Informational Action During Museum Night

On May 24, several museums in Warsaw went on strike, closing their doors to the public. ZSP in Warsaw has been in solidarity with museum workers.

On May 19, during the annual Museum Night event in Warsaw, members of ZSP held an informational action about budget cuts in cultural institutions, loss of jobs and repression of one worker who was involved in action to save his work place.

A few cultural institutions in Warsaw will probably be liquidated because of budget cuts, including the Technical Museum, the Warsaw Chamber Opera and the Praha Cinema. We are in solidarity with the workers of these institutions, who are fighting against their closure.

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Against Rising Water Prices and In Support of Parents' Struggle

Members of both ZSP and the Tenants' Defense Committee protested at the City Council on May 17. A group of parents were also present who successfully fought to overturn a huge increase in fees for nursery schools. The administrative court ruled against the City Council's decision... but then the City Council decided just to introduce a new rule about payment. This time, their idea was to charge parents an hourly rate for these schools and the effect is going to be just the same.

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Case Postponed Again

Some members of ZSP Warsaw who are members of the Tenants' Defense Committee are being sued for a video they made and posted on the internet where tenants describe their problems with their landlady and she is filmed in action. After months and months of delay, we were back in court on May 16. Nothing much happened and the case was postponed again until October.

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Picket at Empik

On May 13, ZSP picketed at another Empik bookstore in Warsaw, kicking off a national campaign against the chain.  Contact with Empik workers started a couple of years ago when we received many denounciations against the firm from people around Poland during the "Worst Employer of the Year" contest. Every year, more and more employees wrote with the same complaints: unpaid overtime work, being forced to work while ill, having trash contracts, being forced to do heavy or dangerous work, lack of proper health and safety measures and mobbing. Now a few employees around Poland want to fight back and one is even suing the chain for unpaid overtime. And we offer our support to them and all workers who would like to organize.

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Case of Jerzy Madziarowicz-MIX reopened

In November 2011, a young worker, Karol M., suffered at accident at work on a construction site in Warsaw. He was employed illegally and did not have proper safety equipment, not even a helmet. He fell into a coma. The owner of the temporary work agency Jerzy Madziarowicz-MIX (also related to the property where the accident occurred) denied that Karol worked for him. The family, which was faced with the double horror of the accident and the financial consequences (since Karol was not insured), decided to fight, so that other workers would not be harmed by Madziarowicz and to get compensation for Karol.

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Action during Roche Corporate Meeting

On May 10, representatives of the Roche headquarters in Basel organized a meeting with Roche Polska workers in Warsaw. Since over 100 people attended, the meeting was held in a cinema in the shopping mall next to the Warsaw office. We were informed of the event so we organized an informational action.
First, leaflets were left in the cinema and posted around the shopping mall. Security was tight and it was difficult to stay in one place. Information about Roche practices were handed out also to people in the shopping mall and then posted in the neighbouring area between the mall and Roche offices.

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Legal victories through the anarchist optic

The following is a personal opinion piece and does not necessarily reflect the view of everybody.

In recent weeks, I have been a little surprised by small rebellions and about-turns on the part of various authorities. In Poland we have become quite used to the fact that courts and controlling authorities usually take the side of those in power: bosses, landlords and city officials. But we have seen some small victories lately in legal matters.

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May Day - The Struggle Continues

On May 1 anarchists and anarchosyndicalists held a May Day march in Warsaw. During the march we spoke about the worsening situation of the working class: the widespread use of trash contracts, raising the retirement age and the capitalist attack on all that workers' had gained in the past hundred years. We criticized the mainstream unions, which compromise with the bosses and refuse to call strikes, even when faced with the most drastic of situations.

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Against the Politics of the Euro

Over the past couple of years, more and more social and political organizations and grassroots initiatives in Warsaw have been fighting against the city's social spending policies. We have seen movements and protests against public housing policy, the closure of schools, the privatization of school cafeterias and huge fee increases in nursery schools. (The latter have been cancelled due a judgment in favor of parents who launched a legal challenge against that decision.) All of these initiatives share a common sentiment: that the city does not care about the basic social needs of most of its residents, who are working but poor and who cannot afford private hospitals, education and rents.

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Not guilty!

Finally there is a verdict in the case against Jakub and Marek related to a demonstration from 14 months ago. Then the authorities tried to make a crap case against them, with various bullshit charges. Today the court decided that our friends are not guilty.  This means that the state treasury has to pay the cost of the court proceedings - another waste of our tax money just meant to try and scare people from protesting.

It didn't work.

The verdict went out on TV since the case had drawn a lot of attention. Everybody was really happy and afterwards there was a little celebration.

We refuse to let social protest be criminalized and are very happy that it didn't happen this time.

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Eviction Successfully Blocked

Members of ZSP, the Tenants Defense Committee, the Warsaw Tenants Association, Syrena squat and others blocked the eviction of a single mother today. It was another example of direct action in practice.

The house, like many in Warsaw, became privatized and the new owners raised the rents. In such situations, the city rarely gives help. The city's own statistics show that 97.5 percent of such tenants are not able to get replacement municipal housing.

In other cases, a tenant may be offered replacement housing, but it can be much worse - for example, too small, without a bathroom, heat, etc. In this particular case, the city did not offer a regular municipal flat, but so-called social housing, which the family would have a right to stay in only until 2013. Also the flat has only one room and it cannot even be divided in any way for privacy. The family asks for a normal replacement flat from the city.

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Wikipedia Censors ZSP

As it turns out, a bunch of right-wingers are active in censoring articles on Wikipedia in Poland. On the portal Center of Anarchist Information, we can read what the censors say about attempts to put up a page about the organization. Amongst the arguments the right-wingers use is that "nobody knows if it even exists and nobody ever wrote about them" and there is a lack of any sources about their activity!!! A few of the wikipedia editors have said there are "no sources" about ZSP's activity.

Of course this is not true and ZSP even appears quite often in the mainstream press. We have a few articles even reprinted on our home page: http://www.zsp.net.pl/zsp/media (not all of course... the mainstream press is not always a good source on information :-).

This just shows what organizations like ours face to deal with - constant harrassment from the right wing that ideologically dominate the country.

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Picket at Empik

On April 21, ZSP held a picket at an Empik store in Warsaw against working conditions in the chain and in support of workers who are organizing and beginning to take some actions. Empik is a huge chain of bookshops and for the last three years we have been in contact with workers from around the country. The initial contact was made through the Worst Employer of the Year contest. Every year we get dozens of complaints about them and last year they received 3rd place, for which they threatened to sue us. But that just caused more workers to send us evidence, with which we helped them to organize complaints and now some legal cases. Furthermore, we have heard that some employees have started to engage in various acts of sabotage as some sort of revenge.

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City's Show Crumbles to Pieces

On April 19 we went to see the President, Mayor, etc. at a public PR show where they gave keys to the first family which will move into new, "deluxe" public housing. http://zspwawa.blogspot.com/2012/04/protest-against-housing-policy.html The city, builds almost no public housing units, but when it does, it tries to make them look like luxury estates... and usually holds a competition for the families who can move in, not taking them on the order or the huge waiting list. The President and Mayor, etc. proudly took the journalists on a tour of the new building on Thursday. But on Friday night, a huge part of the facade just fell down. Local residents alerted the Tenants Defense Committee and we made the politicians and administration get over there on Saturday.  There was a look around the building and there will have to be an inspection.

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Solidarity with Antti

On April 20 we made a solidarity action against political repression in the form of the threatened deportation of Antti R.  (More info about the case: http://themoscownews.com/russia/20120404/189590201.html or http://hro.rightsinrussia.info/archive/refugees-idps/antti-rautiainen/picket) We visited the Russian Embassy with a small picket, condemning political repression by the state. We also pointed out that the Russian state allows fascist murders to prowl the streets but go after political activists. We know that it is just a symbolic action, but we send our best wishes to Antti who is fighting his expulsion and we hope that other people will do the same.

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