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THE ONLY COMMON DENOMINATOR? by Nawojka Mocek

While I marched on the July 9th on the streets of Warsaw decorated with rainbow flags, filled with music and dancing, surrounded by friendly people waiving at each other, one of the Polish fellows said to me: “What a nice feeling to finally march not against something, but simply to celebrate and rejoice our diversity and presence.”

Warsaw Pride (photo credit @ Kamila Szuba)

If you look at the most recent and burning events in Poland, you can easily see they that have one common point – people taking over the streets in mass protests against the changes proposed (or already implemented) by the ruling conservative party of Law And Justice (PiS). Constitutional crisis, Black Protests or most recent protest of families of people with disabilities. Those are pictures I have mostly seen in history books. Now, they have became alive right in front of my eyes and became sort of normal and often used in forms of response and expression to resistance and strong disagreement. In an era of social media it seems really easy to organize such a big gathering very fast and reach to a great amount of people, get together, stand arm in arm for a good cause. It brings people together, raises awareness that they’re not alone in their struggle and ultimately – creates an impact by bringing an important issues to the spotlight and, in some cases, also postponing changes imposed by PiS. However, only postponing for a while – the case of fighting for women’s reproductive rights demonstrates clearly that after some time the issue will probably arise again and a reaction of resistance will be the same. These temporary solutions and constant tension create deeper and deeper divisions in the Polish society, it pushes our society us away from the probably most demanding, but real and long-lasting way of solving the problems – dialogue. Journalist Leszek Jażdżewski in our panel, mentioned: dialogue implies that you might be wrong or you might be right, so you might change your mind on certain idea. Those are factors that make the dialogue so demanding, but at the same time the most effective and fruitful tool.

I believe in the power and necessity of dialogue, but are we ready to take this path? Is PiS, considering itself legitimate to implement big systemic changes because of the fact of possessing the majority in the government and treating their non-voters in a way which forces them to take the streets as the only way to show the resistance and actually be heard, ready to admit it might be wrong and open up for different perspectives? Is the opposition, tired of being ignored and labeled as the citizens of the worst category, using protests as a way of expression, ready to take part in a discussion about creating a society where also the voices of conservative members of parliament and society are taken into consideration?

Discussion between HIA fellows and guests: Leszek Jażdzewski, Dominika Sitnicka and Barbara Nowacka

Politician Barbara Nowacka, being a social democrat herself, made an excellent point during the panel discussion that I believe we should reflect on a little more. She said: “I’m tired of a country looking for leaders instead of looking for values.” So are we ready, as a society, to speak about our values in order to define them– openly, honestly, with an attitude of mutual understanding and dialogue? Are we ready to discover more common denominators than we think we share?


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Nawojka Mocek was born and raised in Poznań, Poland. After two years of studying law and French, she spent one year volunteering in France, Germany and Belgium, living together with young people from all over the world and experiencing the beauty of diversity. She was a member of the team preparing the 38th Taize European Youth Meeting in Valencia, Spain. She also worked as a volunteer with migrants from Subsaharian Africa in Morocco and with refugees in Skaramagas camp in Athens, Greece. Influenced by those experiences, she would like to focus on the issue of perceiving and welcoming refugees and migrants in Europe, especially in Poland. Currently she works for Young Life organization.

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