Lech Walesa: “America Is Moving Towards Socialism” (who would know socialism better than Walesa..)

Gateway Pundit ^ | 01/31/10 | Jim Hoft

[American Dream 246]

On Friday, January 29th, 2010, Lech Walesa, former President of Poland, traveled to Chicago to endorse Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate, Adam Andrzejewski. This was the first time that Walesa has backed an American candidate for office. Andrew Marcus from Founding Bloggers and Big Government interviewed Lech and Adam on Friday in Chicago:

Lech Walesa: “The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope that whenever something was going wrong one could count on the United States. Today we lost that hope.”

Adam Andrzejewski will be in O’Fallon, Illinois today at a pre-election rally from 3-5 PM.

The rally for Adam will be held at the Regency Conference Ctr. Hilton Garden Inn 360 Regency Drive (Hwy. 64 – Exit 16) O’Fallon, Illinois See you there!

[Jean S]

Bump!

[ryan71]

You just can’t make this $hit up!

[Yardstick]

Pretty bad when Lech Walesa is saying so. I’m going to keep this quote handy for the next time some snivelling lefty tells me it’s nutty to think the US is trending socialist.

OTOH, I wonder how aware he is of the Tea Party movement and the massive pushback that’s going on?

[tophat9000]

Lech Walesa, former President of Poland...There is a man we want and need on our team, he has the moral standing to speak for freedom

[tflabo]

Post us a review of the event later on too.

[raybbr]

Okay, start practicing saying "Andrzejewski"! On-dzhe-yev-ski.

`Andrzejewski' makes 'Blagojevich' look like C-A-T: Hinsdale businessman Adam Andrzejewski is running in the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary. Campaign materials tell us to pronounce the last name “And-G-F-Ski."

Although they pronounce it "And-G-F-Ski" I think in Polish it would be pronounced more like I had it at the top. I could be wrong and would welcome any correction. I grew up in a Polish-American neighborhood and

[American Dream 246]

Lech Walesa is known for his valiant effort to free his native Poland from Communist rule.

Born into a working-class family in 1943 in Popowo, he excelled in school. But lack of money forced Walesa to attend a vocational school at 16. In 1967, he moved to Gdansk where he worked in a shipyard as an electrician. By this time, Polish workers were beginning to protest the poor conditions of life. A strike in Gdansk in 1980 led to the formation of the National Committee of Solidarity (see below), and Walesa was elected chairman. In 1990, Walesa was re-elected to chairman of Solidarity. His interest in serving as president in Poland became increasingly public.

In the presidential election of 1990, Walesa won more than 74 % of the ballots, making him Poland's first popularly elected president. For his efforts, Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, among many other awards. Walesa has been married since 1969 and he has eight children. He is a devout Roman Catholic.

Solidarnosc Polish trade union (Niezalezny Samorzad Zwiazkow Zawodowych Solidarnosc) that in the early 1980s became the first independent labor union in a country belonging to the Soviet bloc. Solidarity was founded in September 1980, was forcibly suppressed by the Polish government in December 1981, and reemerged in 1989 to become the first opposition movement to participate in free elections in a Soviet-bloc nation since the 1940s. Solidarity subsequently formed a coalition government with Poland's United Workers' (communist) Party (PUWP), after which its leaders dominated the national government.

The origin of Solidarity traces back to 1976, when a Workers' Defense Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotnikow or KOR) was founded by a group of dissident intellectuals after several thousand striking workers had been attacked and jailed by authorities in various cities. The KOR supported families of imprisoned workers, offered legal and medical aid, and disseminated news through an underground network. In 1979 it published a Charter of Workers' Rights.

During a growing wave of new strikes in 1980 protesting rising food prices, Gdansk became a hotbed of resistance to government decrees. Some 17,000 workers at the Lenin Shipyards there staged a strike and barricaded themselves within the plant under the leadership of Lech Walesa, an electrician by trade. In mid-August 1980 an Interfactory Strike Committee was established in Gdansk to coordinate rapidly spreading strikes there and elsewhere; within a week it presented the Polish government with a list of demands that were based largely on KOR's Charter of Workers' Rights.



On August 30, accords reached between the government and the Gdansk strikers sanctioned free and independent unions with the right to strike, together with greater freedom of religious and political expression. Solidarity formally was founded on Sept. 22, 1980, when delegates of 36 regional trade unions met in Gdansk and united under the name Solidarnosc. The KOR subsequently disbanded, its activists becoming members of the union, and Walesa was elected chairman of Solidarity. A separate agricultural union composed of private farmers, named Rural Solidarity (Wiejska Solidarnosc), was founded in Warsaw on Dec. 14, 1980. By early 1981 Solidarity had a membership of about 10 million people and represented most of the work force of Poland. Throughout 1981 the government (led by General Wojciech Jaruzelski) was confronted by an ever stronger and more demanding Solidarity, which inflicted a series of controlled strikes to back up its appeals for economic reforms, for free elections, and for the involvement of trade unions in decision making at the highest levels.

Solidarity's positions hardened as the moderate Walesa came to be pressured by more militant unionists. Jaruzelski's government, meanwhile, was subjected to severe pressure from the Soviet Union to suppress Solidarity. On Dec. 13, 1981, Jaruzelski imposed martial law in Poland in a bid to crush the Solidarity movement. Solidarity was declared illegal, and its leaders were arrested. The union was formally dissolved by the Sejm (Parliament) on Oct. 8, 1982, but it nevertheless continued as an underground organization. In 1988 a new wave of strikes and labor unrest spread across Poland, and prominent among the strikers' demands was government recognition of Solidarity. In April 1989 the government agreed to legalize Solidarity and allow it to participate in free elections to a bicameral Polish parliament.

In the elections, held in June of that year, candidates endorsed by Solidarity won 99 of 100 seats in the newly formed Senate (upper house) and all 161 seats (of 460 total) that opposition candidates were entitled to contest in the Sejm (lower house). In August Solidarity agreed to form a coalition government with the PUWP, and a longtime Solidarity adviser, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, on August 24 became the first noncommunist premier to govern Poland since the late 1940s. In December 1990 Walesa was elected president of Poland after splitting with Mazowiecki in a dispute over the pace of Poland's conversion to a market economy.

The split between Walesa and Mazowiecki prevented the formation of a Solidarity-backed coalition to govern the country in the wake of the PUWP's collapse, and the union's direct role in Poland's new parliamentary scene dwindled as many new political parties emerged in the early 1990s.

[Gritty]

Lech Walesa stood up to Communists before. He certainly knows who they are, how they operate, and how dangerous they are.

No wonder he came to Chicago. This is the queen's nest...

[LiberConservative]

President Walesa, welcome to America. Care to stick around?

[hellbender]

I’d be willing to vote for Lech Walesa for POTUS. So what if he’s not “native born?” That doesn’t seem to matter any more, and at least we do know where Walesa is from. I’d rather have a man from a communist country who fought for freedom than one who grew up in a free country and fought for communism.

[the invisib1e hand]

The intelligentsia will banish him just like they did Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

[American Dream 246]

Good idea!!! At last SOMEONE who understands that even America can be in danger of communist with the nutjobs upthere in Congress.

Please stick with us Mr Walesa! You know the drill and hopefully you will help me and all the one who were not born here and know the danger to make American understand the huge risk at stake.

Thank you for your courage.

[American Dream 246]

I’d rather have a man from a communist country who fought for freedom than one who grew up in a free country and fought for communism.

Or don't realize what's happening here - or says "no..cannot happen in America" and go back to his flat screen TV...hoping for the best.

[Erasmus]

When my brother recently discovered the old-country name of our Dad’s Dad’s Dad, it took coaching from two of my Polish friends to come up with the pronunciation.

I subsequently coached my brother and his family on it, but I’m still the only one who can come close.

The name, in its common English lexical form, is perhaps even more befuddling then “Andrzejewski.”

[nuke rocketeer]

I was there. Very interesting and exciting.

[Recon Dad]

Hey Lech, don't stop promoting one candidate there's more than can use your backing.

[Doohickey]

Yeah, but how many Polish ones? :)

[Erasmus]

No wonder he came to Chicago. This is the queen's nest...

...and more citizens of Polish descent than Warsaw....

[American Dream 246]

Admin/mod, may I know why this not considered important enough to be in breaking? You just removed it - may I know why? Thanks