Posted on 04/16/2006 12:32:45 PM PDT by lizol
Warsaw, Poland, police shut gay club
Coalition occupied Le Madame to keep it open
By Leslie Feinberg
Published Apr 15, 2006 12:59 PM
Polish police carried out a final dawn raid against Warsaw’s Le Madame gay bar on March 31, ending a week-long occupation of the club by an ad hoc coalition of movement forces.
Earlier that week, on Monday, police had blockaded the bar and tried to force the more than 200 people inside to leave. The Warsaw City Council had reportedly ordered the establishment shut down, once and for all.
But those inside refused to budge. Instead, they vowed to hold on to the club by staging a sit-in. As word of the resistance traveled, police barricades proved insufficient to keep out reinforcements—gays, lesbians and other left-wing , artists, students and other intellectuals—including those from out of town.
A group of militants from the left-wing political party Nowa Lewa [New Left], with its chairperson Piotr Ikonowicz in the lead, “eventually broke through the police barricades while lobbing a few beer bottles at blockading forces.” (Gay City News, Doug Ireland)
Le Madame, which opened three years ago, is owned by Krystian Legierski, a gay Polish-born Black activist.
The club’s artistic director, Kastia Szurstow, explained that the former electronics factory had become a home to many political currents. “Gays, feminists, anti-globalization activists, pacifists, anarchists, the left-wing opposition parties, we welcome them all there, especially when they find it hard to get meeting rooms elsewhere.” Before police shut down the building, the offices of the Warsaw Green Party had been on the first floor of the club.
Szurstow added, “We work with 61 theater groups and have produced 204 plays and pieces of performance art—everything from Chekhov and the classics to a play featuring only actors who were all schizophrenics. Our primary focus, however, is contemporary theater and art.” The club also served as a gallery exhibiting paintings and photographs.
As negotiations with police and the right-wing capitalist government in Poland continued throughout the week, support from an already broad political spectrum widened. All but the government-owned television station and the most reactionary newspapers aired sympathetic media-coverage of the sit-in. U.S. actor John Malkovich held a March 30 media conference supporting the occupation.
The next morning, however, police chose 6 a.m. on March 31 to raid the club again, at a time when there were only 50 people there. Some of the bar defenders had chained themselves to pipes and railings.
Gay activist Lukasz Patucki said the cops were brutal, beating many occupiers as they drove them out.
Forced into the streets, the resisters regrouped, chanting at the cops: “To nie koniec, to poczatek!” [It’s not over, it’s just the beginning!]
He identifies himself as FIRST homosexual, THEN Polish-born, then Black. He doesn't put man or Christian as part of the equation. He shows what's most important to him....his sexual orientation.
He also runs a bar. If homosexuality were so very good, wholesome and right, it wouldn't have its "grass roots" in a bar.
These folks apparently need booze to feel normal.
Losing proposition from the get-go.
I wonder how they differentiated between spoken lines and the voices in their heads?
I rather like Nashville's creative solution to dealing with pitbulls causing problems and gay men cavorting with each other in public parks. Well, that is unless gay men start cavorting with pitbulls... Hadn't thought of that one until now...
I think there are no problems for the Americans to get a Polish visa.
"Haven't you noticed the "other" (other intelectuals)? Which means, that intelectuals are: "gays, lesbians and other left-wing , artists, students". :-)))"
Yeah, I caught that, too. Those that support homosexual sex clubs are the intellectuals. Anyone who doesn't support homosexual sex clubs is unintelligent and ignorant.
Barf.
Provided you want to come to Poland to raise kids (like B-Chan wanted).
In this case 3 months would be hardly enough :-)))
Wow! What a great post.
Keep up the good fight.
Reddy
Poland was known for centuries as the eastern bulwark of Christianity. It is looking like the western one right now.
Does Poland accept American immigrants? I want to move there!
Keep up the great work.
How many posts until the first Polish Joke about Polish gays being heterosexuals? (It took effort to wordsmith Gay poles into Polish Gays...)
"There was a time I wanted to move to the West, esp. to the USA."
What comes around, goes around.
Central Europe is the new world, and it is why I am here in Slovakia.
Every day, I see fewer reasons to EVER return to the US.
I do, however, worry about problems from the EU.
I can only hope that the new countries can tell the EU and UN to to stuff it.
Poland - a light on the continent of darkness...
SSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! A basic public health protection move. Before the politicizing of AIDS and the marketing of deviance, the same would, and did, occur on our soil. No we spend billions on an out control venereal disease and the myriad other health issues associated with living in deviance. Cannibalism and Creutzfeld Jacob disease come to mind is another striking example of deviant behavior and associated disease.
Awesome! Godspeed brother!!
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