May Day Report from Poland
We received a report on May Day mobilizations in Poland, which took place in Warsaw, Szczecin and Kraków.
The largest demonstration of this year took place in Warsaw, organized by the Coordination of Solidarity and Struggle (KSW), centered around the Workers’ Initiative Trade Union (IP). The march started at the Sejm, and passed the US embassy and the Ministry of Justice, ending in Marszałkowska Street, and was attended by several social movement organizations, trade unions, socialist, revolutionary and anti-imperialist initiatives and organizations, including, among others, Anti-Imperialist Action (AIA)and Iskra.
The main demand of the march in Warsaw was the repeal of the 1991 Act on the Resolution of Collective Disputes, which practically outlaws the organizing of solidarity-based and/or political strikes in the country, with the act resulting in some of the strictest regulation throughout Europe in regards to organizing “legal” strikes, modeling itself “on the social-fascist period of the late Polish People’s Republic”.
AIAraised the slogan “For the right to strike! For a united front!”, and distributed leaflets denouncing the aforementioned bill, and emphasized the need to build an anti-imperialist movement. They also denounced thelinks between Operation Kagaar in Indiaand the role of Poland.
In Szczecin, AIA participated in the May Day demonstration organized by the Razem Party. AIA publicized to the workers and youth present in the march the trade unions’ demands being raised in Warsaw and Krakow, in addition to propagating the need to build a united front.
Some party members of the “leftist” Razem Party were opposed to the participation of the AIA in the demonstration, due totheir anti-militarization line and propagation of the specific demands of the labor and trade union movement—namely, the right to strike. They write: “the demands for the right to strike, raised by the Workers’ Initiative and publicized by the Anti-Imperialist Action, conflicted with Razem’s international line – namely its lackey relationto this institution of Europeanimperialists.”
The Szczecin local AIA chapter, writes in this context an appeal to the people: “We encourage everyone in Szczecin and Western Pomerania who cares about the anti-imperialist andworkers’ struggle to contact the Anti-Imperialist Action in order to become active within a frameworkofpractice in the field of class struggle thatdoes not contradict its ownrhetoric. Only through consistent, united action at bothlocal and the national level against opportunism and reformism will we be able to build a force in our own backyard that lives molds itself inthe class struggle, rather than preying on it.”
In Kraków, the May Day march was organized by local tenant, anti-fascist, and pro-Palestinian groups, with the main slogan centered around “housing solidarity”, focusing on the housing struggle in Kraków. This struggle is raised in a context of increasing housing crisis in the country, marked by increased gentrification, and “development” projects without any plans for public housing.
During the Kraków march, AIA distributed leaflets as part of its nationwide May Day campaign.
