White, red, white

Today’s the day that the Belarus opposition, whom all but the current president recognize as having won the August 9 elections by collecting at least 60 percent of the vote, set as the day the current president resign from office. The current president, who is no longer considered president by the overwhelming majority of Belarusians and … well, pretty much most people, didn’t resign. No surprise there. He’s held onto power for 26 years – “Europe’s Last Dictator”—and claims to have won 80 percent of the vote.

Deadline time has come and gone, so we’ll see what happens next. The opposition leader, who is exiled in Lithuania, has called for strikes. What that means, I don’t know, but I’m staying by my phone in case we have any alerts of anything.

 here’s no expectation of violence, but it could be that people don’t go into work tomorrow and continue to protest. (NOTE: reiterating again that “protests” here equate people walking along the sidewalks with flowers. These are not violent protests whatsoever.) I may not have internet and there could be police standing around tomorrow.

They do that every weekend and today I realized I’ve become somewhat immune to it. I walk early on the weekends to be in by the 2 p.m. protest start – Saturdays there are women’s marches and then the general ones are on Sunday – to walk. This morning I’d walked by several of the pro-government trucks that carry the enforcers before realizing they were there. I guess it’s just a given that the squares will be blocked off and there will be uniformed thugs every so many meters. I just walk right by them.

The pro-government buses are distinguished by the Belarusian flags. The pro-opposition protestors have adopted the “white, red, white” flag. It was the official flag when Belarus was declared a republic in 1918. The whole republic thing didn’t last long, but the flag re-emerged after the fall of the USSR. At this point, it basically means “not Lukashenka.”

It’s everywhere, too. Once you realize what to look for, you see white-red-white all over. People very subtle intertwine it sometimes, but often it’s boldly displayed. In those cases, the pro-government gets out really quick to paint it over or remove it.

Still, white-red-white persists. I have no idea where people buy red and white umbrellas, but I see people using them every day. (It rains here as much as it does in London.) The funny thing is, once you start looking you can find the pattern in lots of weird places. You know the road barricades that normally come in orange in America? They come in both red and white here, and normally they alternate colors. I found it funny that in the construction across from the sitting president’s palace, there is a half-kilometer stretch of white-red-white-red-white barricades.

Red and white ribbons hang from trees; rogue graffiti artists spray paint red stripes on the signs featuring white-painted silhouettes that mark which sidewalk lane is for walking and which is for bikers. (The school crossing sign, which has a big person walking a little person, can be found with a police stick added to the big person, giving the illusion of that one beating down the little one. I haven’t seen one of those but have seen them in the press.)

 I snap photos of all I run into and am constantly surprised by the creativity – and the ballsiness. Of the three pictures in this post, the flag – I couldn’t rotate it on the blogspot software – was on a walk by the river and was painted over fairly quickly.

The series of planters have been covered up as well; they are off the beaten path and lasted a little longer. They’re in the courtyard area of my apartment building.

The big-ass flag wasn’t near my house; a colleague saw it as he set out on a bike ride; it was gone by the time he came back. Word had it that firemen were dispatched to take it down; the fireman who wound up with it tossed it off to a protester, who ran off with it. Maybe we’ll see it again. If not that, I’m sure there will be plenty more.

No idea how this is going to turn out, but it really is fascinating witnessing a revolution.