Dušan Vaněk

"The 17th November came. I had no TV, I only had a radio, and that weekend I somehow did not listen to that, even, and I listened o the radio on Sunday, Voice of America. And suddenly, it caught my attention, what's going on, I thought to myself, and I arrived to school and obviously, the pupils were curious and wanted to know what's going on, then, and what about the students' strike and the like, and I tried to explain that it's not their problem, they're still small, it's a thing for adults, adult students and adult people at work, but then, we kept that spirit… so we had those five-minute [incomprehensible] and I said Alright, one hour of discussion and then we will study and we will study very Well, obviously, as I had a file at Leninka, I was under surveillance. Leninka is the place where in Brno the Secret Police had its headquarters. So they had me under surveillance and someone invented some assholery, that I'm calling the pupils for a strike and that I spout some nonsense at school, so I was summoned to the district council and the boss of the school department gave me a dressing-down and I got terribly angry and ttold him: “Yes, I talk to them but I never called them for something like that and don't lie about me!” And it was an unpleasat debate and it gradated, understandably, because I had had more issues that he had to deal with, and I was so angry that I grabbed my stuff, left the council building and we to the square and then I stayed there. And I waited until the evening when others joined. Logically, those who were interested in some of the things came there and then we made a decision to start the Civic Forum. So the Civic forum of Břeclav was the third in the country. It was established in Prague, then in Brno and then in Břeclav.“

"I fell asleep at a certain moment; although I was very active in that 1989, there I woke up and I was like a Claymore mine, so after, when actually the situation settled in the most strange conspiracy of the opposition agreement, so, I fell asleep. I stopped being interested in things, political, I stopped being an active citizen and I fell asleep. I am an example of how I slept and slept and slept again. And I woke up in the autumn of 2017 and I was surprised to what I woke up and the signs were very similar to that time. People have to tend to democracy. We thought in 1989 that we won freedom, we won democracy and they will stay with us and we do not need to do anything about it. But it is about some everyday activity. It is about that one is interested, that one does something in some way, and I admit that my awakening in 2017 was very, very surprising for me, so I was looking for a way to do something to get out of that mess, which was a logical solution that I joined the bunch, Million Moments for Democracy, and, actually, I found out that I have to, again. The same way I had to in 1989, when people asked, 'Why you go for it, Why are you doing this?' - 'Simple, I have to.' I simply feel that I have to do it. Now people ask me again, 'Why you do this, for goodness' sake, why you spend so much time with that?' - 'Because I have to.' I think people should be active, they should be interested, they should deal with things and that democracy is not what many people imagined, let's say, in the nineties or at the beginning of the millenium, that sort of democracy when you cast a ballot and don't care any more.”