Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer, Author at Public Seminar

Democracy

Poland’s Abortion Ban Protests Are a Harbinger of a Wider Social Movement

Channelling the grievances of women and of the LGBTQ community

November 10, 2020 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer and Roch Dunin-Wąsowicz

The pro-choice protests that started on October 22, 2020 are the beginning of a wider social movement channelling the grievances of women and of the LGBTQ community, as well as other marginalized groups in Poland, write Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer and Roch Dunin-Wąsowicz. What’s more, the protests are not only taking place ...

Poland’s Abortion Ban Protests Are a Harbinger of a Wider Social Movement

Democracy

Authoritarian Appetites versus Local Solidarity

July 10, 2020 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

This piece was originally published in Polish in Res Publica Nowa. The English translation is provided by the author. Commenting on the Covid-19 Pandemic, Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, recently said that Europe is the “world’s beating heart of solidarity.” Indeed, for two months now news ...

Authoritarian Appetites versus Local Solidarity

Feature

The Unplanned Heroes of Białystok Pride

Anti-LGBT violence displays the homophobic political and religious rhetoric in Poland — but it didn’t crush the parade.

August 1, 2019 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

Police officers, almost as many in number as the Pride crowd, used teargas to separate the parade from the anti-LGBT protesters. After Pride ended, some of the marchers were chased and beaten by the latter, mostly young men. The police say over three dozen violent offenders were detained. The reports, images, and ...

Feature

An Assassination in Poland

Charity and madness in times of hate

January 16, 2019 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

Paweł Adamowicz, the mayor of Gdańsk, was fatally stabbed on Sunday while standing on the stage in the center of the city during the finale of the Grand Orchestra of Christmas Charity winter drive, Poland’s largest and until now most joyous charity event. Although immediately hospitalized, he died Monday. Everyone instantly ...

Feature

Poland’s Growing Authoritarianism

On Facing the Implications of Recent Events

December 22, 2017 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

In order to restore real justice, unlike the EU-enforced one, there are no holds barred; and just because something is written in law doesn’t mean it’s just. It doesn’t even matter that some of these laws were created during the previous 2005-2007 PiS-led government or that they were signed by ...

Feature

Sadism in Poland

The proposed abortion bill was an attack on women, nothing else

October 20, 2016 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

Since the beginning of Law and Justice Party (PiS) rule in Poland, the right-wing government has accustomed Poles to regulations that counter the principles of democracy (e.g. the Constitutional Tribunal) or human decency (nepotistic hires). This time, however, PiS has taken a step further, deciding to support a bill proposed ...

Feature

Voting Dangerously: Britain, Europe, and the United States

June 27, 2016 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

Back in 2015, the French woke up having to mobilize against the threat of Marine Le Pen’s National Front party, infamously nationalist and anti-immigrant, after its overwhelming victory in the first round of regional elections in 2015. Earlier that year, Poles elected a president endorsed by the Law and Justice ...

Voting Dangerously: Britain, Europe, and the United States

Uncategorized

After the Victory of The Law and Justice Party

Envisioning a perfect right-wing religious Poland

November 9, 2015 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer and Jan Smoleński

Karl Marx famously claimed that history repeats itself twice, first as tragedy, then as farce. Sadly, the recent parliamentary elections in Poland seem to show that actually the opposite can happen as well. Although the 2005 parliamentary victory of the Law and Justice (PiS) party ended in a short-lived coalition ...

After the Victory of The Law and Justice Party

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Presidential Elections in Poland: Something Old, Something New

May 26, 2015 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

The victory of Andrzej Duda, the nationalist, right-wing Law and Justice party’s candidate, came as a shock to many. Yet, in fact, his success over President Bronisław Komorowski, a center-right conservative, supported by the ruling party, Civic Platform, should not have been a surprise. After all, Duda also won the ...

Uncategorized

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews

The return of the secular Jew to a happier Poland

November 21, 2014 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

The grand opening of Polin or the Museum of the History of Polish Jews at the end of October was a widely anticipated event, and when its exhibition was finally revealed, the celebration was covered by major media in Europe, the U.S., and, unsurprisingly, Israel. Timothy Garton Ash and Anne ...

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EuroMaidan: A Site of Monstration and of the Politics of Small Things

February 5, 2014 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

“EuroMaidan,” or Euro-Square in Kiev, has recently again become the site of protests of citizens upset by president Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to continue negotiations on the Ukraine’s membership in the European Union last December. A loyal ally of Putin, Yanukovych turned down the EU offer, choosing the promise of billions ...

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Remembering Tadeusz Mazowiecki

November 5, 2013 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the first democratic prime minister of Poland, elected after decades of Communist rule, died on October 28.

In a widely popular weekly satirical puppet TV show, The Polish Zoo, which aired in Poland at the beginning of the 1990s, Mazowiecki was a turtle: sluggish and wise. (Among other central ...