prosecuted. After dozens upon dozens of scandals, each of which would be enough to bring down a government in any sane country, the general populace basically gave up on the idea of having a country at all, it is taken for granted that every single institution is in service to one man (Aleksandar Vucic, the current president), and the opposition in the parliament was and still is a joke.

On the 1st of November 2024, the canopy above the train station in the city of Novi Sad collapsed, killing 15 people (initially, one more person was confirmed dead last week). The train station was renovated and reopened that same year in July. Students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade started blocking the roads for 15 mins (1 minute for each killed), when they were attacked by a group of hooligans (who are often used as a sort of a paramilitary for the government).

2. The students revolt

As the police did not move a finger, the students from the faculty took over the faculty building and announced that the faculty is blocked. Studets from other faculties and universities soon followed, and soon all universities in Serbia stopped working, as the students took over. They announced 4 demands that they want to be met before things can return to normal. The demands are ingenious in their own right, but the thing I want to focus on here is how the students organised themselves.

First of all, nobody is allowed inside the university buildings except other students, you get checked when entering. They have transformed every building to include places to eat, sleep, and have formed teams, each with their tasks. Food and supplies are given as donations, as the students have overwhelming support from the general populace.

Every major decision is made in a plenary session (or plenum). Every student can participate, make proposals, and voice their opinion on the topic at hand. After the discussions end, the question is decided by voting. If a decision passes, working groups are formed and the decision gets executed. The most important thing here is that there are absolutely no leaders. Every time someone needs to appear in public, the decision is made inside a plenum, and every time the representative is someone else to avoid any one person being perceived as a leader. This has made it insanely hard for the government to battle against the students, as they cannot target a signle person or a small group, and it also made so that the students are receiving support from everyone, from ultranationalists to vegan anarchists, as the movement is based purely around the concrete demands (that can be simply summed up as: "We want the institutions to function as intended"), and not any specific charismatic leader or ideology.

3. Actions taken

The students and people together started regularly blocking the roads all over Serbia every day for 15 minutes at 11:52 (the time when the canopy collapsed). While this went on without incidents most of the time, there were notable moments when thugs came out of a car and started attacking people, and a number of times people rammed the crowd with their cars. Each of these incidents caused more people to join the protests.

Education workers in primary and secondary schools went on strike in support of the student demands, as did the lawyers. Soon, the students started calling for mass protests. They blocked an important highway in Belgrade by staying there for 24h, a few weeks later all 3 bridges in Novi Sad across the Danube were blocked, 2 for 3h and the biggest one for 24h. After the 24h expired, a "citizen plenum" was held, where it was put up to a vote for all present whether the blockades should be extended for 3 more hours (it was just symbolic, but I would call it a notable event). 2 weeks later another mass demonstration was held in Kragujevac, then 2 weeks later in Nis. These three cities are respectively in the norther, central and southern part of the country. The students thus motivated people from all over the country to join in, as most protests have historically been only in Belgrade and Novi Sad, the two biggest cities. Then, two weeks ago, protests were held in Belgrade, the biggest ones in Serbian history.

Also worth noting is that for the protests in Novi Sad, students from Belgrade walked 80km for 2 days to get to Novi Sad, even sleeping out in the open in the middle of winter. They were greated as liberators in every place the passed, and this walking of insane distances became a regular thing thereafter. All this caused more and more people to become involved.

4. The people join

Protests started being held all over the country. Pretty much every place that has more than 1000 inhabitants had at least one protest. It became so insane at one point that a website was created to keep track of upcoming ones (kudanaprotest.rs).

Local groups started being formed based on the exact same organisation as the student ones (all participants are equal, every decision is made inside a plenum). People formed groups to block roads themselves, other groups were formed to collect supplies for the students, other groups were formed to cook and bring fresh food to the students every day, etc etc. When the government announced that teachers in strike will not be receiving their salaries, groups formed a system by which people can donate money that would go towards teachers that have not been paid.

5. Local communities

As the students could not, and didn't even want to, be the leaders of any force, they asked the people to organise themselves by the way of public assemblies, or "zbor" in Serbian. A zbor is essentially the same thing as a plenum. Each city in Serbia is divided up into many 'local communities' or "mesna zajednica". They are not very influential bodies, and most are governed by the ruling party anyways, but they were identified as a perfect way to get people to organise themselves. Groups started popping out everywhere for each mesna zajednica, and thus entire neighbourhoods started connecting and attending zbors in their respective areas, with the idea that neighbourhoods could organise themselves and take over the mesne zajednice officially, and then they could all work together and start taking over the public positions in the cities. A decision made by a zbor can be taken to the city as a suggestion by the citizens, so it does have some limited value, but the main point here is that it made people all over the country come together with their neighbours to discuss how they can make their surroundings better.

6. The rise in popularity of decentralized organisation and the influence of aesthetics on public opinion

Direct democracy is now the norm in the minds of many. Suggesting that anything else is almost contraversial. It came to a point where many people are saying that we don't need any politicians or the parliament, zbors should take over everything. While this of course won't happen, it is very interesting how this idea became so widespread, and how decentralized organisations with direct democracy at their core were widely accepted when everyone saw how far the students managed to get. Also worth noting is that this was all started by students, young people, which dispelled the myth that youngsters nowadays don't care about politics.

On the other hand, people did not suddenly become informed overnight. Very often it can be heard how we should be wary of both the "right wing" and "left wing", instead we should just focus on our problems and solve them, and later we can "divide ourselves". The left is mostly associated with people being "woke" and "hating their nation", so that we have people in decentralised organisations, who participate in plenums, who are talking about forming unions, bashing the left and saying that we should stay away from "ideologies". I think that this really speaks volumes on how the left is thought of by most people. Unless I severely misunderstood the left wing and anarchism, solidarity, equality, direct democracy and local communities are the very pillars upon which these "ideologies" stand on, and they have been shown to be extremely popular in Serbian society, and still if you mention the "left", people will cringe, and if you mention "anarchism", people will run away. We can see right here that the ideas we stand behind are tangible and popular, but that we have a serious branding problem. I guess the conclusion is that actions speak much louder than words, as 'preaching' decentralisation and equality will get your into bad faith debates, whereas the students have shown the way by personal example.

7. Conclusion

Protests came and passed in Serbia many times in the last 13 years, but it is clear to everyone that this is something more. We are going through a change in society. The common people demonstrably can come together, organise, and fight a central authority and take matters into their own hands.

Huge protests were recently held in Greece, in Hungary, in Turkey, in North Macedonia, and other places, and there are many more to come. We still have a long way to go, but I hope that this can be of some use to inspire people in other places in the world. All this show of solidarity and community building was not forced, it formed organically as the students lead the way by personal example and sacrifice. Show people that they don't need a leader to keep them in line, show them that "the masses" are not stupid and can make intelligent decisions, show them how natural solidarity is, and show them how inequality has to be artificially created and upheld, and then they will come to understand.

Thank you for your attention.

For two days, citizens poured into Belgrade for the largest protest in modern Serbian history. This occurred despite authorities' efforts to obstruct the demonstrations by halting public transportation.

Thousands of students walked into the capital, spreading messages of solidarity through smaller towns along the way. The city's streets were packed, with people occupying several key locations.

"I came for my child, for my son, so that his future can be better," a young man told DW.

Police estimated a peak turnout of 107,000. Arhiv javnih skupova (Archive of Public Gatherings), an NGO which tracks mass gatherings, reported between 275,000 and 325,000 demonstrators — possibly more.

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Panic while honoring Novi Sad victims

The most alarming moment occurred during a 15-minute silence to honor the victims of the station collapse. A loud, unexpected noise described by witnesses as resembling a projectile or crashing aircraft, caused panic and triggered a brief stampede. Videos on social media captured the crowd scattering in fear.

Dušan Simin, who was among the crowd, told DW that it "sounded like a plane was landing from the direction of the Presidency building."

"We couldn't run away from it — we didn’t know what to do. You don’t know if something will fall on your head or hit you from the side," Simin said.

"People must have instinctively thought something was coming down the street, so they started running to the side, and we fell over each other. My wife hit her head on a lamppost. I watched her, but I couldn’t help. We still feel uneasy."

He added that they planned to seek medical attention and that the incident has already been reported to the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, which has called on citizens to reach out if they need free legal assistance.

"We will seek justice because what they did is not normal," Simin said.

Balkan news broadcaster N1 quoted military analyst Aleksandar Radic, who suggested an acoustic weapon, specifically a "sonic cannon" reportedly available to Serbian security forces, caused the sound. An opposition lawmaker echoed this claim, but police swiftly denied deploying any such device.

This is the default place my friends and I order books from ever since bookdepository got shut down. Orders ship quickly.

When a building structure collapses because it is old, as happened in Dresden a few months ago, people naturally respond with disbelief and disapproval of the authorities. It is a different story when new buildings crumble and kill people. The 1 November 2024 collapse of the concrete canopy of a railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia – whose restoration was completed only months earlier, accompanied by great government pomp – killed 15 people, and has sparked continuing nationwide outrage and indignation. The mass protests have forced the prime minister to resign and put the president under increasing pressure.

...

But then came the students. Last month, their peaceful vigils silently commemorating the 15 victims in front of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade were violently interrupted by a bunch of thugs posing as impatient drivers. It was alleged shortly after that they were closely related to the ruling party, some of them its members, and the Serbian president went on national TV to defend the provocateurs. It was revealed that people close to the regime were given instructions to disrupt the moments of silence. To defend the businesses of the oligarchy, violence seems to have been only allowed but also prescribed.

In response, students at public universities across Serbia declared strike action, halting the operation of their schools. By the end of December, they were joined by a significant number of high school pupils. Others joined too: agricultural workers – also unhappy with the way the government had been treating them for years – backed the students’ demands. The Bar Association of Serbia was next. Performances in theatres ended with actors holding banners reading, “The students have risen. What about the rest of us?”. The public was not indifferent: about 100,000 people gathered on 22 December at Belgrade’s Slavija Square, standing in silence for 15 minutes. Last weekend, on the three-month anniversary of the station accident, unprecedented numbers swelled into the streets of Novi Sad, and a growing, countrywide movement now includes school teachers, cultural workers, bikers protecting the rallies, engineers and taxi drivers. Peaceful vigils took place in more than 200 towns and villages. On the protesters’ faces was a peculiar mixture of solemnity, indignation, pride and hopefulness. It is a combination that has come to represent the present moment in Serbia.

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What the Serbian students are doing is nothing less than restoring democratic hope in a country that has seen too little of it – and at a time when it is crumbling worldwide.

Serbia’s powerful populist leader Aleksandar Vučić was facing his biggest challenge yet as student-led demonstrations intensified at the weekend in what was being called the Balkan country’s greatest ever protest movement.

Three months to the day after a concrete canopy collapsed at the entrance of Novi Sad’s railway station, tens of thousands of protesters converged on the northern city, blockading its three bridges in commemoration of the 15 people killed in the accident. The tragedy has been blamed squarely on government ineptitude and graft.

“What we are seeing are the greatest street protests in the history of Serbia,” said Dejan Bagarić, a master’s student speaking from the city. “There’s never been anything like it, people are really animated because everybody has had enough of corruption and this government is very corrupt.”

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By last week the anti-government rallies had spread to more than 100 provincial towns and villages nationwide.

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On Friday, as hundreds of students reached Novi Sad on foot after a two-day, 80km trek from Belgrade, Vučić, addressing the protests, told the nation: “Our country is under attack, from abroad and from inside,” echoing earlier claims that the protesters were working for unspecified foreign powers to oust the government.

Friday's strike call was the latest move to increase pressure on the government, following demands for high-ranking officials to resign and greater transparency into the accident investigation.

Public outrage has fuelled almost daily protests across Serbia after 15 people died, including several children, at the station in the northern city of Novi Sad.

The deaths came shortly after the completion of a three-year renovation project, and many attribute the accident to corruption and poor oversight of construction projects.

Thousands of young people, including many high school students, filled streets across the capital and urged the public to join Friday's one-day general strike.

Teachers also joined the walkout, shutting schools throughout the Balkan country, as did lawyers. Several theatres and cinemas closed.

Basically, as I understand it, when you eat food it goes through your stomach and then it travels through your bowels where the nutrients and water get gradually absorbed along the way. Coffee, as I understand it, stimulates the muscles in the bowels and causes the contents to move through the intestines more quickly. So if drinking coffee means that food will spend less time in the intestines, does that mean that less nutrients will be absorbed from the food than if no coffee was consumed?

MetaGer, the privacy-focused search engine of the non-profit association SUMA-EV, will no longer exist in its familiar form. It will still be possible to use the token-financed service. Nothing will change for members and users who use MetaGer with a key. However, it is the ad-financed search that has ensured the main part of the revenue and thus the operation and further development. Unfortunately, this “normal” search is no longer possible as of today. This is just as dramatic as it sounds: it is no longer possible for SUMA-EV to continue to employ staff. All employees are being made redundant, as are the offices.

The reason is that Yahoo terminated our contracts unilaterally and without any notice on Monday. Upon request, we were merely informed that Yahoo would no longer be operating the business in Germany. For us as the operator of MetaGer, this means on the one hand that we no longer receive any advertising revenue, which has been used to pay for office space, servers and employees. On the other hand, we will also no longer be able to deliver our search results as part of the ad-financed search. Only with Yahoo did we have a central deal to receive search results in return for advertising. This no longer applies.

What happens now? MetaGer's supporting association, SUMA-EV, will continue to exist. It will also still be possible to buy a key for the token-financed search and search with MetaGer. With this model, MetaGer will still be able to query paid search engines and deliver the results without tracking as usual. We will also continue to work for SUMA-EV and MetaGer on a voluntary basis to ensure the operation of this small niche, but this will of course be on a very small scale and not what MetaGer is all about. MetaGer-Maps can also no longer be operated in this context. The plans to become bigger and to one day provide a really good alternative to “the big players” with its own index (or European index) have of course died with this termination by Yahoo. And that is what is really sad.