Poland, Warsaw's Pensioners and Anarchists Unite Against Gentrification

On a brisk Thursday afternoon, a queue forms in front of a newly privatized four-story 
council estate in Warsaw's Praga district. ---- A century ago it could have been an 
impressive piece of art nouveau architecture, but ? worn away by the years, like most of 
the buildings in Praga ? it now stands as a bleak contrast to the city's shiny financial 
center. The people forming the queue live in the neighborhood, though with the nascent 
privatization of the area it's hard to tell how long they'll be able to stick around for. 
---- The local Tenants' Defense Committee ? who those in the queue are waiting to see ? 
was set up to tackle up this problem, beginning its life as a small family affair. ---- "A 
multiplex cinema was erected in front of our window, where an old movie theater used to 
stand. The vibrations resulting from the use of heavy machinery began to topple the weak 
foundations of our house. The council was suspiciously slow to act, so we organized a 
protest," says Teresa Jasi?ska, who formed the committee several years ago, along with her 
husband Marek and their daughter. "Word of mouth spreads quickly around here, so as people 
heard about our success they started coming to us for advice."

The help they offered at first was primarily from a legal standpoint, but this changed 
radically after a series of unexplained fires hit the district's estate buildings in 2011.

Basements, attics and storage rooms caught fire in rapid succession; at one point there 
were as many as three fires in a single day.

The committee recruited a few more members and put together Patrol Okrzej?wki, named after 
an early 20th century socialist who fought for Poland's independence.

Wearing fluorescent vests bearing the patrol's name, the residents took to the streets, 
arm-in-arm with members of the anarchist Polish Syndicalist Union and denizens of Warsaw's 
few remaining squats.

For months they have been voluntarily taking turns in nightly patrols, aiming to deter 
whoever was repeatedly setting fire to the local buildings.

"You won't burn every one of us!" was the brigade's rally call.

Nobody in Praga believes that the fires were an accident, so who are the alleged arsonists 
behind the attacks?

Every investigation into the fires has been closed due to lack of hard evidence, with the 
police stating that they probably were intentional arsons. Those queuing in front of the 
committee's provisional office point at the building's new owners, but refuse to give me 
their names.

The buildings were privately owned before the war, but were later nationalized by the 
Soviet-approved government in an effort to both crush the bourgeoisie and to streamline 
the reconstruction process.

Some of these previous owners ? or their families ? have tried to reclaim their property 
from the government, claiming it was unlawfully confiscated, but often get fed up with the 
drawn out legal process.

This, according to Marek Jasi?ski ? spokesperson of the Defense Committee and founder of 
the Okrzej?wki Brigades ? is where the new breed of owners step in.

He claims that the same few companies have been buying out the former owners' and the fire 
victims' compensation claims. Then, armed with a host of lawyers (and ? as sociologist and 
local whistle blower Jan ?piewak alleges ? sometimes using falsified documents and 
bribes), they manage to break the council and end up owning more and more neglected homes.

Praga ? with its pre-war buildings and soon-to-be finished Metro line, which connects it 
straight to Warsaw's business hub ? is sure to attract big money. And big money is just 
what the private building owners want, not the meager rents paid by former council tenants.

What big money wants in return are renovated houses (or new ones, replacing the demolished 
structures), beautiful neighbors and a porter. Which, in the developers' eyes, means that 
most of the current tenants need to go.

"It's a mafia," says Witold, who just joined the queue at the committee's door. Of course, 
by "mafia" he doesn't mean Tommy guns and cement shoes, but that the landlords will 
allegedly use illegitimate techniques to evict their current tenants, exploiting their 
lack of knowledge around the few laws that have been put in place to protect them.

He comes straight from the courtroom, having won a case against his new private landlord. 
He asks not to disclose the details of his situation, as there are still legal battles to 
come.

"I ask the committee for legal advice. Consulting professional lawyers on my and my 
mother's income is a definite no go," he says, before reciting some 1960s Polish poetry.

Fear, he says, is the main tactic employed by the building owners while they try to get 
rid of their tenants.

"The people around here are mostly simple folk ? not primitive, but simple. When they're 
sent an official-looking document they won't question its validity. They don't believe 
they have a right or possibility to not agree. Out of all the families in my building, I 
was the only one who decided to fight against the 300 percent rise of our rent. I ain't no 
anarchist ? I just won't allow anybody to take advantage of me."

Witold believes that the more individualized societies are, the easier it is to exploit 
people.

"You're weaker if you feel you're alone," he says. "It's a popular trick. That's the 
reason why no big company ever asks for a class action. Atomization has killed the trade 
unions, now it's killing our neighborhood."

In turn, the Tenants' Defense Committee is trying to get people back together. Their 
events have managed to gather people from all social backgrounds and are a rare 
opportunity to see pensioners (a group generally perceived to be more of the 
Catholic-conservative outlook) shouting their discontent alongside anarchists, 
syndicalists, pacifists and every other breed of welfare supporter.

They demand fairer and more realistic rules on the distribution of social housing; a 
program that will ensure that municipal properties are not privatized and demolished to 
make space for office blocks and condos; and, finally, the construction of new council 
estates in lieu of subsidizing developers who build on cheap land on the city outskirts, 
fueling the gentrification of the center and putting a strain on public services.

To achieve what they've set out to do, they are now shifting from street activism to 
political work.

As well as lobbying the city council, they organize two open advice sessions at the 
committee's provisional headquarters every week, where everyone is welcome to come and ask 
for help. "It's not an easy job," says Bozena Jasinska, a law graduate.

She also claims that development companies have started to spy on them.

"We had several individuals claiming to be students wishing to take internships with us. 
Upon further investigation they turned out to be professional lawyers working for the real 
estate sector ? a few of them even confessed to this," she says. "Apparently, what they 
really wanted was to infiltrate our organization and get to know the ways in which we 
operate. One can only guess why."

Three years ago, one of most prominent activists involved in the tenants' movement was 
found mutilated in a forest on the outskirts of Warsaw. Her name was Jolanta Brzeska and 
she was 64. Initially, suicide was considered a possibility.

"Surely, with her hands tied behind her back, face down in a bonfire, miles away from her 
own home she must have done that herself," says Jasi?ski, sarcastically. Since then, the 
possibility has been eliminated by the court, but the investigation itself was canceled 
earlier this year due to a lack of murder suspects.

The investigation was canceled in April 2013, and this year it was placed under court 
scrutiny.

Currently Jolanta Brzeska's daughter, Magdalena, is also in a legal battle with the new 
owners of her home. They accuse her of owing them more than 14,000 euros ($19,342.40) for 
living there illegally (after they allegedly destroyed her contract).

?The hope of ever finding the murderers might have been forever lost in the first days of 
the investigation,? wrote Gazeta Sto?eczna ? the biggest local newspaper ? on March 1, the 
anniversary of Brzeska?s death.

?Everything was happening too slowly or didn?t happen at all; it took the police a week to 
even identify the victim [...] and only after a few months, after the court experts have 
concluded that the murderers were affiliated with the building development sector, they 
decided to search the car that the owner of her house had been using on the date of the 
murder.?

Ever since, Jolanta Brzeska has become a symbol for the tenants' movements across Warsaw, 
her portraits adorning the walls of buildings throughout Praga.

With similar problems in all major Polish cities, the Tenants' Defense Committee has a 
fight on its hands, and the memory of their murdered friend is what keeps them going.

They are currently working hard to gain broader public support by staying on the right 
side of the law; they recently stopped taking part in eviction blockades, which involved 
clashes with the police and generated a lot of negative publicity, even if the evictees 
were grateful.

As Jan ?piewak points out, by now Praga can be considered a lost battle. Those still 
fighting for their rights are only a minority, with hundreds of families having been 
evicted already.

But the re-privatization problem will not cease ? on a smaller scale it is present in 
every major Polish city as well as the other districts of Warsaw. In the city center, 
claim-buyers are now taking over communal spaces: parks, public squares and even schools.

"This may lead to another unlikely alliance, as it is no longer just council tenants and 
anarchists. Right now, it?s becoming a middle-class problem as well,? says ?piewak.

"For an average Pole, the idea that housing is a right rather than a commodity is still 
something that only the dirty squatters or crazy Amnesty International activists moan 
about," says Polish writer Ja? Kapela.

"Going into debt is the way of obtaining shelter that had supposedly been blessed by the 
God and the market alike. Our society still believes in such ghosts as God or the free 
market. The only fact that slightly shatters that faith is that 60 percent of Polish 
citizens have absolutely no chance of getting a mortgage loan."