Every year people gather at the Operace Anthropoid memorial to remember the courage of the paratroopers, of the domestic resistance and of everyone who paid the highest price for freedom.
It is an important place. Not only for Prague 8, but for the whole country.
That is exactly why the surroundings of the memorial should match the significance of what we remember here. Not just on the day of the commemoration. Not just at the moment when the cameras are there. But all year round.
Respect does not end with a wreath
It is only a few steps from the memorial to the fountain.
And yet it is a distance over which the difference between symbolic attention and everyday care for public space is clearly visible.
The fountain next to the memorial has not worked for years. Its mechanism is flooded. The repair has been promised repeatedly. But the result is still the same: a fountain out of service and a place that does not look the way it should.
This is not a huge investment or a complex development project. It is not a new school, a major transport scheme or a billion-crown reconstruction. It is ordinary administration of the district.
But it is precisely on things like this that you can tell whether a town hall works.
We have been raising the problem for a long time
Our councillor Michal Trník, who is also 8žije's neighbourhood contact for Holešovičky, has repeatedly drawn attention to the broken fountain next to the memorial.
He also raises the topic regularly at the Prague 8 council. Not because one fountain would be the district's biggest problem. But because cases exactly like this show how the town hall approaches the ordinary management of public space.
When even a relatively simple repair is promised repeatedly but not delivered for years, that is not a detail. It is a sign that the system lacks responsibility, consistency and the ability to see things through.
Public space is not maintained only before a commemoration
Prague 8 has many places that are not neglected because repairing them would be technically impossible. They are neglected because problems get put off, get lost between departments, wait for “the right moment” or are only revisited by the town hall when they happen to be visible.
That is wrong.
Public space is not a backdrop for ceremonial moments. It is the environment in which people live every day. It includes dignified surroundings for memorials, working fountains, safe pavements, clean streets, maintained green space and places that do not feel abandoned.
If even smaller things go unresolved for years, a simple message emerges: nobody here really cares.
That is why we have contacts for the individual neighbourhoods
8žije does not want to deal with Prague 8 only from behind a desk. That is why we have our own contacts for the individual neighbourhoods in the individual parts of the district.
They are people who know specific areas up close. They know where the long-standing problems are, what keeps being promised, what troubles local people and what, on the contrary, works. Their role is not only to collect complaints. They are there to help verify reports, put them in context and carry them into political work.
In Holešovičky this role is filled by Michal Trník. That is also why we keep coming back to the broken fountain at the Anthropoid memorial. This is not a one-off outcry on social media, but a concrete example of a problem the town hall has known about for a long time and has still failed to solve.
That is why we are launching the issues map
It is precisely because of problems like this that 8žije is launching an issues map. You can find it at 8zije.cz/podnety.
We want to collect specific places in Prague 8 that people know well from their everyday lives. Places where something does not work, where a repair has been awaited for a long time, where there is a mess, an unsafe pavement, a broken feature or a promise the town hall has failed to keep for years.
The issues map is meant to be linked to the work of the contacts for the individual neighbourhoods. A report should not get lost in an anonymous form. It should reach the people who know a particular part of Prague 8 and can take it further.
Not so that we can keep a list of complaints. But so that an overview of specific problems emerges that can actually be worked with.
What kind of reports are we interested in?
You can send us things like these for the map:
- broken or long-unusable features in public space
- unsafe pavements, crossings or places for people on foot
- neglected corners, mess or fly-tipping
- unmaintained green space and places without care
- broken street furniture, fountains, benches or lighting
- problems the town hall has repeatedly promised to act on, with nothing happening
Every such report helps to show where Prague 8 needs more attention, better upkeep and clear responsibility.
Prague 8 should work even without cameras
The Anthropoid memorial deserves respect. But respect is not made up only of a ceremonial speech and a wreath laid down. It is also made up of how the district looks after the place on the days when no commemoration is taking place.
The broken fountain next to the memorial is a small example of a bigger problem: Prague 8 often cannot see through even the things that should be a matter of course.
And that is what we want to change.
Send us your report for the map. Because Prague 8 should not be looked after only at the moment when the cameras are there.