Integration into the labor market

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)



Time and again we are hearing this from the “activists”, that Rom need to get better integration into “education” and the labor market. 


What is the labor market in this case? In general, for le Rom, it means menial tasks that Gadje don't want to do and even the chances for well educated, as in having gone through the school system, though schooling does not equate education, Rom stand little chance – and yes, it is due to continuing discrimination – to find employment in the field that they have studied for. Then again, how many of Amare really want to work for a Gadje employer? 


As to the labor market, the capitalist slave market as we should really call it: where are the jobs with many countries having serious unemployment as it goes and the number of the unemployed in the Covid-19 p(l)andemic is rising daily with businesses going to the wall? So, where are the jobs going to come from for Amare when there aren't even enough for the Gadje? There won't be any unless they are the most menial ones. We have to create our own. 


Yes, we will have to create our own jobs by creating our own businesses and enterprises. We always have been doing this until not so log ago and always found a way of creating our own businesses of all kinds, from “crafts” over service industry, such as knife sharpening, to almost anything else. 


With the technology at our fingertips, literally, today the sales platforms for crafts and such can move into the virtual world, while still remaining also partly in the real world, through, maybe shops and markets.


And here is another suggestion: We have also not just been craftspeople but traders and still are and there is an opportunity here for those of the diaspora who are living in the richer countries to help those stuck in the poorer countries, such as in the East, but who are great craftspeople; namely trading in the goods produced. 


Baskets, wooden spoons, other wooden ware, cooper ware, etc., can and will sell for good prices in many countries in the “West” but the wares have to be gotten here. Yes, there is competition from China, Vietnam and such places but with the right kid of marketing and this is where the problem lies but also the opportunities come along. 


If trading with such products is done honestly, by the traders, then the producer can earn a good income and soon have his family in better condition than presently, unlike when a Roma spoon carver today sells a spoon for maybe the equivalent to 50 cents to a dollar and at the end the same spoon is sold for well over $50. 


Services, such as knife grinding, which would still be in demand would it be marketed properly, also can be done via an online presence, though the physical visit will still be needed. However, appointments can be booked via the online presence which, in turn, does away with the need for a hawker's license as one is not hawking, in the legal sense, but visiting by appointment, be that commercial premises or private addresses. 


What can the Gadje slave market, aka labor market offer us, except for bondage in return for a somewhat secure income, though that is only secure as long as the job is secure, and depending on what kind of job it is in today's world that security no longer exists. 


Trades, on the other hand, and even crafts, have much more of a future, even though some do not seem to be able to see that, than do such jobs in the Gadje slave market. When a child has learned a trade, be this crafts trade, so to speak, or trades such as carpentry, plumbing, roofing, and even computer repair, website design, etc., he or she, for why should a trade be done by the boys only, can immediately after “graduating” set up in business and earn an income, without having to worry about paying back tuition fees, as the college or university graduate will have to. 


In today's era it is staring to become “fashionable, for lack of another word, again – or at least so we all hope – to get things repaired again rather than throwing them away and that, hopefully, goes for knives and scissors and other cutting implements as much as for electric and electronic devices and thus the one who knows how to repair and service such things, and the servicing of small engines, will have, if he or she is good at the job, more work than they can possibly handle. 


But, the powers that be, inside and outside the community, wish to direct Amare Chave towards the labor market and studying even for high jobs. The problem is only that too many graduates are already chasing far too few jobs.


Nothing wrong with that if there is a well-paying job to be gotten at the end, for well-paying it will have to be in order to be able to service the student debt, and we indeed need our own doctors (oh, my, I am going to be excommunicated by some just for suggesting the medical profession), midwives, paramedics, lawyers, and what have you, but that still leaves the debt. 


But this is where the barvale Rom should come in, sponsoring those talented of Amare Chave to progress towards their graduation of medical professionals, lawyers, teachers and such who then, after completion are debt-free and can go on to serve the community in their capacities, because we need them in our communities. Professionals of that kind who understand the People, the Language and the Culture. 


The problem is, though, that I cannot see those barvale Rom, many of whom have gotten barvale on the backs of the chorore Rom, to help in this way. Can anyone else? I doubt it. But does it really need the barvale to help in this way? If but each and every one of us who can, out of at least 16 Million alone in Europe, not counting the Americas, would just commit €1 per month to sponsor a gifted Romani youngster to graduation in such professions we would be a long way towards having many Romani graduates who are debt-free and able to practice in and for the community. Then again that is as much an Utopian vision, I guess, as would be that some of ours would step up to help, directly, our abandoned Chave and those Chave otherwise in peril. But, hope is the last thing to die, as they say. 


2024 © Michael Smith / O NEVO DROM

And after the 8th of April, Romani Nation Day, what?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)



On April 8 everyone was celebrating Romani Culture and all that, and in many instances it was being turned into a memory of Samudaripen again, such as by some organizations in Germany and Austria. 


We did celebrate our Romani Culture and various other aspects but what we really should be doing, aside from that, is bring together the Romani Nation,, so that this day has true value. 


But what are we doing now that this annual event is over for another year? 


Are we going to march forward, carrying our banner high, to claim the rights of our People or are we going to to be all more passive again, more moderate, more parsimonious, more temperate? Are we going to blend into the background again for another year in the hope that no one realizes that we are Gypsies, Rom?


I fear that the majority will be doing just that instead of fighting against Anti-Gypsyism and other discriminations and fighting for cultural autonomy and for the full and political recognition of our People, and that, I am afraid, includes many of the so-called “leaders”. 


At the day there are photo-opportunities and all that and the “leaders” stand there frantically waiving our flag but once the day is over they return to their cozy chairs and wait for the next conference where they can rub shoulders with the “great and the good” in politics or they cook up the next phantom projects so they can get some money into their own accounts again from donor sources.


We must not let them get away with it and also we, the People as a whole, must finally rise up and claim what is rightfully ours, namely Nationhood. 


The Romani Nation Day must not just become a Romani Nation Year; it must become a Romani Nation all the time event. 


And we must fight tooth and nail all and any attempt to lead us away from the aspiration of being a Nation, which we, as a People, anyway are and end up being directed, as some would like it, to merge into the international proletariat, the international working class, in what they would call integration. 


Integration, in the vocabulary of the Gadje, and many modern even Romani activists, has always equated with assimilation, into our People merging into the background and becoming part of, well yes, the industrial labor slave circus. In other words, ethnocide and many of our own are helping the Gadje in this endeavor. 


The battle lines have been drawn and everyone must now make a choise on which side they stand. Either you are for the Rom to survive as a People, as a Nation, or you stand with the Gadje in destroying us as a People, as an ethnicity. There are no bystanders in this. Bystanders, while not actively choosing to do so, support the Gadje in the destruction of our Romani People. We owe it to our children and their children to fight and win this war. 


2024 © Michael Smith / O NEVO DROM

Roma Passport

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)



Who do you entrust your data to? A private individual or some organization – no scrutiny or oversight as to how, aside from putting together the passport, your information is being used, and for what other purposes.


After all you are required to send in a photocopy of your own national passport. This is, in fact, a felony in many jurisdiction and countries around the globe.


There are, at present, at least three (3) individuals and organizations playing passport office. Would you trust this? I would not. Especially as this useless passport will cost around $100 each.


If this Roma Passport would be to give those Rom who do not have an official citizenship – and there are many of them – then I would welcome this idea, to a great extent at least – but as you are required to send in a photocopy of a passport that you already got, which means you have citizenship in this or that country, why would anyone want a document (and pay around $100 for such a toy) that is not going to be accepted at any time soon, if ever, by the Gadje border agencies, and other agencies.


For those Rom, and there are thousands of them, who do not have identity papers and thus are stateless such a document, if accepted by the powers-that-be, would make sense but otherwise it is just an expensive gimmick, expensive on several levels. And, the way it is, at present, that is all that it is. Nothing but a harebrained scheme, probably intended to make money for some.


We saw something something similar to this, I would suggest, years ago when Macedonian Roma refugees in Germany were promised UN passports, so-walled “white passports”, by a certain organization in Germany, against payment of 200 DM each, which never, obviously, materialized, as they could not. Many of the “victims”, alas, believed in those promises of those passports and that those would give them the right to stay in Germany and paid the money. They did not even believe people, Rom, from other organizations, who told them that this was a scam.


How many Rom will believe the story of those Roma Passports, whether issued by the IRU (or whoever else), as being legitimate identification and travel documents (which they are not and will and, with 99% certainty, never will be and become)? Quite a lot of those that are undocumented and thus they will sacrifice a lot to buy such a passport (if they can) which may get them into more trouble than not having papers at all. It is time to put an end to those scam merchants.


2024 © Michael Smith / O NEVO DROM 

Roma(ni) Homeland

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)



This is another one of those weird and “wonderful” ideas on which effort, time and resources are being wasted. Effort, time and resources that should be used in much more important way where the matter is one of life or death. 

Autonomous regions and areas maybe but a homeland? 

A large autonomous region, possibly in the nowadays almost depopulated rural steppe of Russia, as long as it does not turn into a Pale, or similar areas in some other countries, including Brazil, might be one course to proceed but a homeland proper which might, nay will, mean displacing others is definitely not a route to travel. In other countries this could be autonomous areas – smaller than regions – but again a homeland proper, as in country, will for ever be a dream for when realized it will become a nightmare. 

Who would we like to dispossess, in the way the Zionists have done with the Palestinians, in order to set up our own country? Do we really want to make ourselves more unpopular that we already are? Also, a homeland means the need for defense.

The example of the Sorbs and Wends in Germany, who are a recognized minority in Germany and have something akin to their own parliament, the Domowina, may be another way but not a “homeland” as in country. 

All this, in the same way as the “Roma Passport” idea (more about that in more detail later), and others, just detracts and diverts attention, effort, and money away from issues that are of real importance and a matter of life or death, as said above. 

As far as the “Roma Passport” is concerned the question is who do you entrust your data and personal information to in this case and how secure, or not, for that matter, is that information going to be in whoever's database or filing cabinet it may end up? In addition to that those worthless “documents” will never be accepted by any Gadje agency. To believe otherwise is to live in cloud cuckoo land. 

© 2024 

Romani Nation Day


Phralale, Phenjale, Chavale... Latcho Dives... Sas Bachtalo... 

Greetings everyone on this our Nation's Day. 

Maybe, to begin with, we should consider why this day was started and why it is important. 

It was not started for us to simply celebrate who and what we are and wave our flag about and make some speeches and ask the Gadje for some crumbs from their table, or for a seat at their table, where they do not really want us anyway. 

Originally it was termed, or was to be termed, Romani Nation Day, a day celebrating the Nation of the Romani People. It was for us to stand together as a People, as a Nation, and show the world that we are indeed a Nation. 

This very concept is more and more threatened today, and not just from the and by the Gadje. Some of our very own, at least genetically our own, are telling us and the world that we should not aim to become a Nation but instead should rather merge into the international proletariat. Exactly what the Gadje want, namely to have us disappear as a People, as an Ethnicity. 

The most concerning aspect about the statement of this particular person, who shall remain unnamed, is the fact that he is also a director on the board of an organization, also to remain unnamed, that it purporting to be on our side and to be Romani run. 

Whatever the case, though, the fact is that no one can even say that there is no Romani Nation because Nation does not equal state (with land), as the Gadje have turned it to mean over the last hundreds of years, but Nation equates to People, hence the Canadian term of First Nations for the indigenous People of the Americas. Note the term Nations. 

If they are Nations then so are we, the Rom, a Nation, period. We may be scattered across the globe, Europe, the Middle East, Egypt and North Africa, the Americas, South Africa, the Antipodeans, but we are one People though with different groups, tribes, clans, and thus we are all part of that one Nation, the Romani Nation. 

Having a country, some land “to call our own”, is not a necessity for nationhood, for being a Nation, and neither could that ever work for us, as a People and Nation, because who would we wish to dispossess of their homes and lands? Anyone believing that there is going to be some plot of land, large enough to house even the low estimate of 12-16 Million Rom in Europe alone, is more than misguided. 

When we are looking at being a Nation – which we, in fact, as said before – are, being a People of one bond though separated by some small differences in cultural practices and variations of the language, in what could be seen as dialects, if we so wish, we must get away from the Gadje thinking, as we must in political terms as well. 

The Gadje way cannot be our way and when it comes to politics the Gadje system will for ever be skewed against us. We, as a People, as a Nation, must find and use a different approach and abandon the Gadje one. It does not and will never work for us. 

2024 © Michael Smith (Veshengro) / O NEVO DROM

N.B. I wrote this for April 8, 2024 and this also went as an audio message.