 Okay, I think we can start the proceeding now. We are all here. Unfortunately, our chair, Dan Glass, who has been very instrumental in bringing the series to SOAS. He was supposed to be here tonight with us. Unfortunately, he's not able to be here. So I am stepping a little bit in his role, although I am not as an expert as he is. But I will try my best. Okay, so we have a few audiences in the register. We're just waiting for some more to come in. But I think I will start with a brief introduction of our panelists. And then I will pass it on to our lovely panelists to take over the discussion. And then after the discussion, we'll be going to have about 15-20 minutes of question and answer. So I will suggest to the audience to put your question in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and type your question there. And then we will take them at the end of the discussion. Okay, so for now, I just would like to say a few words about the series, how it came about and about today's event. As I mentioned earlier, Dan Glass is an activist and a writer, and he has been connected to SOAS for some time. And thanks to him, we launched a series of event called Unfinished Business, Voices of the LGBTQIA Plus Revolutions. The idea was to focus on, because we are at SOAS, the idea with Dan was to focus on the practical tools to dismantle colonial homophobic laws and try to address the issue. So we had some events focusing on countries across our region, but today we're very pleased to have here Monica and Magda to tell us more about the situation in Poland, because we are all very concerned that European countries where you will expect some sort of sort of wider understanding is actually going back to some extent. And I'm very pleased to have here Monica and Magda who will tell us more about it. So now just a few words about Monica and Magda, our speaker. So Monica, apologies if I mispronounce your name, please do correct me. Monica Pasifkatici is a Red Bull activist, a motorcyclist, feminist, a photographer, writer, travel journalist, and once a promoter of young talented racists, it was called the Psycho Sports when the Far Right Catholic Party took over ruling Poland in 2015. And it was urgent to take care of more important things, defending democracy and human rights, and most of the fight is for the acceptance and equality of queer people. She's organized a pride parade in Poland, psychological support, and prizes to help for survivors of patriarchy and prephobia, and also funding transitions. She's a member of Make Paula Queer again, and the leader of the Labda Poland Foundation, and loves the chosen family Woodstock Poland Rock Festival original The Witch's Book and movies by the Wachowski. I love that. Thank you so much, Monica, and welcome. Welcome very much to be here today with us. Thank you. Thank you. And then then we are very lucky also to have Magda Olzie Gemska, who is a Polish queer feminist activist writer and researchers at the University of Essex. She's living in London since 2006. Activisms focus mainly on reproductive and LGBTQ plus rights, and is closely linked to identity as a Polish migrant. She's a member of several queer feminist activist group in London, including Parza, Make Paula Queer again, and she writes about feminism radical spaces and activism on a blog. You can check a blog Angel and witches.com and her, her store, her story that diary and other collective platforms, such as WordPress and alpha fan dot com. She will tell us maybe a bit more about about those. And so she will be speaking about a Polish activism in London since 2016. This is like a very brief introduction of our panelists. Thank you again for being here. And I will now I just wanted to say that this event is recorded. Therefore, like attendees unable to attend so many of them today, we will share the link widely after the event so that for those that couldn't attend, that we still have a chance to hear the conversation. And now without further ado, pass it on to Magda and Monica to take over the discussion. And, and, and then I will join you again at the Q&A. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for bearing with us with the technical difficulties. So I think Monica, it would be good if you could start by telling us more about your activism since you're in Poland and we're talking about Poland today and I'm in London, even though I'm Polish. I haven't really spent that much time in Poland recently so I think it's right for you to start. Okay. As everybody knows, the situation of cool people in Poland is really hard. Especially during the last seven years since the party called Law and Justice, who are far right Catholic populists came to power in the parliamentary election and they also have their presidents. And since that moment, the agenda, which is not only focused not only against Korean people but also against religious minorities, against people of no religion, against other nations and against other races, which is not spoken out loud, but it works in practice of life of minorities in Poland really hard. Of course, the politicians are being asked by the Germans or European Parliament or whatever they say, and in Poland we are tolerating, we accept everybody, but it's just a declaration. And the environmental effect, I'm sorry, I should mention first, also catastrophe on women's rights, including almost total abortion, introduced in 2020. And before they knew, we will have like crucial protection in a level of legislation. No hate crime protection, no hate speech protection. There are no kind of recognition of same-sex couples. And what is I think most difficult, there is no transition in Poland, so it's not forbidden, but there is also no legal procedure to do it. And people who want to correct their gender marker in their documents and also the name, they need to sue their own parents to court for giving them that marker in proper marker at birth, which is ridiculous and inhumane. And many people just don't want to go through this part of it. There's a lot of documents like for doctors which confirm that you are male or female. Of course, any kind of gender except of male or female does not exist in Polish law. But this situation was the same before 2015. And since that moment is even worse because the real party also uses us as a sort of artificial threat to integrate their followers and using this narrative during one election in 2019 after the first term, telling everybody that LGBT people are going to turn children into gay or into perverts by making a sexual education in kindergarten and teaching in masturbation, which is ridiculous even to think of. That was the official reason to gather their followers against us. It also, not only gave them a second term, but also raised a lot of number of hate crimes and a number of suicidal attempts and a lot of problems with mental health of poor people in Poland, especially children and teenagers. We had 2,000 victims also being made to declare LGBT freedoms, which covered three, one third of Polish area and population. There were declarations made by cities or counties or regional governments. And mental health of poor people who live in those homes is much more worse than people who live outside. So we are under the oppression from many sides and even more this year is again an election there. An election campaign has already started with a leader of the ruling party, Jarosław Kaczyński, attacking transgender people this time, which is extremely dangerous because there is very little knowledge about being transgender in Poland and especially transgender people are not accepted by their parents even more than homosexual or bisexual people. And especially for the minors, acceptance and cooperation of parents is crucial for them to usually survive until they are adult. So we are in the middle of Europe, we are part of Europe, we are part of NATO. And with the level of human rights, we are going directly to new ages. That's for the short summary. Yeah, thank you, Monica. That was really good summary. I guess my next question was about your inspiration, what drives you? Because for me, obviously all of those political issues are important, but personally what drove me into queer activism is probably very similar to what drove me to other types of activism, personal stories, right? Because what happened in the year, I think it was 2019, wasn't it? The attack in Bialystok, which is my hometown and that really struck enough because it's my hometown. I cried, I remember watching the transmission on TV and I remember crying thinking about how painful it was, even not being there but just thinking about it being my hometown. So this is what drove me into becoming a queer activist or at least more consciously, more openly. So I'm wondering what drives you personally, if you don't mind talking about it. Yeah, it's like, I'm sure, in England, I was there in Bialystok actually. I was marching in this pride march, which was first for the city. And then having first experience in pride marches, even those violent country protests, which happens from time to time, especially in the East Poland and South, and this rural areas where people are religious and there are a lot of followers of law and justice party. Bialystok was a nightmare. There were one and a half thousand participants of the pride, 700 police officers and more than 3,000 of big flags, violent country protesters, and with the Disha T-shirts with outing of God, or Poland against Pevots, or Jews as soon as you know, or things like this. They first didn't pray, like several prayers, and then they started to throw stones in front crackers at us and then I saw them targeting the girl who was on the wheelchair, the person with disability. They were targeting her deliberately because she couldn't duck or she couldn't scoop as quickly as the others. So that was the Christianity, the way they saw the mission as a Christian. And that was smashing. The level of aggression was so high that it reported people with serious injuries, including broken bones. And when there was a news, like in the evening that two teenagers beaten up after the pride, because most violence was not even during the pride, but after the pride when people tried to return homes, and those masses were chasing them and hunting them down in the streets. So there was a news that two of them were beaten up and died in a hospital. And seeing before the level of aggression there, that was completely easy to believe that it could happen. Later on it revealed that there was a fakeness, nobody died, but I think it was a miracle that nobody died. Personally, when we and my four companions tried to return to our car, which was parked inside the street, we were chased by three big guys with a baseball bat. And we barely escaped because the bat was over our heads already. That was a very profound feeling of the injustice, our situation that somebody decides on living or dying because that was his decision to hit with a bat or not. And nobody should think that it's okay that it's passed through nothing, that it's good for the region to hit a girl or any person with a baseball bat on their head. Those guys were inspired by local art bishop and local law and justice party leader who were so inspired to deprive the everyday to put the message on media you have to defend power and defend family, defend religion against those perverts who want to rape your children and who are against Christianity and stuff. And it's really painful that it happens. And even more, it's painful that it gives a second stand to law and justice because it means that most of the society either doesn't care or they approve that. And this is in June, especially in Poland which is proud of the tradition of being first to get through from the totalitarian system of the Soviet area, of the Soviet circle. And the movement which started this revolution in 1981 was called Solidarity. Solidarity is a great human value, is a great human virtue to take care of those who are weaker than us and not to leave them behind. And now the dissidents of that movement who are in the government, what they do is totally against Solidarity as a humanistic idea because they don't want to accept refugees from other countries, they are in Ukraine, they are in Japan because they are white, they have blue eyes, they are Christians. But on the same border but few kilometers away from the border with Belarus, there are people who try to get to Poland from Syria, from Africa and they are kept in the forest until they die. And then the same thing with Solidarity to cruel people. It doesn't work. It's so cynical and cruel what they are doing to us. And they are asking for personal reasons or how I decided on that. Well, I think it happened to me once to conclude that my city of Szczecin is the seventh biggest city in Poland but it doesn't have a place where young queers could meet and have support by talking to each other and feeling safe and accepted at least in one place in Szczecin because there was now actively working in Szczecin which was doing things like this. And so I thought somebody should do something about this and then second thought was if you're French somebody should do something about this and who should do something about this so I did. And I started Lambda and then it grew up. It was 2018. The other people who joined also wanted to organize Pride so we did. The first Pride in Szczecin in September 2018 was a big success. A lot of people came and it was so remarkable in the history of the city. And so then it all grew. There are a lot of myths and so if I see the myths I try to address those myths and later on I organized Pride also in other places in the region of West Poland which Szczecin is a capital city of. And also what I noticed especially in the last three years that most people who want to come to organizations for help are transgender people or parents of transgender kids. That's why I focused on transgender people whose situation is much higher than people of sexual identities different than the heterosexual because being gay or lesbian, being gay or sex relationship is visible when it happens and if you do not try to keep it secret but if person is transgender there's only choice between not transitioning and suffering from this fall now which is extreme pain that cisgender people cannot imagine or to be exposed all the time. And it's being rejected by most of plans, by most of society. So I focused on this and now the Lambda Polska Foundation works with people from the whole country and mostly directing them to the specialists who they can start transitioning especially on the level of hormone therapy and also they go transitioning depending on what they most are first and because thinking about transitioning and when we speak transition most people think about surgery which is like rooted by memory but it's not the first minute of transgender people mostly it's first need is hormone therapy and it's impossible to get to this public health care system and also a lot of doctors do not understand when it's transgender they think that it's insanity and you should go to psychiatrists not to hormone doctor for instance and part of the rest are people who exploit transgender people by making them come to these doctors very often and of course all the every visit is paid so it's sort of like source of money for them. So I have a database of those doctors and psychologists who are OK and the Foundation pays for visits for the people who cannot afford it especially now but even before this crisis and before this inflation time private visits are something that it's not affordable for regular people in Poland especially teenagers especially teenagers not supported by the plans especially for people who are for years in depression because they suffer from dysphoria and they suffer from anxiety and trauma and it's very different all the time it's not the best way to be to earn money to save some money after you spend it on your own living I'm not sure if I answered your question Yeah, I think you did and I also want to talk about because obviously it's really easy to forget about the positives of the movement so I want to also talk about the inspirations the positive inspirations and the joys of being part of the movement so for me it's usually in the moments so once or twice we danced outside of the Polish Embassy as part of a protest but still it was a very joyful moment I don't think I'll ever forget that also things like international solidarity so when you came, was it last year or the year before? I think it was the year before now time just flies when you're having fun when you guys came over from Poland you and a few other queer activists and we had a series of events that was really inspiring for us for reasons partly because we often question ourselves when we do solidarity activism because we're not there so what's the point but it really means a lot to people elsewhere, to people who are in the middle of it and we always hear that whenever we have these connections so I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what inspires you positively in the movement outside of this, is there anything outside? Okay, so being a queer activist in Poland is really the healthiest hobby ever because it really connects with a lot of pressure and oppression and being harassed by the authorities and being rejected by parents and parents like in my situation parents rejected me and they are ashamed of me but then I know they try but on the other hand there are quite a lot of situations when people contact me this or that way they approach me after some protests because there are a lot of protests in many topics here or they write email or they write on Facebook that what I did saved their life literally like they got their common therapy and they came out of depression and out of problems and studied again and have hope for the future I remember in a short time when I met at one Pride there was a girl who was looking at me and walking around but she was too shy to approach so I approached her and her friends and I said hello, how are you, where are you from? and it was in the city of Koszanie and the Pride and the girl who was 15 years old she said that she attended Pride in a certain area and that changed her life she found a courage to come out to her friends and parents and she comes from this little town so she's the only person in the time that she comes she is cleaner and she feels a little better than me but participating in Pride was the great feeling of being part of the big family and she was really happy and thankful about this and two weeks later there were women's rights protests and I was really gone a person said 9 so we talked and she said like she's 70 and since the first Pride initiative she's happy in her life she never experienced that before because during this Pride having this experience she accepted herself and she's happy with who she is and that was a love-changing moment so this guy struggled with his identity for over half a century so I was really... I wrote to him that I organized to make him happy in this years of his life and he has left it's better than another especially that a lot of people from his generation didn't live long enough to be alive more because of addiction that were harvesting a lot of life and I've heard those personal meetings when people say that what I am doing what the organization is doing what the media is doing teach their lives their own biographies this is sort of mind-blowing thing I think kind of the drug because you get addicted to this and that even if activism costs us a lot on a personal level then maybe when that we find out that we cannot stop we cannot give up because it's like that what is to say if you know and maybe the final thing which keeps me growing is that I can like integrate I can go to the land which is really classic here I have a lot of friends there in front of my child so I can move like every moment but those teenagers many teenagers they will not move they will not integrate and it brings them to suffer some things or suffer including the others who are like kids now who are not born yet to have to go through the same path of pain of growing up here in a society when nobody accepts you nobody will stand still and you feel alone and you feel sort of you are sort of insane or sort of sinful so that's why we want to change problems yeah, I was once young married woman I had my time of happiness so I think now I feel like I owe this to those who had struggled 100 years ago for me to have a wedding Christ that's for instance and this is something that if I had my happy life once that I want the others to have their happy lives and since once in their lives I don't care about my own happiness anymore that much because I had my happiness already thank you I think we should sorry, go ahead and I wanted to add that we have everything for here on the grounds for everybody who cares about what's happening here and who act outside Poland like you did in London making protests because it gives us a lot of strength and a lot of energy that we are not forgotten and outside of this sandbox of our country there are people who care and who want our part of work also to do just and so for everybody so thank you so much for the things you are organizing in London and on that note I think it's worth mentioning that we are planning a trip in the summer I am very excited we are going to visit some flights and we are going to promote Dan Blas's new book which is about queer history here locally but we are hoping to make connections with Polish history and Polish queerness and Polish queer movements obviously so keep an eye out for more news I think the schedule of Dan's tour locally has already been announced so if anyone is interested in joining here that will be definitely possible as well so maybe you can also talk about a little bit more about ways that people can support remotely if they want to show their solidarity with Poland Yeah, Dan we have people from the world who can support us first we have practiced a lot during this outburst of LGBT free zones because we have cities or counties or regions are connected we have these two partnerships which sometimes is longer than like two years it is less for the class that we have cultural exchange or we have exchange programs and it's during that time activists from the cities or regions which were partners of those in Poland who had LGBT free zones in Croatia they informed there their local authorities about the situation and the partnerships were either suspended or cancelled by local authorities outside of Poland and also it has a practical effect of getting less money from European Union which sometimes is a reason that after a year or two there is the curation but their own authors they do not they just want the money and this is the good tool to make the pressure and the city in that western north of Poland is not covered by LGBT free we are here close to Croatia and the city is the most open handed in Poland the city was conducted by city hall of Ukraine which are partners of city hall in Turkey and the question like are you or are you going to be LGBT free zone because we will not accept this as a case of values and city hall and city hall I can live with my own and city hall made the declaration among friends and everyone including it was like it was a people of order whether it is sexual orientation which was like second in Poland such a declaration and the other thing that we can do to connect to to to organization to be partnership like if one is a part of the organization we can contact other organizations in Poland and have cooperation like visiting each other for the price or when in planning an organized price we can make a display for Poland of sort of performance even the price that reminds people that in Poland situation is still very bad and if there would be a possibility to travel it's always good for us in Poland to host you especially during our price and if organization from Poland could and have a possibility to host other activists or people it would be for us also to go there and I was organizing video trips to Berlin mostly because it's like two hours drive but it's like 40 years in time the trip in time and it gives a lot of strength to like cruise traveling for the price or for other events to see the world where people can kiss each other in the streets and nobody gets them up like where people play whatever they want and have powerful hair and nobody attacks them in the streets and the price is a lot of joy and it's the holiday of the home and our community and all the creepy people so if we need a lot of funding this is very awkward topic to mention but we suffer from having a lot of money to work especially that our enemies have a lot of money to work against us and then there was international organizations and radical Catholic organizations I mean heavily funded from the government using all that kind of to give them huge amounts of money this organization which coordinated country protest in the stock was giving amount of that equals of more than half million pounds see after this country protest so they were rewarded for that and also other organizations that they used especially to now execute strategic lawsuits against public participation like we are recording every single thing that we are doing and then they sue us to the court or inform our prosecution for like whatever reason and that takes a lot of time and energy to you know get through this trials also thank you very much my friends as well most of us work voluntarily without being a print but we can like money for you know to buy a printer to pay the trip to organize to pay rent off if we have an office where people can gather we have to pay rent for that and what is most of it is to pay psychologists to take care of people who are mental health crisis because of the situation that it's like you know vast amounts of money and for paying for transition procedures and I'm not going to mention my schedule but those who can who are needed to for regrow transitioning and hormone therapy and this is this is the biggest need because this is important because it saves lives like literally you know and it helps people who who struggle to survive especially teenagers and organizations have websites where we put our dunk accounts and so we have also crowdfunding and it's then it's easy to chip in you know one pound in the pain and has completely different power of paying for financing problems it's much more in the human so that's everything comes I would say this is our huge need if you would like to support my information it's called Nanda Polska and the website is NandaPolska.org and for crowdfunding that's great and I've been making a list of things that people can do so I think it would be useful if you could Angelica I don't know if you are with us we could send out a list on the event page or something of how people can support absolutely yes if you can send me the list I can attach it to the recording and then when we share in we can share those information and those websites absolutely great did we have anything in the Q&A that you wanted to raise okay so we can see the discussion there are at the moment many questions in the Q&A but we can open more the discussion among ourselves and then hopefully some questions will come through but yes perhaps it would be nice to hear also a little bit more about your experience as an activist from abroad and as Monica said there are ways in which we can support but perhaps you can tell us a bit about your experience of activism from the UK because as I was saying earlier to you is quite striking to have a country in Europe where you will expect a different sort of understanding and also exactly within the European Union what kind of push there can be and how come this has been allowed to go forward without being stopped from high spheres some extent it would be interesting to hear a bit more about Magda's experience and how we can sort of push more those issues within within Europe because exactly could set precedence, it could allow other countries to feel that it's easy to go and crush human rights that's been built over many many decades absolutely I think for me as so I got involved in activism I've been involved in activism for about a decade but I've been involved in Polish activism specifically since 2016 like Monica mentioned before it was around the time when peace the right wing party came into power in Poland and things started shifting towards the right and one of the first things that were attacked were reproductive rights even though at the time already the right to abortion was quite limited in Poland one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe there was a sudden drive to limit it completely even in cases of rape and fatal abnormalities and the risk to the mother's health and all the exceptions they wanted to ban them so that was the point when kind of the Polish activists and me woke up and but then it didn't really click with the queer part of my identity until the attack like I said before in my home town in Poland and that I think that was a real kind of awakening point in terms of how the violence seeps into the mind of the state right and the society because that was I think the stats that Monica presented before of you know how many protestors there were, how many anti-protestors were already astonishing in the level of violence but one of the things that shocked me about that event was the permission from the church right the not just the permission the open open admission that they are behind it right there was as the violence was happening on the other side of the town there was a major figure head of the Catholic church giving a speech saying that what's happening is good and how can you know how can what kind of you know disjunction in somebody's mind does one have to have in order to as a representative of the church which is supposed to be supposedly at least in the version of the story that I was told as a child hence perhaps the shock even though if you think about it more critically perhaps the church is more violent from the start it was supposed to be about love and compassion and all those things and suddenly you have this priest who is openly condoning street violence right so that's a kind of I mean I haven't been to church for many years before that but that was kind of personal a waking point on many levels for me so how does it happen I think I think it's very complex because it's linked to Polish history it's linked to this idea that we owe something to the Catholic church right there's this idea there's this martyrdom idea in the Polish historical identity which tells us that somehow the Polish Pope was solely responsible for freeing Poland from communism right which is bullshit because like Monika said before it was the solidarity movement right but there is this massive massive narrative that it was the Polish Pope somehow like this Jesus figure right creating this miracle it's complete lunacy but it is there it is there in this there in the Polish consciousness and I also don't want to be misunderstood because I don't think it's also just a Polish problem right because it's very much an international problem right there's been a shift to the right for quite some years throughout you know it's not a coincidence that the election of the peace party in Poland almost not quite but almost exactly coincides in time with the election of Trump in America right and not just that there are the countries as well there are other examples that you can give so I think there's something there's an interesting point that we're living in historically and you know even here one of the most you know I spoke about the joys of being in the movement before but one of the most shocking moments of the last few years for me was when we were prevented by the police from drawing chalk rainbow on the pavement outside the embassy right which we've done many many years before and then suddenly last year they told us that it's illegal and we could be arrested for it I mean it's chalk right it's something that comes out naturally with rain it's not like we were spraying it it was just chalk and yet we proceeded to have this really long conversation which was completely ridiculous again so and I think that was around the same time that the low around protest was being becoming more strict here after the pandemic right because the government was using the pandemic to justify its move towards the right again so yeah I think it's happening all over the place I don't think it should surprise us perhaps Poland is an extreme example at least as far as Europe goes but it's not unfortunately it's not an exception I don't think yes thank you yes it's very interesting as you talk also the role of the church and again you know it shows all this this connection because of one side sometime you hear even the Pope trying to be open minded and then trying to present this idea of you know the Catholic Church you need to be kind you need to support people or the Archbishop of York he said in the news that you know he will support gay marriages and so there are so many different messages being sent from the church but Ayaka I completely agree with you yes it's a complete disconnect world we live in where rights that used to be given are now being challenged and for people like us like myself I'm 50 years old you know you just feel really at risk of so many undermining so many rights so I completely agree with you yes it's not just Poland and it's I mean I'm myself from Italy originally even if I live in the UK for nearly 30 years now but again in Italy it's the same situation going on with the rights taking power and then started to challenge this idea of the family in Italy we have this challenge of what is the family again complete sort of going back to medieval time of this idea of you know the reproductive of the family whatever that means because we live in a world where families the concept of families is so diverse now but then again you've got politicians taking power and just trying to dismantle complete that vision so yes it is I completely agree and sometimes you do feel like you know are we going backwards are we actually going completely down the mine and is this our future now so also yes also the role of the new generations the social media again as well complex so many polarized vision and so it is yes so I may press Monica you want to comment on that thank you for mentioning the role of the religion and Catholic Church in this whole picture because this is quite important I think it's important it's important to ages during the whole 19th and 20th century Catholic religion was so intertwined with national identity especially after having been surrounded by Orthodox Russia and Protestants Germany and Czech also Protestant traditions were very strong so this myth of church which is the new power that made Polish national identity survive and then the same kind of sort of with the icon of of probably democracy again and free from some domination and it's more than 30 years since Poland is back democratic country and since Pope died well it's still the cause of John Paul II is a huge factor of how Polish mentality especially like in all the generations it's not by chance that in year when Pope died Pope John Paul II there was quite let's say leftist government in Poland there were very leftists on economic level but honest for example society most level there were quite leftist and so that was the time when the bill about sex relationships being recognized in the law with already employment and when Pope Fontana died the party itself cleansed the bill to give the official reason spoken out to the press was it's a gift to John Paul II to know his death that we respect the bill which is insane and so but what is more more pragmatic that those very conservative movements who are anti-gay and anti-trice at the same time the biggest organization is called American Congress but they are connected with World Congress of Families American Congress of Families and other conservative radical organizations lobbying the school of queer rights and women's rights into the state law all over the world but they are also connected directly to Kremlin for Russia which was proven by some genius investigations made by one of our Clementine Missoukhan and the other by Lenny Brony and the biggest proof was that when water in Ukraine started in the trans, make transfers from Russia were blocked the organization of the movies which had the budget of two million a year for four million years they had like this kind of movie suddenly they started to crowd from because they said like we do not have money in New York it was the same moment so in those moments you know to destabilize the democratic countries because they are weaker then by hitting on women's rights and by hitting on queer rights and minorities rights because dance groups are easy to target and and it's sort of making the society see that people are not equal but there are people who have more rights and people who have less rights and if you want to have more rights then keep with us the obedience so we won't take care of you and so that was the same thing that was happening one hundred years ago in Germany in Italy in the same and also in some of Russia when Stalin was the leader of it this is the way to break democracy because democracy is based on idea of equality everybody has rights and everybody is equal and if you wipe out equality then it turns very easily democracy to Italian system like you did and also this anti-choice movement doesn't care at all about children doesn't care about people with disabilities the analogy for this has nothing to do with what they do but what is the reason behind is to show who decides because before the anti-abortion in Italy two years ago we had over one thousand people in Poland which is not much they don't care about this one thousand abortion they want to show us who decides and that's why they hit on self-determination rights are also self-determination rights somebody says gender identity is not what you are thinking when somebody wants to join in life plus in the same gender also this radical feminist against trans rights this is something that Putin was directly supporting because it splits let's say leftist energy laws, human right energy laws and movements into parts so they are weaker and this war this ideological war is not only about those women who were forced to come with prejudices and they died or they had to watch their children die right after the birth it's not only about those teenagers who were beaten up in the restock but it's about the future of Europe as a democracy part of the world and this is the bigger picture we really quite often forget about this world if we lost track of protecting democracy as something that means that everybody is included then we are on the right way to authoritarianism and one more example I wanted to give is that in Poland moderate politicians and right-wing activists often say that people are not people it's an ideology from president so from what he said in his election campaign and it really cost him a position at one second stand telling that queer people it's not people it's an ideology the guy who said let's stop with this bullshit about equality because the queer people are not equal to other people now he is a minister of science and education in other countries that would cost him the position and the whole community he was promoted here and he has a lot of power and we have very ridiculous law that says there's little offensive religious feelings can be jailed for two years and in my city of Szczecin a person sprayed the ground on a sweet figure of money piece of art with something very common and the guy was jailed for a year when rapers are not jails very often they have this probation time instead of jailed so it shows that a lot of values are important to our authorities and what is not important in life humans it's the figure of the statue of Jesus Christ in Warsaw where queer activists held the flag and they were jails for that using a lot of force of the police to find the names and stuff so this is a pretty the whole idea of democracy but also of Christianity of the message of Jesus Christ which I was a great fan when I was a kid when I still admire this figure being religious or war that and he makes are most important because for our authorities there are ideas which are important in life humans thank you so much Monica I mean absolutely it's so poignant we're saying and very very important and I'm just very mindful of the time and we have two questions from Jarolas Kubia Kubia if sorry if I mispronounce your name Jarolas maybe you want to ask your question I can now open your mic so instead of me reading your question you can perhaps ask them yourself so there you are okay you can unmute now and if you would like to make your comment that would be really nice hopefully you need to unmute I think and then you can ask your question yeah hello Erik are you with me? yeah he just has to well yes I'm here thank you I was really puzzled to ask this question but I'm really happy that we're talking about Polish queer rights during those events I'm very I met Monica from Magda forever so we've done a lot of good stuff and I feel a little bit pulled out now because I don't really have much to say because I'm so unprepared I only learned about this event like last minute mmm well then I'll be very brief basically Polish queer rights attack on Polish queer people and LGBT rights have been intensified obviously but I would like to bring a point that the moment Poland joined the European Union hundreds of thousands of Polish LGBTQ migrants left Poland because they could lots of people stayed over lots of people stayed in Poland and fought but some of us we were young we wanted to have a better life now in 10, 20, 30 years and out of this we realized that especially I mean I can speak for London and the UK but more than a decade ago we started organizing locally because we were like oh there's so many of us why don't we just do something since 2018 and 19 we organized a lot of protests but also we did good stuff we socialized we marked during the during the Pride in London almost every year and as much as you know and even especially during the pandemic I remember we've managed to like Magda I think mentioned that we've managed to meet so many times outside the Polish Embassy trying to draw rainbows and chocks and be a voice of the Polish queer queers in abroad and in London and you know due to lots of personal struggle I had to step away from my activism a little bit last couple of years because as Monika mentioned being an activist sometimes you forget about yourself and it has a lot of impact on mental health and personal life but one of the points I really wanted to make is amazing intersectionality and solidarity during the part of the Polish migrants who want to engage and support Poland you know we might be different politically sometimes from you know like a little bit of like a centrist to left to hardcore socialist like myself but outside the Polish Embassy when we dance when we cry when we you know it doesn't matter if you know women's rights queer rights freedom of justice system all that stuff it's been very powerful and I think it gave us another platform to connect as migrants as well so and seeing lots of lots of other initiatives like Edinburgh Queer Collective for example who did a lot of stuff in Scotland people in there were some folks doing stuff in I think in Cardiff Bristol especially in 2020 when the case of Margo happened and lots of Polish activists were detained in Poland we had so many solidarity demos by local queer Polish migrants in London I think that's that's also very important that we might have left and sometimes we feel a little bit guilty that we could have stayed and fight and put our bodies in front of so-called homophobic buses or homo buses you know I hope the money can maybe can say a little bit more about it the vans which are traveling around Poland and one last thing I remember just before the pandemic we had this amazing idea to make Poland queer again and the idea was to just travel on many buses and any sort of transport invade Poland with queer love and the pandemic happened and we got stuck we got stopped in our trucks but I'm really glad that people like Magda and Dan and some other people who I could pass the button on to them and it was great to have put a little bit into that project but we hope that one day we're gonna get it to our bus, paint it all the colours of the rainbow and invade Poland with queer love thank you for letting me speak thank you fantastic brilliant I'm so glad you came in yes, I mean yes, activism and solidarity is obviously the most powerful tool and hopefully that will continue and it will bring more people on board as well sort of metaphorically and also practically on your buses it would be nice to hear from Monica about the buses in Poland because I'm not so aware and it sounds very and also what's happening now how many buses we call them homophobes they appear before the price in our city price is going to be held and it also came to shitting last summer so when we got a signal that it drives around the city centre we were blocking it but you know shitting is I will say now and it also applies to police which didn't cross us in front of other citizens and dealing with this physical force they only like asked us to show it and then we had to go to the police station and speak with them I didn't I refused to take the ticket for blocking traffic so I'm going to have a trial in court for that but I also put the suit against this homophobic bus driver for the formation and for hate speech and also for the end of the pride because his car was parked in a place that the pride was flinching and there were so powerful loudspeakers and there were so loudspeakers speaking out that we were like, you know, perverts that will IP the files and stuff and that was to localize pedophilia and this is something that is happening in Poland for many years and Central Australia is, of course, nothing like this and it's like NGOs who try to oppose this this crazy thing like, you know, car riding around the city and it's playing like picture of two guys and they were naked butts and they were speaking out that we were subtitling that this is something we want to do to our child and stuff pride mobilizes our child to be like this and we have the lines about pedophilia and its connection between pedophilia but when it goes to the court it takes a lot of time first so this thing is going to be after a year or two and then in the morning we applied to the second the great court so there is no violence in this yet but at least what we have is sentences in Lansk and I think in Krakow that the court said that what you write on this on this track, what is written there is not a scientific opinion so the the research they say it's based on is not a part of their of the difficult common accepted researches which is true because it's sort of camera making research on population of incarcerated people like criminals comparing it with regular citizens and it's completely scientifically invalid but it was printed somewhere and they reprinted the track and they said what it's scientifically proven is in 2003 second year or 2003 we need the court to say to describe to this organization because it's one of the oldest circle and now you say it's scientifically proven but most of scientists does not consider it science and what you do is harmful to the huge group of people and it's you know it's and it's still not working practical level because the synthesis and it's still in progress so thank you thank you so much Monica and we only have like a few minutes left perhaps Magna do you want to come in and make some final comment before we close today and then as I said the event is recorded so this discussion let's all of us try to share it across our networks and for those people that could attend because there's been such an interesting conversation that we really should try to to share it widely so I just wanted to thank everyone and but perhaps Magda I like you to say if you find a comment thank you thank you so much for having us and for the solidarity and hope for you will keep in touch I think just maybe just a brief thought linking back to some of the international funding rings that Monica was talking about I think it's interesting to note that they are also they're very much international including here because I think a lot of people are not aware they think that everything is fine here you know and and our consciousness kind of goes to sleep but it's not like that at all I mean one of one example just from my own personal experience a few years back there was a fairly big anti-choice march in London which is the first time in my memory that I have seen something like that and the placards a kid do not they were like copied from an anti-choice rally in the US they didn't they looked so out of place in London completely strange so you can see clearly plain as day right without doing any research that this fun that their funding definitely comes from somewhere else right and you can say with fairly good level certainty just by looking at how they present themselves that is not in this country so I think we need to be very vigilant and we need to be very aware that this is very much an international movement and we cannot let ourselves fall asleep and that's why we need solidarity absolutely yes I completely agree thank you so much so yes let's share all those links because exactly our absolutely funding is essential unfortunately we live in a world where you know if you don't have money you have no voice and so it's sad it shouldn't be like this but unfortunately is that is like that and we also have to play that game so let's share all those links and trying to really you know announce the support because that's the only way forward is the solidarity is the support and as you said international support because this is affecting so many different countries across the world absolutely including the UK sometimes you write Magda sometimes we feel like oh the UK things are better you know but what does it mean actually you know there are there are a lot of issues still affecting this country as well so I completely take your point of looking at it as an international movement that has to be you know promoted supported in that kind of way and okay so we can we come to the end of our time unfortunately it was really really interesting to meet you and to talk to you so again yes let's stay in touch let's keep talking and keep pushing the boundaries because that's what we can do and we have to like not give up and so constantly and this is what these events are about as well for us that's what's trying to kind of keep the conversation at the keep talking about it a lot of different forum the more the better and so let's stay in touch and as I said then please send me the link I will be in touch by email with Monica Magda Jarosla so lovely to see to meet you today also yes let's keep in touch keep connected and and so yes thank you so much to everybody and we will be seeing you each other very soon thank you