 By September they spread to 39 towns with over 400,000 people.On 5 October 1988, around 150,000 people gathered in Novi Sad to protest against the Vojvodina provincial government.The gathering started a day earlier in the nearby town of Bačka Palanka, and, as "Politika" explained it, people spontaneously gathered and moved on to Novi Sad, the provincial capital.