A Warsaw for Everyone
24/03/2011
Submitted by
ILGA-Europe
Original source: http://www.tol.org/client/article/22267-a-warsaw-for-everyone.html
Poland’s first openly gay, popularly elected official envisions a more open, “sexy and colorful” city.
by Wojciech Kosc 22 March 2011
WARSAW | Campaigning for an unpopular, taboo, or otherwise controversial cause is seldom rewarding. Years spent living for a cause can transform a person into a bitter zealot, ultimately doing the cause more harm than good. Krystian Legierski, 33, has spent many years advocating for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Poland – to little effect thus far.
But he isn’t bitter, or a zealot. He’s a busy businessman, a cultural activist, a media personality, and a self-described “average Pole’s faggot.”
“He’s our Harvey Milk,” said Yga Kostrzewa, spokeswoman for Lambda, a gay-rights organization.
Legierski seems embarrassed by the comparison. Whether or not he proves to be a figure for Poland with the charisma of the slain gay San Francisco politician Milk, Legierski, who won a seat on the Warsaw City Council last year, has made a start.
He is the first openly gay, popularly elected official in Poland. A board member of a small ecological party, Zieloni 2004 (Green 2004), Legierski was invited to run by one of the mainstream parties, the Democratic Left Alliance.
Tomasz Kalita, spokesman for the Democratic Left Alliance, said the overture was part of a strategy to strengthen his party’s lagging position before last year’s local elections as well as national elections to be held later this year.
“The strategy was to start rebuilding the left’s position with names that fit well what the left is about,” Kalita said.
Legierski is the son of a father from Mauritania and a mother from the Polish mountain village of Koniakow. As a child, he performed in a local folklore song and dance group and absorbed the strong local Catholic tradition. “Back then, in places like that, the issue of being a sexual minority wasn’t anything that people were hostile to – because it didn’t even exist in the mindset,” Legierski said.
Before he left for Warsaw to go to university, he never tried to discuss his sexuality at home. As he was coming out in the Polish capital, he could also be more open with his family. “They’ve gotten over it by now. Not that they were particularly happy or they are willing to talk about it even now. I think it’s more embarrassing for them by now than anything else,” Legierski said.
“I think when people get to know someone whom they think they hate or are afraid of, they tend to come to terms with it eventually. Just like my family, I never came out as gay in any official way. They knew it, I knew that they knew it. We hardly spoke about it, but over time we’ve somehow smoothed it out between ourselves,” Legierski said.
On winning a councilor’s seat, Legierski went through a brief period when journalists called constantly for interviews. The interviews were hardly ever about what his plans were as a member of the city council, he now says.
“I was a sensation: a gay wins election in homophobic, conservative, Catholic Poland! Makes you think where we are, doesn’t it?” Legierski said, as he nibbled on cottage cheese with chives at Sklep z Kanapkami (The Sandwich Shop), a restaurant and coffee shop across from Warsaw’s presidential palace that he co-manages.
At 2 p.m., there was a mixed crowd on the premises: on the ground floor teenagers hung out after school and upstairs a few business types hunched over their laptops. No one blinked an eye as Legierski talked, and he was not talking quietly. He said he doesn’t find the world of politics all that different from the world of activism, in which he made his name.
“Let’s be frank, I’m not any big politician. I’m a city councilor from an opposition party. I’m still doing whatever I did as an activist plus I work as a councilor. I’ve not changed sides,” he said. There were sacrifices, he added, like quitting as a host of Better Late Than Never, a program on a popular Warsaw radio station.
“The hosts and their guests discuss social, political, and cultural issues circulating in the world that’s at odds with everyday heteronormality,” according to the station’s website. “[The show] gives you a shot of energy that you’ll need to live through another week in the fumes of heteronormality – without camouflage.”
Running for a councilor’s seat, Legierski didn’t bother with camouflage. While he says he didn’t make an issue of his sexuality, it was common knowledge. “I’m already stereotyped as a gay and nothing else. I’ve met people who think that on the council I’ll do nothing but talk about gay and lesbian stuff,” he said.
“Everyone in Warsaw has known for years that I’m gay. I couldn’t even make that an outstanding point when I ran for a seat on the city council. I’ve flown the gay flag high enough before, what else could I do?” he said.
He also says that it was his platform, not the appeal to the gay and lesbian community, that won the day. “I’m pretty sure that my success in the elections owed nothing to any mobilization from the LGBT people who’d think of voting for ‘one of us.’ Such solidarity doesn’t exist in our circles,” he added.
“Many gays and lesbians don’t even vote. They feel marginalized so they don’t see a need to be active. I’d like to show them that it’s their city too and that they can own some of it,” Legierski said. “It’s about being represented and not at the mercy of [Prime Minister] Donald Tusk who might, or might not, be persuaded to do something for them,” he added.
But if there’s not much political solidarity among Warsaw’s gay community, there is a definite social glue, to which Legierski contributed greatly.
After taking a law degree from Warsaw University, he opted not to pursue a career as a lawyer. Instead, he ran a nightclub, Le Madame – bad grammar intended – that was Warsaw’s ultimate destination for lovers of unruly arts, the gay crowd, and everyone who thought themselves at odds with mainstream culture and politics.
Yet it was politics that put Le Madame’s existence to an end, Legierski says. The venue was shut down by city officials, led by conservative right-wing party Law and Justice.
Le Madame sublet the venue in a building in downtown Warsaw from a company that the city hall claimed had no rights to sublet or manage. The city won a court case against the company and ended the lease in 2006, in spite of officials’ frequent declarations that Le Madame had become too important a cultural spot to be driven away.
“We were unwanted and gotten rid of,” Legierski said.
Robert Biedron, a co-founder of a Warsaw organization called Campaign Against Homophobia, said Legierski’s cultural activism, especially his stint with Le Madame, helped make him a fixture in some circles in the city.
“Le Madame was an important, even if not the only or dominant, spot where the LGBT community met,” Biedron noted, adding that the Campaign Against Homophobia’s youth group held its first meeting at the club. “It was also a major meeting point for Warsaw bohemians,” Biedron said.
In office, Legierski says his ultimate goal would be a law recognizing homosexual marriages in Poland. But that’s the domain of national politics. As a local player, he would like to draw on his experience with Le Madame to make Warsaw “sexy and colorful.”
“I want this city to be for everyone," he said. In a city where the Pride parade has suffered an on-again, off-again status, Legierski said he would like to see officials more actively associate themselves with it and bring it into the mainstream. In addition, he said, he would like them to "work out a system to support small cafes or art galleries, instead of driving rents up so that only banks can pay them,” he said.
“I would also like to make people, particularly minorities like gays, but also immigrants, feel that they can own Warsaw too, just like everyone else,” he added.
He admits, though, that being in opposition will put his ideas to the test. In Warsaw, as on the national level, political power is held by Civic Platform (PO), a party whose claims to be liberal are dismissed by Legierski.
He says Civic Platform is worse than even Law and Justice, which is “at least straightforwardly opposed to most of the issues I stand for. PO is hiding its approach behind what seems a civilized attitude. They don’t hit out against, say, homosexuals, but on the other hand they make it clear that we’re not going to be treated in the same way as healthy, heterosexual Catholics,” Legierski said.
“So they appear to be oh so European but in fact they’re pretty backward,” he said.
Even so, Warsaw under the rule of Civic Platform is not the kind of city where gay people can be open about their sexuality only in an underground club, he said. “There’s a lot of hate on the Internet, of course, but in real life, I haven’t been through any even remotely dangerous situations here.”
Wojciech Kosc is a TOL correspondent in Warsaw.
Poland’s first openly gay, popularly elected official envisions a more open, “sexy and colorful” city.
by Wojciech Kosc 22 March 2011
WARSAW | Campaigning for an unpopular, taboo, or otherwise controversial cause is seldom rewarding. Years spent living for a cause can transform a person into a bitter zealot, ultimately doing the cause more harm than good. Krystian Legierski, 33, has spent many years advocating for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Poland – to little effect thus far.
But he isn’t bitter, or a zealot. He’s a busy businessman, a cultural activist, a media personality, and a self-described “average Pole’s faggot.”
“He’s our Harvey Milk,” said Yga Kostrzewa, spokeswoman for Lambda, a gay-rights organization.
Legierski seems embarrassed by the comparison. Whether or not he proves to be a figure for Poland with the charisma of the slain gay San Francisco politician Milk, Legierski, who won a seat on the Warsaw City Council last year, has made a start.
He is the first openly gay, popularly elected official in Poland. A board member of a small ecological party, Zieloni 2004 (Green 2004), Legierski was invited to run by one of the mainstream parties, the Democratic Left Alliance.
Tomasz Kalita, spokesman for the Democratic Left Alliance, said the overture was part of a strategy to strengthen his party’s lagging position before last year’s local elections as well as national elections to be held later this year.
“The strategy was to start rebuilding the left’s position with names that fit well what the left is about,” Kalita said.
Legierski is the son of a father from Mauritania and a mother from the Polish mountain village of Koniakow. As a child, he performed in a local folklore song and dance group and absorbed the strong local Catholic tradition. “Back then, in places like that, the issue of being a sexual minority wasn’t anything that people were hostile to – because it didn’t even exist in the mindset,” Legierski said.
Before he left for Warsaw to go to university, he never tried to discuss his sexuality at home. As he was coming out in the Polish capital, he could also be more open with his family. “They’ve gotten over it by now. Not that they were particularly happy or they are willing to talk about it even now. I think it’s more embarrassing for them by now than anything else,” Legierski said.
“I think when people get to know someone whom they think they hate or are afraid of, they tend to come to terms with it eventually. Just like my family, I never came out as gay in any official way. They knew it, I knew that they knew it. We hardly spoke about it, but over time we’ve somehow smoothed it out between ourselves,” Legierski said.
On winning a councilor’s seat, Legierski went through a brief period when journalists called constantly for interviews. The interviews were hardly ever about what his plans were as a member of the city council, he now says.
“I was a sensation: a gay wins election in homophobic, conservative, Catholic Poland! Makes you think where we are, doesn’t it?” Legierski said, as he nibbled on cottage cheese with chives at Sklep z Kanapkami (The Sandwich Shop), a restaurant and coffee shop across from Warsaw’s presidential palace that he co-manages.
At 2 p.m., there was a mixed crowd on the premises: on the ground floor teenagers hung out after school and upstairs a few business types hunched over their laptops. No one blinked an eye as Legierski talked, and he was not talking quietly. He said he doesn’t find the world of politics all that different from the world of activism, in which he made his name.
“Let’s be frank, I’m not any big politician. I’m a city councilor from an opposition party. I’m still doing whatever I did as an activist plus I work as a councilor. I’ve not changed sides,” he said. There were sacrifices, he added, like quitting as a host of Better Late Than Never, a program on a popular Warsaw radio station.
“The hosts and their guests discuss social, political, and cultural issues circulating in the world that’s at odds with everyday heteronormality,” according to the station’s website. “[The show] gives you a shot of energy that you’ll need to live through another week in the fumes of heteronormality – without camouflage.”
Running for a councilor’s seat, Legierski didn’t bother with camouflage. While he says he didn’t make an issue of his sexuality, it was common knowledge. “I’m already stereotyped as a gay and nothing else. I’ve met people who think that on the council I’ll do nothing but talk about gay and lesbian stuff,” he said.
“Everyone in Warsaw has known for years that I’m gay. I couldn’t even make that an outstanding point when I ran for a seat on the city council. I’ve flown the gay flag high enough before, what else could I do?” he said.
He also says that it was his platform, not the appeal to the gay and lesbian community, that won the day. “I’m pretty sure that my success in the elections owed nothing to any mobilization from the LGBT people who’d think of voting for ‘one of us.’ Such solidarity doesn’t exist in our circles,” he added.
“Many gays and lesbians don’t even vote. They feel marginalized so they don’t see a need to be active. I’d like to show them that it’s their city too and that they can own some of it,” Legierski said. “It’s about being represented and not at the mercy of [Prime Minister] Donald Tusk who might, or might not, be persuaded to do something for them,” he added.
But if there’s not much political solidarity among Warsaw’s gay community, there is a definite social glue, to which Legierski contributed greatly.
After taking a law degree from Warsaw University, he opted not to pursue a career as a lawyer. Instead, he ran a nightclub, Le Madame – bad grammar intended – that was Warsaw’s ultimate destination for lovers of unruly arts, the gay crowd, and everyone who thought themselves at odds with mainstream culture and politics.
Yet it was politics that put Le Madame’s existence to an end, Legierski says. The venue was shut down by city officials, led by conservative right-wing party Law and Justice.
Le Madame sublet the venue in a building in downtown Warsaw from a company that the city hall claimed had no rights to sublet or manage. The city won a court case against the company and ended the lease in 2006, in spite of officials’ frequent declarations that Le Madame had become too important a cultural spot to be driven away.
“We were unwanted and gotten rid of,” Legierski said.
Robert Biedron, a co-founder of a Warsaw organization called Campaign Against Homophobia, said Legierski’s cultural activism, especially his stint with Le Madame, helped make him a fixture in some circles in the city.
“Le Madame was an important, even if not the only or dominant, spot where the LGBT community met,” Biedron noted, adding that the Campaign Against Homophobia’s youth group held its first meeting at the club. “It was also a major meeting point for Warsaw bohemians,” Biedron said.
In office, Legierski says his ultimate goal would be a law recognizing homosexual marriages in Poland. But that’s the domain of national politics. As a local player, he would like to draw on his experience with Le Madame to make Warsaw “sexy and colorful.”
“I want this city to be for everyone," he said. In a city where the Pride parade has suffered an on-again, off-again status, Legierski said he would like to see officials more actively associate themselves with it and bring it into the mainstream. In addition, he said, he would like them to "work out a system to support small cafes or art galleries, instead of driving rents up so that only banks can pay them,” he said.
“I would also like to make people, particularly minorities like gays, but also immigrants, feel that they can own Warsaw too, just like everyone else,” he added.
He admits, though, that being in opposition will put his ideas to the test. In Warsaw, as on the national level, political power is held by Civic Platform (PO), a party whose claims to be liberal are dismissed by Legierski.
He says Civic Platform is worse than even Law and Justice, which is “at least straightforwardly opposed to most of the issues I stand for. PO is hiding its approach behind what seems a civilized attitude. They don’t hit out against, say, homosexuals, but on the other hand they make it clear that we’re not going to be treated in the same way as healthy, heterosexual Catholics,” Legierski said.
“So they appear to be oh so European but in fact they’re pretty backward,” he said.
Even so, Warsaw under the rule of Civic Platform is not the kind of city where gay people can be open about their sexuality only in an underground club, he said. “There’s a lot of hate on the Internet, of course, but in real life, I haven’t been through any even remotely dangerous situations here.”
Wojciech Kosc is a TOL correspondent in Warsaw.
