16th January 2009

Last week I went out to protest. The protest was organized by students, environmentalist, mothers, and farmers. All of them had different reasons to be angry with the state. I was angry that our government failed us yet again, by proving to be the only European government totally dependent for natural gaz supplies on one country: Russia. Probably James Chowning Davies quoted in a Transitions Online article  [1]  was right: we have started believing, naively, that we live in normal democratic states where the interest of citizens and market rules frame our governments.

And when we are betrayed we become very angry. I stayed at the sidelines: supporting fully the requests of the environmentalists, harboring sympathy for the students with no clue what the mothers and farmers wanted.

Last week I also read a text by a Bulgarian sociologist, commenting on national data from a major representative survey of European values. He had entitled his text “A-Sociality”. He saw in the responses no appreciation, readiness, motivation and practice of anything collective, outside of the family - the No. 1 value for Bulgarians. Zero solidarity, zero participation, zero trust. He saw no society and stated the obvious: if there is no society there could be no civil society.

And then staying at the sidelines of the protest and in front of my computer (before and after) I saw civil society’s new avatar: Civil Society 2.0. Out of the 3000 protesters at the Parliament Square 2000 had arrived when mobilized through a Facebook group. The mothers came mobilized by BGMama, the biggest internet forum of young mothers (and also older mothers, women in general, and effectively, anyone who cares).