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Warsaw, Poland, police shut gay club
Workers World ^ | Apr 15, 2006 | Leslie Feinberg

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!]


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: gay; homosexual; homosexualagenda; poland; warsaw
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To: lizol
These sodomites will be applying for political asylum in the US. Probably will work for the lead rumpists.
21 posted on 04/16/2006 1:02:44 PM PDT by ncountylee (Dead terrorists smell like victory)
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To: lizol
gay Polish-born Black activist

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.

22 posted on 04/16/2006 1:05:55 PM PDT by starfish923 (Socrates: It's never right to do wrong.)
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To: lizol
“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.

I wonder how they differentiated between spoken lines and the voices in their heads?

23 posted on 04/16/2006 1:07:37 PM PDT by johniegrad
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To: lizol

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...




April 13, 2006

Pit Bulls to Get Own Dog Park
Hamilton Creek Pit Bull Park will keep guys ‘zipped up tight’

Last week, the Metro Parks Department banned pit bulls and “dogs having the characteristic of the pit bull breed” from Metro’s three dog parks.

But in response to an outcry from pit bull owners who want a place where their dogs can run without leashes, Metro Parks will establish a new “pit bull park” at Hamilton Creek Park on the shores of Percy Priest Lake.

In recent years Hamilton Creek has been notorious as a sexual liaison and pickup spot for men. Last year hundreds of citations were issued at Hamilton Creek, most for indecent exposure after men flashed undercover police officers.

Metro Council member Michael Craddock and others concerned about the issue even have suggested tree-mounted security cameras throughout the park to deter sexual activity, a proposal that garnered the opposition of privacy advocates and the ACLU.

But parks director Roy Wilson says that the pit bull dog park neatly uses one problem to solve another.


24 posted on 04/16/2006 1:13:49 PM PDT by CheyennePress
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To: B-Chan

I think there are no problems for the Americans to get a Polish visa.


25 posted on 04/16/2006 1:29:40 PM PDT by lizol (Liberal - a man with his mind open ... at both ends)
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To: B-Chan
For US citezens no visa is required if you stay is less than 90 days at a time and less than 180 days a year.
26 posted on 04/16/2006 1:55:03 PM PDT by fogofbobegabay
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To: lizol

"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.


27 posted on 04/16/2006 2:00:08 PM PDT by Reddy
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To: fogofbobegabay

Provided you want to come to Poland to raise kids (like B-Chan wanted).

In this case 3 months would be hardly enough :-)))


28 posted on 04/16/2006 2:47:11 PM PDT by lizol (Liberal - a man with his mind open ... at both ends)
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Comment #29 Removed by Moderator

To: vox_PL

Wow! What a great post.

Keep up the good fight.

Reddy


30 posted on 04/16/2006 5:56:32 PM PDT by Reddy
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To: vox_PL

31 posted on 04/16/2006 7:46:00 PM PDT by Pyro7480 (Sancte Joseph, terror daemonum, ora pro nobis!)
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To: All

Poland was known for centuries as the eastern bulwark of Christianity. It is looking like the western one right now.


32 posted on 04/16/2006 11:21:22 PM PDT by Polak z Polski
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To: vox_PL

Does Poland accept American immigrants? I want to move there!


33 posted on 04/17/2006 2:16:13 AM PDT by Jezebelle
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To: Polak z Polski

Keep up the great work.


34 posted on 04/17/2006 2:17:07 AM PDT by Jezebelle
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To: lizol

How many posts until the first Polish Joke about Polish gays being heterosexuals? (It took effort to wordsmith Gay poles into Polish Gays...)


35 posted on 04/17/2006 2:21:31 AM PDT by Cvengr
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To: vox_PL

"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.


36 posted on 04/17/2006 2:42:29 AM PDT by AlexW (Reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia)
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Comment #37 Removed by Moderator

To: AFA-Michigan; AggieCPA; Agitate; AliVeritas; AllTheRage; An American In Dairyland; Annie03; ...
Homosexual Agenda Ping!

To be included in or removed from the
HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA PING LIST,
please FReepMail either DBeers or DirtyHarryY2k.

Free Republic homosexual agenda keyword search
[ Add keyword = homosexualagenda to flag FR articles to this ping list ]

Poland - a light on the continent of darkness...

38 posted on 04/17/2006 6:35:36 AM PDT by DBeers (†)
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To: lizol

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.


39 posted on 04/17/2006 6:44:53 AM PDT by Neoliberalnot
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To: vox_PL

Awesome! Godspeed brother!!


40 posted on 04/17/2006 6:44:58 AM PDT by JZelle
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