Saturday 4 February 2012

City Council Liquidates Schools Despite Protests

When people found out that the city council was going to try and push through a vote on the liquidation of 18 public schools in Warsaw, protests were quickly organized in Warsaw, despite the -20 degree temperatures. On January 31, five protests were held in different parts of Warsaw and extraordinary sessions of two local councils were held. There, politicians from the ruling party tried using Orwellian language to get rid of the parents, teachers, pupils and neighbours protesting. ZSP and DZS (the Democratic Student Association) called on people to disturb and protest at the City Council.
(Photos below)


The decisions of course are already made. The neoliberals have an absolute majority in the council, their members do not vote differently and thus it was clear that the decision was already made. Nonetheless, we cannot tolerate this and let this go unchallenged. What resulted were interruptions of the Council and dozens of speeches made, by parents, teachers and others concerned. Such was the opposition to this that the Council was only able to technically make the vote when most people had gone and this means that the session lasted until 3AM.

ZSP has the position that the decisions of the City Council should not be binding on the public, because we do not recognize their authority to decide in principal. Therefore we will be calling for actions in opposition such as the occupations of those schools.