Sofia     New Orleans to Newark, Newark to Munich, Munich to Sofia, and I was there on a gray, chilly, but snowless day dressed dutifully as if for a short hop to the Arctic.  Our delegation assembled and jumped on the Metro at the airport station for a trip downtown, but Lyuba Batembergska and I jumped off early.  It turned out we had someplace to be and needed to be there PDQ.

Lyuba, as part of a professional fellows internship program, had spent a month with us in New Orleans getting an immersion course in community organizing, ACORN-style, with a taste for the city, our work, and our social enterprises.  Part of the program was a quid pro quo return visit where I would spend some time in-country with her now, going over her work and helping make a plan for the various projects she was handling.

One of her avocations, often discussed in New Orleans, was an effort to protect one of the last pristine stretches of beach and waterfront land in Bulgaria along the Black Sea.  As it turned out the reason we powered up the stairs like Sherpas with my luggage from the Metro and grabbed a taxi to drop my bags at the hotel, was that Lyuba and her associates were scheduled to deliver a letter to the Parliament mid-afternoon, so we needed to be humping.

We walked the two kilometers or so to Parliament, fearing we would be late, but when we got to the traffic island across from the building, instead, as we looked around, we were first.  Well, not exactly first, because there were police everywhere.  We were standing beside three police cars with more across the street and a van full next to the park.  There were police on every corner.  Clearly, we were in the right place to meet our friends, and the wrong place as far as the local gendarmes were concerned.

Over the next half-hour, forty or fifty of supporters of the effort arrived on foot or by bicycle.  A clipboard with the letter to the Parliament was passed around so that everyone could sign.  It seemed the issue at hand was a special procedure the Parliament was debating.  Normally, if land is not developed in a timely fashion by law in Bulgaria it reverts to its original use, and for this patch along the Black Sea, that meant it would go back to wilderness, making all assembled happy.  Parliament though was being fiercely lobbied to pass a special exemption that would keep the land available for the wannabe hotel developer.  The makeshift signs brought by supporters or being produced as the crowd assembled accused the developers of being part of the mafia, which infers corruption here.

Everything was calm until the crowd, led by Lyuba and her friends, walked across the street with the letter.  The police immediately mobilized at the curb to stop their progress.  There then ensued a break to negotiate, as people milled around in the increasing cold.  After a bit of stalemate, the alternative chosen was to march to another building where correspondence was normally received.  The usual back-and-forth about walking in the street versus sidewalk ensued, as police marched along with the crowd and other police cars followed.

The press was everywhere, so the message of the action got out around the country, but once there, the letter was also refused.

So far in handling such simple expressions of public opinion, Bulgaria seems like the US, Canada, and a score of other countries.  I’m looking forward to learning something new in Sofia, but so far, it’s same “ol’, same ol’” when it comes to allowing the peoples’ voices to be heard.