We did react to tendencies we had observed in protest movement for several years. Mainly that motivation to participation in protest activities and the number of people willing to participate on organization of them is decreasing. (btw: we see as partial reasons the fear of police repressions and possible attacks from rightwing subcultures) In the same time, there is much more people who are directly involved or at least interested in activities of alternative culture – we mean such activities having certain political, social, or ecological enjambment. And because we are aware of these facts, we try to avoid sectarian segregation on the basis of various criteria (e.g. seeking the conflicts between the “scene” and the “activists”), which is presently quite common. On the contrary, we are trying to highlight the overlapping between alternative culture and protest movement, which point to the inevitable interconnection of different forms and possibilities of protest activities. Thus we try to crate symbolic space for protest activities and help to form protest movement itself. The basic aim is to crate conscious bridge between protest activities and alternative culture.

We did demonstrate this attempt already with Protestfest 2004. Festival did prove that despite gradual tying down of all free public activities from the side state power (sharpening the law of right to assembly, permanent checking, picturing and recording of participants on demonstrations, extending and abusing rights of police) and the status quo seeking role of mass media it is possible to form quite broad base for such movement which wants and can effectively resist such tendencies. One thousand people discussing, activating, having fun etc. during Protestfest 2004 is the proof of it.

Protestfest 2005 is thematically dedicated to the problem of war and armament. We don’t want to impose one opinion on anyone. We represent wide scale of positions: from the belief that arms are principally bad and arms trade dirty to the view that arms trade is only one of the manifestations of the system based on trade with anything what can be sold. Our critique of war and armament doesn’t represent unified front of one view. On the contrary, we try to present as broad critique as possible. In the age when official proclamations on how democratic is this society does give you space even to try to think independently we offer broad palette of alternative views and you can choose the one you find closest to yours positions. And we don’t make barriers to the expression of your alternative. We insist on that we crate the space for many opinions, which can’t be heard otherwise. That’s why se don’t allow political parties take part on our activities. They choose other means of expression, so they should stick to them. In the same time we are strictly against authoritarian ideologies – speaking tubes of different types of dictatorships use their demagogy to shout down all attempts for free expression. We create the space for freedom, creativity and diversity of opinions. We don’t create it for political parties to stick their advertisement on it or for anyone to usurp it.