Sofia    As a woman in one of our meetings in Sofia told us, you could describe the feminist and LGBTQ movements in Bulgaria as before and after 2018.  In that year the EU issued a convention that ostensibly was meant to protect marginal groups in all member countries, but in Bulgaria the convention triggered a backlash.  The language may be on the books as required, but in every other way, it is a dead letter without enforcement.  Youth and rightwing groups also used seemed to spring up everywhere, especially in the city, to attack and harass women and LGBTQ community members.

We heard this repeatedly.  We first spoke to Valentina Gueorguieva, who had been part of an exchange program with ACORN and spent several weeks with us in New Orleans.  She detailed the groups that had survived since our last visit, and the ones that had gone under.

We met later with two dynamic and committed young women who were part of a collective that had organized a space, still under construction, as a small meeting place, so that people in these communities could come together, connect, and find solidarity and common cause.  We also visited another space they maintained not far away for a feminist library.  A measure of the strain in the community might be found in their story they told us of their project to organize self-defense classes, which are ongoing.  They publicize the existence of the workshops via social media, but not the location, which has to be kept private, forcing them to screen all who express interest because of the real threat of hooligan attacks and disruption, if someone were able sneak past them.  They were also involved in the efforts, along with others, to organize a “Care Coalition” to help support and pull together the largely feminized workforce in various care facilities in child and healthcare.

Both of these women were teachers, where, like in the emerging Trump America, there is increased scrutiny of the curricula.  Fortunately, the teachers’ union is the strongest labor union in the country, but that wasn’t sufficient enough to make them comfortable.  All of this work was of course volunteer, as was so often the case, we found.  Our delegations from Toronto and New Orleans committed to helping them obtain more books and donations in order to help finish building out their space and pushing forward.

We also visited with a member of the LevFem collective, a group that ranged between seven and eleven women, which has been trying to change the dominant dialogue about women and marginal groups which has increasingly been under what she accurately referred to as “state capture.”  LevFem is trying to find a narrative that can bring people together, while also finding a way to move the increasingly difficult and dangerous narrative towards a more constructive debate with people who have opposing views.

The news was depressing, but the courage and commitment was inspiring.