Journal articles on the topic 'Gendarmerie et police des colonies'

Résumé Encore récemment, et ce, jusqu'à ce que paraisse l'étude de R. C. Macleod en 1976, la bonne réputation de la Gendarmerie royale du Nord-Ouest reposait sur le souvenir d'exploits extraordinaires; en effet, légendes et traditions s'étaient plu à évoquer les actions mémorables que ce corps policier aurait accomplies dans sa lutte contre les Amérindiens et les criminels de l'époque. Macleod, pour sa part, a remis cette interprétation en question et il estime que le succès de la gendarmerie doit plutôt être attribué au fait que ce corps policier était à la fois bien organisé et bien discipliné. C'est cette récente interprétation que l'auteur de cet article veut nuancer. Il se demande, d'une part, comment on peut la prendre au pied de la lettre quand on sait qu'après 1885, ni les Amérindiens, ni les criminels ne constituaient une réelle menace dans l'ouest canadien et, d'autre part, à quoi il faut attribuer la popularité bien réelle de la gendarmerie si elle ne repose pas sur la lutte contre l'Amérindien et le criminel. A la lumière d'une source tout à fait particulière, soit celle des rapports quotidiens que rédigeaient les membres de la gendarmerie, l'auteur démontre que cette popularité tient du fait de sa présence constante auprès de la population. La plupart du temps, le policier patrouillait le pays, passant de ferme en ferme; il aidait le pionnier à résoudre certains problèmes et c'était à lui qu'on avait recours en cas de danger ou d'urgence, qu'il s'agisse d'incendies, de disette ou de maladies. Dans ces années de durs labeurs, cette présence du policier et les nombreux services qu'il rendait étaient de nature à faire bonne impression et à asseoir sa popularité auprès de la population locale.

Crests and mottoes from Marchalsea to the state police force ; The evolution of the crests and mottoes attributed to the Marchalsea of the old regime then to its heiress, the state police force from 1791, indicates the great steps of French History. The members of this police with a military status represent “the arms of the law” which is named under the old Regime the “judges with boots”. This force remains subordinate directly to the Power in place or to its representatives all along History. This is through the evolution of crests and mottoes of this authority that its history is gone over. This one is crossed with the process involved by the traditional heraldry from the XVIth century and which finds expression in a growing simplification of signs of recognition of the prominent characters. This trend is followed by two great steps. The French revolution gives birth to the sign of recognition of a Nation whereas the Empire lays the foundations of the regimental crests such as we know them nowadays.

L'articolo propone alcune riflessioni sul dispositivo francese di contrasto alla pedopornografia e all'adescamento online di minori, con particolare riguardo all'attività svolta dalle due principali forze di polizia: la police nationale e la gendarmerie nationale. Saranno presentate le unità specializzate nel contrasto a queste realtà criminali, così come le strategie e le sfide sottese alla loro azione.

La situation et les evolutions de la Police -ou plutot des polices- en FRANCE se caracterisent avant tout par la gestion tres centralisee, dans ce pays, des questions de securite et des organisations qui les traitent. Les dernieres elections presidentielles ont par ailleurs montre combien ce sujet etait important pour les francais et combien les attentes envers l'etat etaient fortes en ces domaines. Car, si de plus en plus emergent la securite privee et les polices municipales, la Police Nationale dans les villes, et la Gendarmerie Nationale dans les campagnes, deux institutions d'etat, detiennent toujours dans ce pays l'essentiel des pouvoirs regaliens de securite.

Le colonel Éric Freyssinet est chef de la Mission numérique de la gendarmerie nationale depuis le 1 er mai 2017, dans la continuité de 19 ans de carrière dans le domaine de la lutte contre la cybercriminalité à des postes techniques, stratégiques et opérationnels. Il a notamment exercé comme chef du département informatique-électronique de l’Institut de recherche criminelle de la gendarmerie nationale, chargé de projets cybercriminalité à la sous-direction de la police judiciaire de la gendarmerie nationale ou encore chef du Centre de lutte contre les criminalités numériques. Plus récemment il fut conseiller au sein de la Délégation chargé de la lutte contre les cybermenaces au ministère de l’Intérieur. Après une formation initiale d’ingénieur généraliste (Ecole Polytechnique, X92), le colonel Freyssinet s’est spécialisé dans la sécurité des systèmes d’information (Mastère spécialisé SSIR Télécom Paristech 99-2000) et a pour-suivi dans une démarche par la recherche en défendant une thèse de doctorat en informatique en 2015 (Université Pierre et Marie Curie), sur le sujet de la lutte contre les botnets .

Résumé La littérature populaire qui s'est penchée sur l'histoire de la gendarmerie royale a toujours laissé entendre que la longue marche de 1874 avait effectivement apporté l'ordre et la paix dans l'ouest canadien. Cette conclusion, de dire l'auteur, on la tire beaucoup plus en raison de la manière dont on a structuré le récit qu'en fonction de l'analyse objective que l'on a pu faire de l'événement. En effet, certains grands admirateurs de ce corps policier ont façonné la grande marche en suivant le modèle traditionnel du mythe du héros. Selon ce modèle, un certain nombre d'étapes doivent être franchies avant d'accéder au titre de héros. Le sujet doit d'abord être appelé à l'aventure ou à une façon de vivre hors de l'ordinaire; habituellement, son entrée dans ce monde nouveau est marquée par une circonstance extraordinaire qu'il doit maîtriser; il séjourne ensuite au milieu d'éléments qui lui sont tantôt favorables, tantôt contraires; puis, quand il a triomphé de toutes les difficultés, il est récompensé et il sort de l'expérience grandi et héroïque: il est alors prêt à retourner dans le monde ordinaire. La longue marche de la gendarmerie, en 1874, ayant été décrite et racontée en tenant compte de toutes ces étapes, l'on comprend facilement que certains en soient venus à considérer la situation dans l'ouest canadien comme étant une conséquence directe des actes accomplis par leurs héros en cette fin du XIXe siècle.

Tout en indiquant les principales caractéristiques du procès pénal en France, l’auteur compare celui-ci au système pénal canadien. Il explique ainsi les deux phases du procès pénal français : préparatoire et décisoire. À la phase préparatoire, il se dégage, à son avis, trois principes : la présomption d’innocence, la liberté des preuves et la réglementation de l’administration de la preuve; il constate trois étapes : l’enquête préliminaire ou de flagrance par la police ou la gendarmerie, la poursuite lancée par le parquet ou la victime et l’instruction devant un juge et éventuellement devant la chambre d’accusation. À la phase décisoire du procès pénal français, il y a appréciation de la preuve au cours d’une procédure accusatoire, différente selon que l’accusé est devant un tribunal correctionnel ou de police ou devant la Cour d’assises, puis jugement sur la culpabilité et sur la peine. L’auteur évoque, en terminant, la question de l’autorité de la chose jugée. Les différences avec le système pénal canadien sont au fur et à mesure soulignées.

Durant tout le XIX e siècle, la France est sans doute la première puissance mondiale en termes d’unités de répression des militaires. Le nombre, la diversité, les règlements, la dureté des châtiments, etc. tendent à le démontrer. Si les galères en sont les ancêtres, tout commence vraiment avec la Révolution, ses guerres et la montée en puissance de la conscription. Certains délits militaires se développent alors : désertion, mutilation volontaire et insoumission entre autres. C’est par ces catégories que le mouvement de création de ces unités est initié. Ce processus, qu’on pourrait qualifier de rationalisant, n’est pas pour autant simplificateur. La situation est même d’une rare complexité, pour une période relativement courte : vingt-cinq ans, de 1789 à 1814. Mais quelques grands traits émergent : le principe de séparation des catégories, déserteurs, réfractaires, mutilés, indisciplinés, s’installe ; le régime disciplinaire est aggravé ; apparaît même la subdivision d’une catégorie d’unités (les bataillons coloniaux à partir de 1811) en deux degrés de gravité dans la punition ; l’éloignement dans des îles, des ports de guerre, des territoires étrangers, est une règle importante ; l’emploi des hommes à des fins militaires : travaux, gardes, exercices, puis retour dans les unités normales, est le fil conducteur de cette politique. Ce dispositif est soigneusement encadré. Mais cet encadrement légal est pondéré par les circonstances et les besoins. De plus, il subit des éléments de perturbation autorisés : l’envoi de civils – donc des non militaires – directement par les préfets de police, et le mélange des différentes catégories au sein des unités, par exemple. Les bataillons coloniaux, créés pour les déserteurs, les volontaires pour les colonies et les civils envoyés directement par les préfets de police, sont les seuls conservés par la Restauration.

Objective To analyse the epidemiological data on suicide in French Polynesia (FP). Methods Data on suicides were collected from the Public Health Direction, Judicial Police Investigations Court of Justice records, the Centre d’Opérations et de Renseignements de la Gendarmerie, patient records for those hospitalized in psychiatry and from psychological autopsies. Results The dataset consisted of 316 suicide cases in FP over 25 years (1992–2016). In FP, suicide was more frequent in men (sex ratio 3.2:1), young people (mean age, 34.4 years) and individuals with previously diagnosed psychiatric disorders (100 of 316; 31.6%) The most common method of suicide was hanging (276 of 316; 87.3%). A history of previous suicide attempts was found in 25 of 56 (44.6%) of suicide cases, when documented. The most common potential triggering factors for suicide were emotional problems. The suicide rates have remained stable during 1992–2016 (mean 10.6/100 000 inhabitants per year), with periods of economic crises increasing suicide rates. Conclusions These results provide valuable information to enable the effective targeting of suicide prevention strategies toward those at high risk. Economic crises had larger impacts in the French overseas territories than mainland France. Given the unprecedented economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in FP, there is an urgent need to implement suicide epidemiological surveillance and prevention programmes.

Introduction : chaque année, dans le monde, on estime que ce sont près d’un million de personnes qui mettent fin à leurs jours, soit l’équivalent d’un suicide toutes les 40 secondes. Cependant, en Afrique sub-saharienne, pour des raisons culturelles et géopolitiques, ce phénomène est mal décrit et mal connu. Pour mesurer l’ampleur de ce phénomène, nous avons mené une étude rétrospective sur une période de 5 ans dans une communauté rurale du Nord Bénin. Méthode : il s’agit d’une étude rétrospective menée dans les différents villages de la commune de Cobly du 2 janvier 2013 au 2 avril 2017. Les données ont été recueillies dans les dossiers de la Brigade de Gendarmerie, de la police, des centres de santé et de la mairie. Elles ont été complétées par les données d’une autopsie verbale (ou « autopsie psychologique »). Résultats : au terme de l’étude, 52 cas ont été enregistrés soit en moyenne, 10 suicides par an. L’âge moyen des suicidés était de 36 ans ± 11,8 avec des extrêmes de 18 à 70 ans. La tranche d’âge la plus représentée était celle de 20 à 30 ans. Les hommes étaient majoritaires à 69,2 % et à 67,3 % cultivateurs. Parmi les suicidés, 75 % étaient mariés. Le taux moyen de mortalité par suicide sur cette période était de 14,9 par 100 000 habitants. Sur les 52 suicidés, 8 (15,4 %) avaient laissé une lettre dans laquelle figurent les causes qui les ont poussés au suicide : maladie (62,5 %), pauvreté (25 %), mariage forcé (12,5 %). Selon l’autopsie psychologique, les causes suivantes ont été relevées : pauvreté (32,7 %), conflits familiaux (26,9 %), mariage forcé (15,8 %), troubles mentaux (5,8 %), maladie incurable (3,9 %) et cause inconnue (15,4 %). Conclusion : Le suicide au Bénin est souvent minimisé et négligé. Sa prévalence est probablement sous-estimée du fait des obstacles socio-culturels et religieux. Une étude à l’échelle nationale serait nécessaire pour mesurer l’ampleur du phénomène, comme dans les autres pays d’Afrique sub-saharienne.

Les établissements psychiatriques, et en particulier celui de l’asile de Villejuif où a été ouverte en 1910 une section réservée aux aliénés délinquants et criminels, ont reçu des mineurs déclarés pénalement irresponsables ou estimés aliénés. Parmi eux, des jeunes gens qui avaient été précédemment placés en colonies pénitentiaires, mais aussi des fils de bonne famille ayant pour certains un passif en maisons de santé privées. La prise en charge de leur délinquance ou leur méconduite témoigne de l’approche médico-légale dont ils ont fait l’objet. Considérés plus fous que « dévoyés », les uns n’ont parfois connu qu’une vie marquée par une enfance abandonnée ou irrégulière aux prises avec des institutions dédiées à la répression de la délinquance alors que les cas des autres illustrent comment la psychiatrie s’est faite l’auxiliaire d’une « police des familles » confrontée aux inconduites vues au travers d’un prisme pathogène. Désignés comme des dégénérés, des déséquilibrés ou des pervers, victimes de « tares constitutionnelles » selon les médecins, ces jeunes gens ont été appréhendés comme des inadaptés, inamendables et imperméables aux sanctions pénales avant que ne se pose de nouveau la question de leur responsabilité.

L’automutilation demeure mal comprise malgré son intérêt médico-judiciaire et social. Même si ce phénomène chez les malades mentaux est reconnu depuis plusieurs années, la documentation sur cette question est loin d’être suffisante. Au niveau des consultations médico-judiciaires (CMJ), les personnes présentant des blessures ayant des caractéristiques auto-infligées affirment avoir été conséquences d’agressions. Ces blessures sont utilisées comme preuve matérielle afin d’engager des poursuites judiciaires au tribunal pénal ou constituent une menace contre une personne innocente. Les blessures auto-infligées (BAI) sont évocatrices par leurs caractères. Cependant, aux allégations on note souvent une discordance lors de la reconstitution des faits. A l’examen clinique, ces blessures sont superficielles avec une profondeur égale aux extrémités. Souvent, uniformes (linéaires ou légèrement curvilignes), groupées, parallèles et se croisent entre elles, orientées dans la même direction, symétriques au niveau des zones accessibles par la personne (évitant les zones mortelles ou sensibles à la douleur et le côté dominant). La présence de blessures d’hésitation et l’existence d’ancienne cicatrice d’automutilation sont un signe évocateur. Elles peuvent être surajoutées à des blessures légères causées par un agresseur, dont le but est de majorer une incapacité totale de travail (ITT). Parfois, ces blessures se trouvent en postérieur du corps sur une zone accessible par la personne ou causées à l’aide d’une tierce personne (complice). L’examen des vêtements a une grande importance dans le diagnostic médico-légal des BAI (absence d’entaille vestimentaire en regard de la blessure ou l’entaille ne correspond pas). En médecine légale, la problématique majeure de ces BAI demeure essentiellement sur le diagnostic médico-légal pour les cas particuliers et la rédaction d’un certificat médical initial de constatation de blessures, notamment en matière de fixation d’ITT. Le diagnostic médico-légal de BAI a une importance judiciaire notamment en matière de différenciation entre une agression, une simulation et autres types de comportement autodestructeur. Il permet aussi une rédaction d’un certificat médical adapté évitant une enquête inutile par le service de police ou de gendarmerie, d’innocenter un présumé agresseur et de soulager son inquiétude ou son anxiété injustifiée. C’est une étude incluant des personnes portant des BAI récentes pour avantage judiciaire. En fonctions des données situationnelles de cette étude, nous allons tenter de cerner le caractère médico-légal de ces blessures notamment leurs formes.

L’Équipe Mobile d’Argelès Psychiatrique (EMAP) a vu le jour le 1er septembre 2011. Elle a été financée dans un cadre expérimental, par l’Agence Régionale de Santé du Languedoc-Roussillon. Le projet s’inscrivait dans les travaux du Conseil Local de Santé Mentale (CLSM) d’Argelès-sur-Mer (66700). Il faisait suite à plusieurs constats. Pour de multiples raisons, et notamment du fait de l’augmentation considérable des soins ambulatoires, le nombre des visites à domicile a régulièrement diminué ces dernières années et s’est progressivement recentré sur le suivi de patients connus. D’autre part, il existe un nombre d’hospitalisation d’office historiquement bien plus élevé dans les Pyrénées Orientales que la moyenne nationale (88 hospitalisations d’office pour 100 000 habitants âgés de 20 ans et plus dans les PO contre 25 pour 100 000 habitants au niveau national en 2007. Ce nombre était de 83 pour notre secteur géographique). Les représentants des usagers et des familles étaient très en demande d’interventions rapides dans la communauté. Cette attente faisait écho à celle d’un grand nombre des partenaires du réseau sanitaire (médecins généralistes) mais également social ou médicosocial pour évaluer certaines situations orientées par défaut vers le service des urgences psychiatriques au centre hospitalier de Perpignan. Malgré les efforts de communication et d’information entrepris de longue date, il était noté, dans la pratique quotidienne, l’insuffisance des liens avec les services municipaux, la police, la gendarmerie, les pompiers et parfois les services sociaux pour prévenir les situations de crise. Enfin, l’existence d’une Équipe Mobile Psychiatrie Précarité rattachée au service depuis une quinzaine d’années permettait de s’appuyer sur une expérience déjà solide. Par opposition à notre EMPP qui est intersectorielle, l’EMAP s’est inscrite d’emblée dans une dimension sectorielle, rattachée à part entière à un CMP desservant un territoire de 40 000 habitants. Il s’agit d’une équipe rapidement mobilisable, à la demande des patients, des familles ou des différents partenaires du champ médical, social et judiciaire pour anticiper et évaluer les situations de crise de nature psychiatrique. Au-delà de l’évaluation, elle organise, si besoin, les soins de la manière la plus adaptée. Cette équipe spécialisée, pluridisciplinaire, va :– développer les relations de réseau entre des acteurs pouvant recevoir les mêmes publics mais se connaissant peu ;– intervenir sur signalement pour évaluer les situations de crise susceptibles de relever de réponses psychiatriques ou, ce qui est préférable, pouvant les anticiper.L’expérience des deux premières années de fonctionnement permet de retenir un bilan intéressant, notamment la diminution très sensible des hospitalisations en SDRE sur l’aire géographique desservie et une complémentarité naturelle avec l’activité de CMP classique. Ce bilan sera détaillé dans cette publication.

Sommaire L'intervention policière dans les différends ouvriers soulève nombrede problèmes et prête à critiques. L'Honorable D. Fulton, Ministre de la justice, motive le refus du gouvernement fédéral de faire parvenir des renforts de la Gendarmerie Royale à la province de Terre-Neuve en se basant sur les principes qui doivent guider tout gouvernement voulant intervenir dans un différend ouvrier. La Fraternité des Policiers de Montréal a proposé, pour obvier à certains inconvénients, la création d'un corps spécial de policiers.

Therefore, this unit as a component of the gendarmerie is built on the principle of a military unit. The gendarmerie, one of the few state institutions in France, has been in existence for over 200 years and has a status as DOI: 10.32370/IA_2021_03_07 a significant component of the country's armed forces and is an extremely important part of the police system. The gendarmerie is subordinated to the Ministry of Defense (on the authority of the Main Directorate), and on the ground - to the command of military districts. At the same time, the gendarmerie is at the operational disposal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Justice. Significant autonomy within the Armed Forces allows the gendarmerie to combine military functions with purely police and administrative ones. The difference between police and gendarmerie is that the police are civilian civil servants. They can wear civilian clothes and trade union and political freedoms. Gendarmes also have the status of servicemen and military ranks, always in uniform, not entitled to strike and are responsible for violations in accordance with military charters - from guardians to dismissal from service (for example, for the use of alcohol "in the performance of official duties" the gendarme is threatened arrest for up to 30 days). The need for the creation of the Austrian Special Forces was conditioned by the urgency of taking measures to ensure the safety of the flow of emigrants of Jewish nationality from the former USSR since in autumn 1973 against them was committed serious terrorist act. Special unit "Cobra" enters the warehouse of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and has got a double subordination: through direct combat engagement to the head of public safety, and in relation to personnel issues and logistics - the central command of the gendarmerie of the Austrian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Among the well-known British Special Political Service (Special Air Service, or SAS) is probably the best counterterrorism unit. Its component - Special Projects (SP) team - the main anti-terrorist squad. The Special Air Service and its Counter Revolutionary Warfare Squadron (CRW) unit, the Antirevolutionary Military Squadron, were founded in 1942. The feature of training SAS servicemen is to teach each soldier to possess all methods and means of combating terrorism. To achieve this, SAS trains all of its squadron through training cycles. Acquired skills are improved later in the SP-team's combat duties. The main thing in the work is the maximum approximation of training sessions to a real combat situation in the conduct of operations on the release of hostages, in the role of which are civilians. Anti-terrorist training of SAS and the development of practical measures for the release of hostages is facilitated by the fact that high-ranking members of the British Government, including the Prime Minister, are personally involved in it.

Introduction Darkness is often characterised as something that warrants heightened caution and scrutiny – signifying increased danger and risk. Within settler-colonial settings such as Australia, cautionary and negative connotations of darkness are projected upon Black people and their bodies, forming part of continuing colonial regimes of power (Moreton-Robinson). Negative stereotypes of “dark” continues to racialise all Indigenous peoples. In Australia, Indigenous peoples are both Indigenous and Black regardless of skin colour, and this plays out in a range of ways, some of which will be highlighted within this article. This article demonstrates that for Indigenous peoples, associations of fear and danger are built into the structural mechanisms that shape and maintain colonial understandings of Indigenous peoples and their bodies. It is this embodied form of darkness, and its negative connotations, and responses that we explore further. Figure 1: Megan Cope’s ‘I’m not afraid of the Dark’ t-shirt (Fredericks and Heemsbergen 2021) Responding to the anxieties and fears of settlers that often surround Indigenous peoples, Quandamooka artist and member of the art collective ProppaNow, Megan Cope, has produced a range of t-shirts, one of which declares “I’m not afraid of the Dark” (fig. 1). The wording ‘reflects White Australia’s fear of blackness’ (Dark + Dangerous). Exploring race relations through the theme of “darkness”, we begin by discussing how negative connotations of darkness are represented through everyday lexicons and how efforts to shift prejudicial and racist language are often met with defensiveness and resistance. We then consider how fears towards the dark translate into everyday practices, reinforced by media representations. The article considers how stereotype, conjecture, and prejudice is inflicted upon Indigenous people and reflects white settler fears and anxieties, rooting colonialism in everyday language, action, and norms. The Language of Fear Indigenous people and others with dark skin tones are often presented as having a proclivity towards threatening, aggressive, deceitful, and negative behaviours. This works to inform how Indigenous peoples are “known” and responded to by hegemonic (predominantly white) populations. Negative connotations of Indigenous people are a means of reinforcing and legitimising the falsity that European knowledge systems, norms, and social structures are superior whilst denying the contextual colonial circumstances that have led to white dominance. In Australia, such denial corresponds to the refusal to engage with the unceded sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples or acknowledge Indigenous resistance. Language is integral to the ways in which dominant populations come to “know” and present the so-called “Other”. Such language is reflected in digital media, which both produce and maintain white anxieties towards race and ethnicity. When part of mainstream vernacular, racialised language – and the value judgments associated with it – often remains in what Moreton-Robinson describes as “invisible regimes of power” (75). Everyday social structures, actions, and habits of thought veil oppressive and discriminatory attitudes that exist under the guise of “normality”. Colonisation and the dominance of Eurocentric ways of knowing, being, and doing has fixated itself on creating a normality that associates Indigeneity and darkness with negative and threatening connotations. In doing so, it reinforces power balances that presents an image of white superiority built on the invalidation of Indigeneity and Blackness. White fears and anxieties towards race made explicit through social and digital media are also manifest via subtle but equally pervasive everyday action (Carlson and Frazer; Matamoros-Fernández). Confronting and negotiating such fears becomes a daily reality for many Indigenous people. During the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, which extended to Australia and were linked to deaths in custody and police violence, African American poet Saul Williams reminded his followers of the power of language in constructing racialised fears (saulwilliams). In an Instagram post, Williams draws back the veil of an uncontested normality to ask that we take personal responsibility over the words we use. He writes: here’s a tip: Take the words DARK or BLACK in connection to bad, evil, ominous or scary events out of your vocabulary. We learn the stock market crashed on Black Monday, we read headlines that purport “Dark Days Ahead”. There’s “dark” or “black” humour which implies an undertone of evil, and then there are people like me who grow up with dark skin having to make sense of the English/American lexicon and its history of “fair complexions” – where “fair” can mean “light; blond.” OR “in accordance with rules or standards; legitimate.” We may not be fully responsible for the duplicitous evolution of language and subtle morphing of inherited beliefs into description yet we are in full command of the words we choose even as they reveal the questions we’ve left unasked. Like the work of Moreton-Robinson and other scholars, Williams implores his followers to take a reflexive position to consider the questions often left unasked. In doing so, he calls for the transcendence of anonymity and engagement with the realities of colonisation – no matter how ugly, confronting, and complicit one may be in its continuation. In the Australian context this means confronting how terms such as “dark”, “darkie”, or “darky” were historically used as derogatory and offensive slurs for Aboriginal peoples. Such language continues to be used today and can be found in the comment sections of social media, online news platforms, and other online forums (Carlson “Love and Hate”). Taking the move to execute personal accountability can be difficult. It can destabilise and reframe the ways in which we understand and interact with the world (Rose 22). For some, however, exposing racism and seemingly mundane aspects of society is taken as a personal attack which is often met with reactionary responses where one remains closed to new insights (Whittaker). This feeds into fears and anxieties pertaining to the perceived loss of power. These fears and anxieties continue to surface through conversations and calls for action on issues such as changing the date of Australia Day, the racialised reporting of news (McQuire), removing of plaques and statues known to be racist, and requests to change placenames and the names of products. For example, in 2020, Australian cheese producer Saputo Dairy Australia changed the name of it is popular brand “Coon” to “Cheer Tasty”. The decision followed a lengthy campaign led by Dr Stephen Hagan who called for the rebranding based on the Coon brand having racist connotations (ABC). The term has its racist origins in the United States and has long been used as a slur against people with dark skin, liking them to racoons and their tendency to steal and deceive. The term “Coon” is used in Australia by settlers as a racist term for referring to Aboriginal peoples. Claims that the name change is example of political correctness gone astray fail to acknowledge and empathise with the lived experience of being treated as if one is dirty, lazy, deceitful, or untrustworthy. Other brand names have also historically utilised racist wording along with imagery in their advertising (Conor). Pear’s soap for example is well-known for its historical use of racist words and imagery to legitimise white rule over Indigenous colonies, including in Australia (Jackson). Like most racial epithets, the power of language lies in how the words reflect and translate into actions that dehumanise others. The words we use matter. The everyday “ordinary” world, including online, is deeply politicised (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”) and comes to reflect attitudes and power imbalances that encourage white people to internalise the falsity that they are superior and should have control over Black people (Conor). Decisions to make social change, such as that made by Saputo Dairy Australia, can manifest into further white anxieties via their ability to force the confrontation of the circumstances that continue to contribute to one’s own prosperity. In other words, to unveil the realities of colonialism and ask the questions that are too often left in the dark. Lived Experiences of Darkness Colonial anxieties and fears are driven by the fact that Black populations in many areas of the world are often characterised as criminals, perpetrators, threats, or nuisances, but are rarely seen as victims. In Australia, the repeated lack of police response and receptivity to concerns of Indigenous peoples expressed during the Black Lives Matter campaign saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets to protest. Protestors at the same time called for the end of police brutality towards Indigenous peoples and for an end to Indigenous deaths in custody. The protests were backed by a heavy online presence that sought to mobilise people in hope of lifting the veil that shrouds issues relating to systemic racism. There have been over 450 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to die in custody since the end of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991 (The Guardian). The tragedy of the Indigenous experience gains little attention internationally. The negative implications of being the object of white fear and anxiety are felt by Indigenous and other Black communities daily. The “safety signals” (Daniella Emanuel) adopted by white peoples in response to often irrational perceptions of threat signify how Indigenous and other Black peoples and communities are seen and valued by the hegemony. Memes played out in social media depicting “Karens” – a term that corresponds to caricaturised white women (but equally applicable to men) who exhibit behaviours of entitlement – have increasing been used in media to expose the prevalence of irrational racial fears (also see Wong). Police are commonly called on Indigenous people and other Black people for simply being within spaces such as shopping malls, street corners, parks, or other spaces in which they are considered not to belong (Mohdin). Digital media are also commonly envisioned as a space that is not natural or normal for Indigenous peoples, a notion that maintains narratives of so-called Indigenous primitivity (Carlson and Frazer). Media connotations of darkness as threatening are associated with, and strategically manipulated by, the images that accompany stories about Indigenous peoples and other Black peoples. Digital technologies play significant roles in producing and disseminating the images shown in the media. Moreover, they have a “role in mediating and amplifying old and new forms of abuse, hate, and discrimination” (Matamoros-Fernández and Farkas). Daniels demonstrates how social media sites can be spaces “where race and racism play out in interesting, sometimes disturbing, ways” (702), shaping ongoing colonial fears and anxieties over Black peoples. Prominent footballer Adam Goodes, for example, faced a string of attacks after he publicly condemned racism when he was called an “Ape” by a spectator during a game celebrating Indigenous contributions to the sport (Coram and Hallinan). This was followed by a barrage of personal attacks, criticisms, and booing that spread over the remaining years of his football career. When Goodes performed a traditional war dance as a form of celebration during a game in 2015, many turned to social media to express their outrage over his “confrontational” and “aggressive” behaviour (Robinson). Goodes’s affirmation of his Indigeneity was seen by many as a threat to their own positionality and white sensibility. Social media were therefore used as a mechanism to control settler narratives and maintain colonial power structures by framing the conversation through a white lens (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”). Indigenous peoples in other highly visible fields have faced similar backlash. In 1993, Elaine George was the first Aboriginal person to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine, a decision considered “risky” at the time (Singer). The editor of Vogue later revealed that the cover was criticised by some who believed George’s skin tone was made to appear lighter than it actually was and that it had been digitally altered. The failure to accept a lighter skin colour as “Aboriginal” exposes a neglect to accept ethnicity and Blackness in all its diversity (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”; Carlson “Love and Hate”). Where Adam Goodes was criticised for his overt expression of Blackness, George was critisised for not being “black enough”. It was not until seventeen years later that another Aboriginal model, Samantha Harris, was featured on the cover of Vogue (Marks). While George inspired and pathed the way for those to come, Harris experienced similar discrimination within the industry and amongst the public (Carson and Ky). Singer Jessica Mauboy (in Hornery) also explains how her identity was managed by others. She recalls, I was pretty young when I first received recognition, and for years I felt as though I couldn't show my true identity. What I was saying in public was very dictated by other people who could not handle my sense of culture and identity. They felt they had to take it off my hands. Mauboy’s experience not only demonstrates how Blackness continues to be seen as something to “handle”, but also how power imbalances play out. Scholar Chelsea Watego offers numerous examples of how this occurs in different ways and arenas, for example through relationships between people and within workplaces. Bargallie’s scholarly work also provides an understanding of how Indigenous people experience racism within the Australian public service, and how it is maintained through the structures and systems of power. The media often represents communities with large Indigenous populations as being separatist and not contributing to wider society and problematic (McQuire). Violence, and the threat of violence, is often presented in media as being normalised. Recently there have been calls for an increased police presence in Alice Springs, NT, and other remotes communities due to ongoing threats of “tribal payback” and acts of “lawlessness” (Sky News Australia; Hildebrand). Goldberg uses the phrase “Super/Vision” to describe the ways that Black men and women in Black neighbourhoods are continuously and erroneously supervised and surveilled by police using apparatus such as helicopters and floodlights. Simone Browne demonstrates how contemporary surveillance practices are rooted in anti-black domination and are operationalised through a white gaze. Browne uses the term “racializing surveillance” to describe a ”technology of social control where surveillance practices, policies, and performances concern the production of norms pertaining to race and exercise a ‘power to define what is in or out of place’” (16). The outcome is often discriminatory treatment to those negatively racialised by such surveillance. Narratives that associate Indigenous peoples with darkness and danger fuel colonial fears and uphold the invisible regimes of power by instilling the perception that acts of surveillance and the restrictions imposed on Indigenous peoples’ autonomy are not only necessary but justified. Such myths fail to contextualise the historic colonial factors that drive segregation and enable a forgetting that negates personal accountability and complicity in maintaining colonial power imbalances (Riggs and Augoustinos). Inayatullah and Blaney (165) write that the “myth we construct calls attention to a darker, tragic side of our ethical engagement: the role of colonialism in constituting us as modern actors.” They call for personal accountability whereby one confronts the notion that we are both products and producers of a modernity rooted in a colonialism that maintains the misguided notion of white supremacy (Wolfe; Mignolo; Moreton-Robinson). When Indigenous and other Black peoples enter spaces that white populations don’t traditionally associate as being “natural” or “fitting” for them (whether residential, social, educational, a workplace, online, or otherwise), alienation, discrimination, and criminalisation often occurs (Bargallie; Mohdin; Linhares). Structural barriers are erected, prohibiting career or social advancement while making the space feel unwelcoming (Fredericks; Bargallie). In workplaces, Indigenous employees become the subject of hyper-surveillance through the supervision process (Bargallie), continuing to make them difficult work environments. This is despite businesses and organisations seeking to increase their Indigenous staff numbers, expressing their need to change, and implementing cultural competency training (Fredericks and Bargallie). As Barnwell correctly highlights, confronting white fears and anxieties must be the responsibility of white peoples. When feelings of shock or discomfort arise when in the company of Indigenous peoples, one must reflexively engage with the reasons behind this “fear of the dark” and consider that perhaps it is they who are self-segregating. Mohdin suggests that spaces highly populated by Black peoples are best thought of not as “black spaces” or “black communities”, but rather spaces where white peoples do not want to be. They stand as reminders of a failed colonial regime that sought to deny and dehumanise Indigenous peoples and cultures, as well as the continuation of Black resistance and sovereignty. Conclusion In working towards improving relationships between Black and white populations, the truths of colonisation, and its continuing pervasiveness in local and global settings must first be confronted. In this article we have discussed the association of darkness with instinctual fears and negative responses to the unknown. White populations need to reflexively engage and critique how they think, act, present, address racism, and respond to Indigenous peoples (Bargallie; Moreton-Robinson; Whittaker), cultivating a “decolonising consciousness” (Bradfield) to develop new habits of thinking and relating. To overcome fears of the dark, we must confront that which remains unknown, and the questions left unasked. This means exposing racism and power imbalances, developing meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples, addressing structural change, and implementing alternative ways of knowing and doing. Only then may we begin to embody Megan Cope’s message, “I’m not afraid of the Dark”. Acknowledgements We thank Dr Debbie Bargallie for her feedback on our article, which strengthened the work. References ABC News. 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IntroductionFor over five years, Romanians have been using their bodies in public spaces to challenge politicians’ disregard for the average citizen. In a region low in standards of civic engagement, such as voter turnout and petition signing, Romanian people’s “citizenship of the streets” has stopped environmentally destructive mining in 2013, ousted a corrupt cabinet in 2015, and blocked legislation legalising abuse of public office in 2017 (Solnit 214). This article explores the democratic affordances of collective resistive walking, by focusing on Romania’s capital, Bucharest. I illustrate how walking in protest of political corruption cultivates a democratic public and reconfigures city spaces as spaces of democratic engagement, in the context of increased illiberalism in the region. I examine two sites of protest: the Parliament Palace and Victoriei Square. The former is a construction emblematic of communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and symbol of an authoritarian regime, whose surrounding area protestors reclaim as a civic space. The latter—a central part of the city bustling with the life of cafes, museums, bike lanes, and nearby parks—hosts the Government and has become an iconic site for pro-democratic movements. Spaces of Democracy: The Performativity of Public Assemblies Democracies are active achievements, dependent not only on the solidity of institutions —e.g., a free press and a constitution—but on people’s ability and desire to communicate about issues of concern and to occupy public space. Communicative approaches to democratic theory, formulated as inquiries into the public sphere and the plurality and evolution of publics, often return to establish the significance of public spaces and of bodies in the maintenance of our “rhetorical democracies” (Hauser). Speech and assembly, voice and space are sides of the same coin. In John Dewey’s work, communication is the main “loyalty” of democracy: the heart and final guarantee of democracy is in free gatherings of neighbors on the street corner to discuss back and forth what is read in the uncensored news of the day, and in gatherings of friends in the living rooms of houses and apartments to converse freely with one another. (Dewey qtd. in Asen 197, emphasis added) Dewey asserts the centrality of communication in the same breath that he affirms the spatial infrastructure supporting it.Historically, Richard Sennett explains, Athenian democracy has been organised around two “spaces of democracy” where people assembled: the agora or town square and the theatre or Pnyx. While the theatre has endured as the symbol of democratic communication, with its ideal of concentrated attention on the argument of one speaker, Sennett illuminates the square as an equally important space, one without which deliberation in the Pnyx would be impossible. In the agora, citizens cultivate an ability to see, expect, and think through difference. In its open architecture and inclusiveness, Sennett explains, the agora affords the walker and dweller a public space to experience, in a quick, fragmentary, and embodied way, the differences and divergences in fellow citizens. Through visual scrutiny and embodied exposure, the square thus cultivates “an outlook favorable to discussion of differing views and conflicting interests”, useful for deliberation in the Pnyx, and the capacity to recognise strangers as part of the imagined democratic community (19). Also stressing the importance of spaces for assembly, Jürgen Habermas’s historical theorisation of the bourgeois public sphere moves the functions of the agora to the modern “third places” (Oldenburg) of the civic society emerging in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe: coffee houses, salons, and clubs. While Habermas’ conceptualization of a unified bourgeois public has been criticised for its class and gender exclusivism, and for its normative model of deliberation and consensus, such criticism has also opened paths of inquiry into the rhetorical pluralism of publics and into the democratic affordances of embodied performativity. Thus, unlike Habermas’s assumption of a single bourgeois public, work on twentieth and twenty-first century publics has attended to their wide variety in post-modern societies (e.g., Bruce; Butler; Delicath and DeLuca; Fraser; Harold and DeLuca; Hauser; Lewis; Mckinnon et al.; Pezzullo; Rai; Tabako). In contrast to the Habermasian close attention to verbal argumentation, such criticism prioritizes the embodied (performative, aesthetic, and material) ways in which publics manifest their attention to common issues. From suffragists to environmentalists and, most recently, anti-precarity movements across the globe, publics assemble and move through shared space, seeking to break hegemonies of media representation by creating media events of their own. In the process, Judith Butler explains, such embodied assemblies accomplish much more. They disrupt prevalent logics and dominant feelings of disposability, precarity, and anxiety, at the same time that they (re)constitute subjects and increasingly privatised spaces into citizens and public places of democracy, respectively. Butler proposes that to best understand recent protests we need to read collective assembly in the current political moment of “accelerating precarity” and responsibilisation (10). Globally, increasingly larger populations are exposed to economic insecurity and precarity through government withdrawal from labor protections and the diminishment of social services, to the profit of increasingly monopolistic business. A logic of self-investment and personal responsibility accompanies such structural changes, as people understand themselves as individual market actors in competition with other market actors rather than as citizens and community members (Brown). In this context, public assembly would enact an alternative, insisting on interdependency. Bodies, in such assemblies, signify both symbolically (their will to speak against power) and indexically. As Butler describes, “it is this body, and these bodies, that require employment, shelter, health care, and food, as well as a sense of a future that is not the future of unpayable debt” (10). Butler describes the function of these protests more fully:[P]lural enactments […] make manifest the understanding that a situation is shared, contesting the individualizing morality that makes a moral norm of economic self-sufficiency precisely […] when self-sufficiency is becoming increasingly unrealizable. Showing up, standing, breathing, moving, standing still, speech, and silence are all aspects of a sudden assembly, an unforeseen form of political performativity that puts livable life at the forefront of politics […] [T]he bodies assembled ‘say’ we are not disposable, even if they stand silently. (18)Though Romania is not included in her account of contemporary protest movements, Butler’s theoretical account aptly describes both the structural and ideological conditions, and the performativity of Romanian protestors. In Romania, citizens have started to assemble in the streets against austerity measures (2012), environmental destruction (2013), fatal infrastructures (2015) and against the government’s corruption and attempts to undermine the Judiciary (from February 2017 onward). While, as scholars have argued (Olteanu and Beyerle; Gubernat and Rammelt), political corruption has gradually crystallised into the dominant and enduring framework for the assembled publics, post-communist corruption has been part and parcel of the neoliberalisation of Central and Eastern-European societies after the fall of communism. In the region, Leslie Holmes explains, former communist elites or the nomenklatura, have remained the majority political class after 1989. With political power and under the shelter of political immunity, nomenklatura politicians “were able to take ethically questionable advantage in various ways […] of the sell-off of previously state-owned enterprises” (Holmes 12). The process through which the established political class became owners of a previously state-owned economy is known as “nomenklatura privatization”, a common form of political corruption in the region, Holmes explains (12). Such practices were common knowledge among a cynical population through most of the 1990s and the 2000s. They were not broadly challenged in an ideological milieu attached, as Mihaela Miroiu, Isabela Preoteasa, and Jerzy Szacki argued, to extreme forms of liberalism and neoliberalism, ideologies perceived by people just coming out of communism as anti-ideology. Almost three decades since the fall of communism, in the face of unyielding levels of poverty (Zaharia; Marin), the decaying state of healthcare and education (Bilefsky; “Education”), and migration rates second only to war-torn Syria (Deletant), Romanian protestors have come to attribute the diminution of life in post-communism to the political corruption of the established political class (“Romania Corruption Report”; “Corruption Perceptions”). Following systematic attempts by the nomenklatura-heavy governing coalition to undermine the judiciary and institutionalise de facto corruption of public officials (Deletant), protestors have been returning to public spaces on a weekly basis, de-normalising the political cynicism and isolation serving the established political class. Mothers Walking: Resignifying Communist Spaces, Imagining the New DemosOn 11 July 2018, a protest of mothers was streamed live by Corruption Kills (Corupția ucide), a Facebook group started by activist Florin Bădiță after a deadly nightclub fire attributed to the corruption of public servants, in 2015 (Commander). Organized protests at the time pressured the Social-Democratic cabinet into resignation. Corruption Kills has remained a key activist platform, organising assemblies, streaming live from demonstrations, and sharing personal acts of dissent, thus extending the life of embodied assemblies. In the mothers’ protest video, women carrying babies in body-wraps and strollers walk across the intersection leading to the Parliament Palace, while police direct traffic and ensure their safety (“Civil Disobedience”). This was an unusual scene for many reasons. Walkers met at the entrance to the Parliament Palace, an area most emblematic of the former regime. Built by Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu and inspired by Kim Il-sung’s North Korean architecture, the current Parliament building and its surrounding plaza remain, in the words of Renata Salecl, “one of the most traumatic remnants of the communist regime” (90). The construction is the second largest administrative building in the world, after the Pentagon, a size matching the ambitions of the dictator. It bears witness to the personal and cultural sacrifices the construction and its surrounded plaza required: the displacement of some 40,000 people from old neighbourhood Uranus, the death of reportedly thousands of workers, and the flattening of churches, monasteries, hospitals, schools (Parliament Palace). This arbitrary construction carved out of the old city remains a symbol of an authoritarian relation with the nation. As Salecl puts it, Ceaușescu’s project tried to realise the utopia of a new communist “centre” and created an artificial space as removed from the rest of the city as the leader himself was from the needs of his people. Twenty-nine years after the fall of communism, the plaza of the Parliament Palace remains as suspended from the life of the city as it was during the 1980s. The trees lining the boulevard have grown slightly and bike lanes are painted over decaying stones. Still, only few people walk by the neo-classical apartment buildings now discoloured and stained by weather and time. Salecl remarks on the panoptic experience of the Parliament Palace: “observed from the avenue, [the palace] appears to have no entrance; there are only numerous windows, which give the impression of an omnipresent gaze” (95). The building embodies, for Salecl, the logic of surveillance of the communist regime, which “created the impression of omnipresence” through a secret police that rallied members among regular citizens and inspired fear by striking randomly (95).Against this geography steeped in collective memories of fear and exposure to the gaze of the state, women turn their children’s bodies and their own into performances of resistance that draw on the rhetorical force of communist gender politics. Both motherhood and childhood were heavily regulated roles under Ceaușescu’s nationalist-socialist politics of forced birth, despite the official idealisation of both. Producing children for the nationalist-communist state was women’s mandated expression of citizenship. Declaring the foetus “the socialist property of the whole society”, in 1966 Ceaușescu criminalised abortion for women of reproductive ages who had fewer than four children, and, starting 1985, less than five children (Ceaușescu qtd. in Verdery). What followed was “a national tragedy”: illegal abortions became the leading cause of death for fertile women, children were abandoned into inhumane conditions in the infamous orphanages, and mothers experienced the everyday drama of caring for families in an economy of shortages (Kligman 364). The communist politicisation of natality during communist Romania exemplifies one of the worst manifestations of the political as biopolitical. The current maternal bodies and children’s bodies circulating in the communist-iconic plaza articulate past and present for Romanians, redeploying a traumatic collective memory to challenge increasingly authoritarian ambitions of the governing Social Democratic Party. The images of caring mothers walking in protest with their babies furthers the claims that anti-corruption publics have made in other venues: that the government, in their indifference and corruption, is driving millions of people, usually young, out of the country, in a braindrain of unprecedented proportions (Ursu; Deletant; #vavedemdinSibiu). In their determination to walk during the gruelling temperatures of mid-July, in their youth and their babies’ youth, the mothers’ walk performs the contrast between their generation of engaged, persistent, and caring citizens and the docile abused subject of a past indexed by the Ceaușescu-era architecture. In addition to performing a new caring imagined community (Anderson), women’s silent, resolute walk on the crosswalk turns a lifeless geography, heavy with the architectural traces of authoritarian history, into a public space that holds democratic protest. By inhabiting the cultural role of mothers, protestors disarmed state authorities: instead of the militarised gendarmerie usually policing protestors the Victoriei Square, only traffic police were called for the mothers’ protest. The police choreographed cars and people, as protestors walked across the intersection leading to the Parliament. Drivers, usually aggressive and insouciant, now moved in concert with the protestors. The mothers’ walk, immediately modeled by people in other cities (Cluj-Napoca), reconfigured a car-dominated geography and an unreliable, driver-friendly police, into a civic space that is struggling to facilitate the citizens’ peaceful disobedience. The walkers’ assembly thus begins to constitute the civic character of the plaza, collecting “the space itself […] the pavement and […] the architecture [to produce] the public character of that material environment” (Butler 71). It demonstrates the possibility of a new imagined community of caring and persistent citizens, one significantly different from the cynical, disconnected, and survivalist subjects that the nomenklatura politicians, nested in the Panoptic Parliament nearby, would prefer.Persisting in the Victoriei Square In addition to strenuous physical walking to reclaim city spaces, such as the mothers’ walking, the anti-corruption public also practices walking and gathering in less taxing environments. The Victoriei Square is such a place, a central plaza that connects major boulevards with large sidewalks, functional bike lanes, and old trees. The square is the architectural meeting point of old and new, where communist apartments meet late nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture, in a privileged neighbourhood of villas, museums, and foreign consulates. One of these 1930s constructions is the Government building, hosting the Prime Minister’s cabinet. Demonstrators gathered here during the major protests of 2015 and 2017, and have walked, stood, and wandered in the square almost weekly since (“Past Events”). On 24 June 2018, I arrive in the Victoriei Square to participate in the protest announced on social media by Corruption Kills. There is room to move, to pause, and rest. In some pockets, people assemble to pay attention to impromptu speakers who come onto a small platform to share their ideas. Occasionally someone starts chanting “We See You!” and “Down with Corruption!” and almost everyone joins the chant. A few young people circulate petitions. But there is little exultation in the group as a whole, shared mostly among those taking up the stage or waving flags. Throughout the square, groups of familiars stop to chat. Couples and families walk their bikes, strolling slowly through the crowds, seemingly heading to or coming from the nearby park on a summer evening. Small kids play together, drawing with chalk on the pavement, or greeting dogs while parents greet each other. Older children race one another, picking up on the sense of freedom and de-centred but still purposeful engagement. The openness of the space allows one to meander and observe all these groups, performing the function of the Ancient agora: making visible the strangers who are part of the polis. The overwhelming feeling is one of solidarity. This comes partly from the possibilities of collective agency and the feeling of comfortably taking up space and having your embodiment respected, otherwise hard to come by in other spaces of the city. Everyday walking in the streets of Romanian cities is usually an exercise in hypervigilant physical prowess and self-preserving numbness. You keep your eyes on the ground to not stumble on broken pavement. You watch ahead for unmarked construction work. You live with other people’s sweat on the hot buses. You hop among cars parked on sidewalks and listen keenly for when others may zoom by. In one of the last post-socialist states to join the European Union, living with generalised poverty means walking in cities where your senses must be dulled to manage the heat, the dust, the smells, and the waiting, irresponsive to beauty and to amiable sociality. The euphemistic vocabulary of neoliberalism may describe everyday walking through individualistic terms such as “grit” or “resilience.” And while people are called to effort, creativity, and endurance not needed in more functional states, what one experiences is the gradual diminution of one’s lives under a political regime where illiberalism keeps a citizen-serving democracy at bay. By contrast, the Victoriei Square holds bodies whose comfort in each other’s presence allow us to imagine a political community where survivalism, or what Lauren Berlant calls “lateral agency”, are no longer the norm. In “showing up, standing, breathing, moving, standing still […] an unforeseen form of political performativity that puts livable life at the forefront of politics” is enacted (Butler 18). In arriving to Victoriei Square repeatedly, Romanians demonstrate that there is room to breathe more easily, to engage with civility, and to trust the strangers in their country. They assert that they are not disposable, even if a neoliberal corrupt post-communist regime would have them otherwise.ConclusionBecoming a public, as Michael Warner proposes, is an ongoing process of attention to an issue, through the circulation of discourse and self-organisation with strangers. For the anti-corruption public of Romania’s past years, such ongoing work is accompanied by persistent, civil, embodied collective assembly, in an articulation of claims, bodies, and spaces that promotes a material agency that reconfigures the city and the imagined Romanian community into a more democratic one. The Romanian citizenship of the streets is particularly significant in the current geopolitical and ideological moment. In the region, increasing authoritarianism meets the alienating logics of neoliberalism, both trying to reduce citizens to disposable, self-reliant, and disconnected market actors. Populist autocrats—Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, the Peace and Justice Party in Poland, and recently E.U.-penalized Victor Orban, in Hungary—are dismantling the system of checks and balances, and posing threats to a European Union already challenged by refugee debates and Donald Trump’s unreliable alliance against authoritarianism. In such a moment, the Romanian anti-corruption public performs within the geographies of their city solidarity and commitment to democracy, demonstrating an alternative to the submissive and disconnected subjects preferred by authoritarianism and neoliberalism.Author's NoteIn addition to the anonymous reviewers, the author would like to thank Mary Tuominen and Jesse Schlotterbeck for their helpful comments on this essay.ReferencesAnderson, Benedict R. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2016.Asen, Robert. “A Discourse Theory of Citizenship.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.2 (2004): 189-211. 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