Occupation at Warsaw City Hall – Rent Strike, Direct Actions Continue

Direct actions continue against the city’s housing policy. Members of
ZSP, the Tenants’ Defense Committee and Warsaw Tenants Association
paid a surprise visit to City Hall today, planting themselves in the
office of the President. A banner reading “Public Housing in the Hands
of Tenants” was hung on the balcony of City Hall and stayed there til
the end of the day. When we started to speak with the bullhorn from
the balcony of the President’s Office, the Vice President appeared to
speak with us. We have many issues to settle with him and presented 20
postulates. The discussion was filmed and broadcast on radio. We said
we will come back to meet the President and left after some hours
since tomorrow and later in the week are more actions to do.

On Friday the 22 of Oct., people blocked rush hour traffic, again in
protest against the housing policy. People had slogans such as “trust
the authorities and you’ll find up homeless”, “evict the adminstrators
before they evict you” and “stop real estate speculation”.
Participants called for the dissolution of the city council and for
housing to be controlled by the people. At one point the police tried
to arrest our comrade, but he was unarrested by the crowd. During the
arrest, undercover cops who were invigilating the demo got angry and
yelled at the cops for this arrest, showing that the authorities are
scared and are interested in gathering information and maybe
infiltrating more than arresting.

Some photos from Friday’s action:
http://zspwawa.blogspot.com/2010/10/tenants-protest-strike-actions-continue.html
From City Hall:
http://zspwawa.blogspot.com/2010/10/city-hall-occupation-of-presidents.html