We condemn banning of demonstration in Moscow Jan 19

We condemn the decision of the Moscow authorities to ban a legally planned demonstration on the anniversary of the murders of Stanislaw Markelov and Anastasia Baburowa.

The pretext given was that the demo was announced "too early", but we are aware that this is just another attempt to limit public assembly in Moscow. We do not recognize the legitimacies of the authorities who would tell us when and where we can gather and we support the decision of the comrades in Moscow to hold the demonstration despite the ban.

To hell with the government, murders, supporters of murders, usurpers of power!

We call on people to make protests in support of this demonstration and to commemorate this tragic anniversary. Read more!

Action at the German Embassy in Warsaw

ZSP called for a day of actions to be held at in various cities in Poland. The Warsaw group protested in front of the embassy and also in front of the residence of embassy workers. A second protest letter was delivered to the embassy, the first having been delivered in December. Radical speeches were made and a statement, also signed by the group WRS, was read.


The day of actions were noticed by the German diplomats across the country. We promised to return if the situation did not improve.


An account of the day of actions can be found here: http://cia.bzzz.net/day_of_actions_in_solidarity_with_fau Read more!

ZSP to make demo at Russian Embassy

ZSP is organizing a demo at the Russian Embassy on January 19. This is the one year anniversary of the murders of Stas Markelov and Anastasia Baburowa in Moscow. A demonstration is also being held in Moscow on this day.

We condemn the right-wing and political violence against our comrades in Russia and offer our solidarity to the anarchist movement in that country. Read more!

Changes of tenant's law in Poland

The Polish ministry of economy is sponsoring changes in the so-called law for protection of tenants.

Currently, a private or state owner of a house has to provide replacement housing when evicting tenants. Very often the replacement is very shabby and the state bureaucrats don't respect this regulation anyway by refusing housing on dubious grounds. For example, in one case in a district of Warsaw, the local administration told tenants of a house that is about to collapse that they will not provide them replacement housing, because "they can live with their parents". This is a middle-aged family with 2 kids.

Apparently the regulations that are not respected anyway were too annoying for the owners and public administration lobby.
Read more!

ZSP Condemns Safety at the Site of the National Stadium

Members of ZSP are documenting safety violations at the construction site of the National Stadium in Warsaw.

One problem relates to lack of proper safety lines and nets for all workers. The site is being built by many different subcontractors, and not every one is complying with standards. The next problem is lack of training for unskilled workers who theoretically shouldn't be doing any dangerous jobs, but in reality are exposed to different hazards. The last problem, which is sorry to note is that workers are allowed to work even if they have been drinking. This seems to be more problematic on the night shift; construction goes on at the site until 3AM.

Read more!

Strange Method in JWC Campaign

The campaign with immigrant workers from JWC Construction is on hold since there is nobody working there right now. It seems that a couple of years ago they started the groundwork for 4 construction sites which were all completed this summer. Then the crisis hit and not only did people have less money, but also banks didn't want to lend large amounts for mortgages. The result: a lot of flats that haven't been sold yet. During the winter, there is a break with construction and nobody is working with them. It is unclear whether they will start new construction in the spring. The campaign concentrated on that company naturally depends on that.


The campaign started as a result of a strike of Chinese workers in Warsaw over the summer. ZSP helped out in this case. The main idea was to encourage organizing and provide support if needed to the immigrant workers should something go wrong on these construction sites. Most foreign workers in similar situations have trouble knowing what their rights are in Poland and trouble fighting if, for example, they are not paid. Not getting paid is an endemic problem on construction sites. Read more!

Attempt to Block City Budget

An attempt to block voting on the City Budget until the city agreed to reassign 100 million zloties to pay for repairs to public housing, which was promised last year, failed. Security was too tight and there were too few people. A couple of members of ZSP and KOL made the awful mistake of chasing after one politician who was avoiding us and wound up in a different wing of the building were we were prevented from leaving and returning to the council. Only a couple of people were left in the council and, although the process was heckled and disturbed, it could not be blocked.
Read more!

New Blogs

ZSP have two IWA oriented blogs: www.zsp-iwa.blogspot.com (English) and www.zsp-msp.blogspot.com (Polish). We try in future to make proper page to collect actual informations in different languages as source on information about IWA groups. Also we try to continue translations of most important things. Currently we have no possibility to do translations of everything we like, but at least we can have good information source. Read more!

Tenant's Bonfires

Tenants are organizing bonfires in the city. These are events when people come out to network. It is done with two aims: to get people networked into the tenants' movement and to draw attention  to the fact that many people have no heat in the winter.


Today's bonfire also became the first public confrontation of residents from Praga with gentrification. When I write "public confrontation" I mean by that a confrontation in which almost 100 residents were protesting and giving public expression to the problem. Plenty of small private incidents have occurred with residents and yuppies, but this was the first time people said out loud that there is a problem that the city financially supports the projects of artists as part of its plans to change the neighbourhood but at the same time doesn't help and even tries to drive out not rich local residents.


The stimulus for this was the planned "unveiling" of an overpriced rubber statue of a deceased neighbourhood drunk across the street from the vacant lot where the bonfire was held. Some artists and politicians showed up but quickly ran away. Neighbourhood residents made this "unveiling" themselves and vented about the social priorities of the city.


An article about this protest and links to photos are here:

http://cia.bzzz.net/tenants_bonfires_and_protests_local_residents_demand_heat_repairs_and_confront_yuppie_artists Read more!

Antifascist demonstration

13 December members of ZSP Warsaw went to antitotalitarian demonstration in Lodz. This is anniversary of the martial law in Poland and fascists hold anticommunist demonstration. Some antifascists from Lodz organized antitotalitarian demonstration but we perceived the very strong anticommunist tones to include not only state communists, but idea in general. One boy from ZSP wrote the critics and it proved true, some people have the liberal ideas and anticommunism. Not all, but this tendency is.


The group from Warsaw went to Lodz with anticapitalist banner, which even made small group of liberals leave march. But it made discussion from people on the street. Also there were antifascist leaflets for public. ZSP stands against the creeping fascism in society. Read more!

Tenants Protest at the Sejm

December 9, the Tenants' Defense Committee and other tenants' organizations took part in a demonstration in front of the Polish parliament, the Sejm. The main theme of the demo was to protest against the law on tenants, which protects property owners more than tenants, and which allows for wild reprivatization of property and discrimination of tenants from reprivatized houses. The tenants say that the law has got to go and burned it and other unfavourable decisions of the local and national government in protest.


The protest was held on the eve of a court case being brought by a tenant which challenges the constitutionality of the law, in particular pointing to the fact that if the city sells a building, it must provide substitute housing to the tenants of the sold buildings, but has no such obligations towards tenants from houses that are reprivatized.

Read more!

ZSP becomes part of IWA

At Congress in Porto Alegre in first week of December, ZSP became newest member of International Workers' Association.


In Polish, IWA abbreviation is MSP. Read more!

Local Protest

ZSP members took part in organizing a local protest in the Praga district where the authorities want to liquidate overground pedestrian crossings, make more space for cars and force pedestrians to use underground tunnels. Although the city pays a lot of lip service to making Warsaw more "green", or promoting public transport, everything it does is oriented towards cars. The protest was called during a "consultation" with the public, which was a farce. Almost nobody was invited except a few people from NGOs - and only because they demanded the meeting and called other people. Only a couple of local people came, on our invitation, because the city only confirmed the meeting the day before. The city is building a metro station on the main intersection of Praga, currently one of the busiest in the city. While building the metro, they want to totally liquidate pedestrian crossings. Despite the fact that all gathered there were against the plans and that several architects already made alternative proposals, two which were presented at the meeting, it all doesn't matter because the politicians announce that it's "too late" to change their plans, that they consulted with nobody. No competition for the plans were even announced. Members of ZSP condemned the farce of social consultation and called on residents to walk overground anyway and to make a series of direct actions. The first one was organized very quickly and was mostly informational. Residents of Praga took part and Greens. People crossed the streets and blocked traffic, spoke on the corners and handed out leaflets. Some people heard about this for the first time and spontaneously joined the protest. We are calling for a bigger protest in upcoming weeks. Although this one was modest, it sparked a lot of discussion in the papers, on TV and among politicians and urban planners. Read more!

Protest at the City Council

The Tenant's Defense Committee (KOL) and the Warsaw Tenant's Association interrupted the City Council meeting to protest their policies. The city guards asked people to leave but the members of KOL refused because they are protesting against the city budget. They exposed that although the city claimed that money from rent increases in public housing would go to repairing housing, which is really falling apart, they allocated money differently in the draft budget. Only a small portion of this money will go on repairs - the rest goes to bureaucrat's salaries . And of the money allocated for repairs, a good deal is  some sort of gentrification  work to be done at inflated costs. A member of KOL and ZSP planned to make a presentation on this matter at the council - whether permitted or not and KOL calls for the dismissal of anybody who approves the draft budget, as it breaks the obligations set up in the same resolution that raised the rents.


The budget however was not discussed due to tense opposition, not only by the public, but by opposition councilpeople who demanded some breakdowns and some changes before discussion and voting. It will probably be discussed at the next session where there are more protests planned. Read more!

Congress ZSP

On November 21-22 the ZSP Congress was held in Szczecin. One of the topics there were the growing incidence of cheating workers at construction sites. In Wroclaw one colleague who worked at a site run by the  company KUK was not paid when the Polish firm closed its office. It is a German firm which set up an office in Poland for a construction project, closed the office without paying people and claim that this was a "different firm" than the German one. Members of ZSP decided to help with this case and a member of ZSP in the construction industry is agitating at his workplace. We decided that we need to make a wider campaign for workers on these sites and carry out agitation and information activities.

Read more!