It all started with tea once.

One evening the power went out across the entire neighborhood. The internet vanished, phones flashed “no signal.” In the dark kitchen someone set a kettle on the stove and said:

— Looks like silence is the only thing we have left.

We sat by candlelight and talked. First about the weather, then about how tired we were of being afraid, pretending, agreeing. One poured boiling water, another pulled out a lemon. Someone joked:

— We should found a Society of Free Tea. No protocols, no leaders. Just conversation.

That’s how the “Democratic Kettle” appeared. Not as a channel or a project, but as a state — when water boils not from anger, but from the desire to speak.

The lights came back, but the habit remained. We kept writing, arguing, thinking. Sometimes the kettle overheated — and someone left. Sometimes it felt pointless. Yet every time the conversation started with the same sound — the click of a kettle switch.

Today the “Kettle” is more than a name. It’s proof that even when everything around roars and boils, you can still hear the silence and fill it with meaning.

"We write, think, argue, because we believe:
as long as there are words, as long as there are thoughts, as long as there are people who can gather and boil tea — not everything is lost."