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
