Prague City Hall's smorgasbord in the place where Romani Ukrainian children were sleeping on the floor last year reminiscent of communist officials in the late 1980s

They have drinks, nibble on the hors d’oeuvres, and then quickly drive off in air-conditioned limousines, leaving the Fantova Café inside the main railway station to continue their difficult political work at Prague City Hall, such as how to solve the distribution of “badges” to the Mass Transit Authority staff. However, friends, for me on that Friday the “unbelievable becomes real”, as the literary rendition of Egon Bondy says of the behavior of “little Vladimír” Boudník in one of Bohumil Hrabal’s works [“Legenda o Egonu Bondym a Vladimírkovi”].

A table covered with a clean, ironed tablecloth is standing exactly (almost to the centimeter) on the spot where, at the beginning of May 2022, my emotions and social sensibilities ran amok when, as a volunteer, I refused to go along with or be involved in a total violation of all the ethical norms of social work during a crisis. The unequivocal culprit was the political leadership at all levels of management which, absolutely in the spirit of hardline antigypsyism, attempted to restrict and torment those people whose heavy fate it already was to be fleeing a war.

Today in that spot they are giving speeches across from that table full of goodies, and I just don’t see any Romani children at the table – the Czech stinginess that applies here under any regime. I repeat: This was at the exact same spot where, as time went on, we were gradually forbidden to give even coffee, tea or water to the totally exhausted mothers lying on the floor, frequently ones who were nursing infants, nor could we give their children something to drink.

I don’t even want to mention the food they were allowed (half an apple, a bit of toast, one watery portion of soup). Standing there now, I have the irresistible desire to upend that table full of delicacies which the refugees from Ukraine could only have dreamed of back then.

Since the anarchist black flag of social justice is starting to wave before my eyes again, I prefer to leave and visit the excellent photographs on display, taken by Mr. Škoch and others, which exactly capture the atmosphere of that time. Two doctors and the current and former mayors are speechifying on and on.

Their arrogance, their memorized political phrases, their puffed-up egos literally ooze for dozens of meters into the space. The police stand next to them.

As for the initiative of volunteers (Iniciativa Hlavák) who basically did almost all the work with the people who ended up living in the main railway station last year, they officially prefer not to speak in this format with politicians. However, just like in May 2022, in my opinion, what they do instead is quite moderate, tame – in short, they are too nice to the politicians.

They hold quite a truthful protest in front of the railway station, but almost nobody is there except more homeless people. Ms. Anna Šabatová gives a beautiful speech, and others also read exactly their own crazy memories of antigypsyism in practice, the absolutely racist double standard toward these refugees that differentiated among them according to their skin color.

The people from Iniciativa Hlavák should have fully occupied the Fantova Café space and made sure to get the last word on this occasion. The railway station is their home, they’ve been filling that place since 2015 with humanity, with humankind, they have been protecting this country’s honor and morality.

Ex-Mayor Hřib and current Mayor Svoboda have not been doing any such thing. The volunteers, though, allowed their space to be stolen by politicians who are afraid to even walk out through the main entrance of the railway station, because then those doctors and the ex-mayor and the new mayor would have to see the insane medical and social ruin of the people hanging out in front of that building, as homeless people are increasing exponentially there.

The people out there are in serious phases of mental illnesses, they are pathologically addicted, and there are dozens of them who have been absolutely excluded from society. Ex-Mayor Hřib and Mayor Svoboda instead made a cowardly choice, absolutely in the spirit of communist bosses, to use the escape route of the railway station’s upper entrance so they would not have to see the reality and the truth of their fellow citizens falling further into poverty.

It’s clear these politicians are afraid to encounter any difference, to encounter the medical and social truth of our time. They all but cover their faces, they are afraid to walk among people who aren’t from their own social bubble.

I’ve left my only hope for change till the end: This was awfully reminiscent of the behavior of the Communist Party comrades during the late 1980s here. Soon this same group of idiotic, narrow-minded political factions will be going to make their plans in the lower house.

They’re all turning into nothing but fence posts, which is the beginning of their end. That’s as it should be!

There will be at least that little bit of justice for the socially abused, even if only as a group. To be absolutely alone in such a gang of insincere sycophants – I really wouldn’t want to be in that position.