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ZSP organized two demonstrations called „Days of Rage” on 27-28 May in Warsaw during the Visegrad Summit and the visit of US President Barak Obama.

The day before, 26 May, we warmed up with a protest at the City Council together with tenant activists. There they were voting on a series of price raises: for public transport (a 100% increase), for sewage, water and again for rent in public housing. (Rents were raised just 2 years ago 200-300%.) We interrupted the session with the protest and the chairwoman of the Council immediately asked the city guards to intervene – but this brought no result. After some time, knowing that there would be many speeches against these plans, we let the session continue. The Council agreed that we could have four speakers present arguments officially in the Council. At the same time, they refused to allow the opinion of Solidarity trade union to be read.

The session lasted many hours and we commented loudly throughout, criticizing these plans which will disproportionately hit the working poor. Unfortunately, besides two functionaries from Solidarity, no other organizations came to protest, which shows the great social vacuum in which ZSP functions. The City Council approved all the increases, although they decided that the price of not all tickets should be raised 100%, only some. ZSP responded that it would take actions to spread rent strikes and call on people not to pay the increased price for transit.

On May 27, Warsaw started to look like a police state. Half of downtown Warsaw was blocked off from vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The media had been speculating for days what would happen to the demonstrations, saying the city would not allow them. ZSP declared that we would not be illegalized and would turn up at the Presidential Palace as planned. Nota bene, the Presidential Palace was in the so-called zero zone.

Despite the fact that very few people were able to come about 50 people managed to get within 50 meters of our goal, to the side of the Palace, on the main street - so we were able to great the motorcades and Obama with loud noise and jeers.

During the demo there were speeches about the anti-social policies of the government and against spending public money on creating a security state or militarism. We pointed out that just changing the rulers in the government would not help, illustrating with the example of the millions of naive Americans who voted for Obama. We said this should be kept in mind when elections are held in Poland later this year and instead we must build our grassroots social movements.

The heavy presence of the police and closing half the city to its residents was also condemned. On a interesting note, the public showed good interest in the protest. Most of the very few people who managed to be nearby stopped and listened to the speeches, some even staying a couple of hours. This led one of the mainstream papers to make their ideological comment in an article on the demo. They printed the comments of people listening to the demo who commented that what we were saying made a lot of sense but then had to add the line "but what would happen if there was no government".

On May 28, the city had decided that we could not march as planned and brought a few hundred police against a crowd of a similar size. (With even more police ready in nearby vans just in case.) People were able to observe snipers on nearby rooftops.
Not only did the police come ready with tear gas, but also we saw the Polish premiere of the LRAD - Long Range Accustic Device which is used to direct tortuous noise onto demonstrators to disperse crowds. It is a brutal instrument which can burst ear drums and cause permanent damage and, in extreme cases can even lead to death.

As far as we know, the only other country in Europe to have such a device is Georgia, which used it to disperse anti-government protestors in brutal repressions some time ago.

During these two demonstrations we spoke a lot about how public money was spent on wars and the security state instead of on social needs and the appearance of the LRAD illustrates this perfectly.

The crowd decided that it did not want to be locked in by the police and would try to march as planned, however as most were not prepared to fight with tear gas and the LRAD, the big physical confrontation that would have been needed was avoided and we wound up surrounded by police. The officer in charge of the operation claimed that we could not be allowed to move because he did not like a speech where people were encouraged to mobilize like in Tunisia or Egypt and overthrow the government. Helicopters flew overhead filming the protest.

We continued with a noisy demonstration. People were eventually allowed to leave one by one, but only after ID check. A group of about 30 refused this and decided to occupy the square. After a couple of hours, the police moved on them and 7 people were arrested. Some passersby who recorded this on their mobile phones were then detained and had these recordings deleted. The rest managed to go and went to the police station for a solidarity demo. After a short time, the arrested were released: it is unclear whether the police intend to fine them or make cases against them.

Once again we see the real function of the police: to protect the elites - politicians and the rich and to control all elements which organize against their interests.

We condemn the actions of the police and declare that they only make us more determined to kill this system!

Down with all governments!

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