Warsaw, Poland, police shut gay club

Polish police carried out a final dawn raid against Warsaw’s Le Madame gay bar on March 31, ending a week-long occupation of the club by an ad hoc coalition of movement forces.

Occupation of Le Madame. Photo: bent.com

Earlier that week, on Monday, police had blockaded the bar and tried to force the more than 200 people inside to leave. The Warsaw City Council had reportedly ordered the establishment shut down, once and for all.

But those inside refused to budge. Instead, they vowed to hold on to the club by staging a sit-in. As word of the resistance traveled, police barricades proved insufficient to keep out reinforcements—gays, lesbians and other left-wing , artists, students and other intellectuals—including those from out of town.

A group of militants from the left-wing political party Nowa Lewa [New Left], with its chairperson Piotr Ikonowicz in the lead, “eventually broke through the police barricades while lobbing a few beer bottles at blockading forces.” (Gay City News, Doug Ireland)

Le Madame, which opened three years ago, is owned by Krystian Legierski, a gay Polish-born Black activist.

The club’s artistic director, Kastia Szurstow, explained that the former electronics factory had become a home to many political currents. “Gays, feminists, anti-globalization activists, pacifists, anarchists, the left-wing opposition parties, we welcome them all there, especially when they find it hard to get meeting rooms elsewhere.” Before police shut down the building, the offices of the Warsaw Green Party had been on the first floor of the club.

Szurstow added, “We work with 61 theater groups and have produced 204 plays and pieces of performance art—everything from Chekhov and the classics to a play featuring only actors who were all schizophrenics. Our primary focus, however, is contemporary theater and art.” The club also served as a gallery exhibiting paintings and photographs.

As negotiations with police and the right-wing capitalist government in Poland continued throughout the week, support from an already broad political spectrum widened. All but the government-owned television station and the most reactionary newspapers aired sympathetic media-coverage of the sit-in. U.S. actor John Malkovich held a March 30 media conference supporting the occupation.

The next morning, however, police chose 6 a.m. on March 31 to raid the club again, at a time when there were only 50 people there. Some of the bar defenders had chained themselves to pipes and railings.

Gay activist Lukasz Patucki said the cops were brutal, beating many occupiers as they drove them out.

Forced into the streets, the resisters regrouped, chanting at the cops: “To nie koniec, to poczatek!” [It’s not over, it’s just the beginning!]