Rundale

We took a short winter break after our themed issue on energy in November (check it out here!), but now we are slowly emerging from hibernation with two great articles.

It’s been a hell of a start to 2026. In a time of growing injustices and accelerated imperialist aggression, it is easy to feel pessimistic. And maybe we should. Things are pretty bad right now, and we need honest analysis of that. But maybe we can also feel hopeful. Hopeful that our pessimism about the current state of affairs helps us to imagine futures beyond the logics and entities causing these harms. A form of hopeful pessimism perhaps?

In Pumpaj!: Student Protests Past & Present Converge on Serbia’s Streets, Tara Ćirić offers an inside view into the student blockades that brought Serbia to a standstill in 2025 and what makes them so special. Following the collapse of a concrete canopy outside a train station in Novi Sad, killing 16 people in November of 2024, student protestors have reignited old traditions, threatening to topple a decade long autocratic regime headed by President Vučić with little support from the EU.

In Environmental Struggle and Anti-Imperialism in Ireland, anti-capitalist collective Slí Eile provide analysis from their ongoing work connecting environmental and anti-imperialist movements across the island. If these issues are connected, so too should be our response. They argue that this needs to be rooted in community building, mutual aid and solidarity.

As always, we hope you enjoy this month’s Rundale, and that it may even inspire action as we come into the spring.