Imagine a Saturday night around 11pm in Warsaw, Poland. Some people going out on the town, enjoying themselves, and others staying in. This is a Saturday in January. Piles of snow everywhere, it's icy underfoot and the temperature's around minus twenty.
But the trains are running. There's hardly any cancellations at Warsaw East station. Plenty of people in the queue buying tickets, around a dozen hot dog and hamburger stands, people waiting for trains or waiting for people to arrive by train.
Only nobody's using the waiting room.
The waiting room is a largish hall with white walls and rows of wooden benches. It stinks of sweat and stale urine and is full of middle-aged men and women, all dirty, dishevelled, smelly.
I'm heading home out of Warsaw in 2003 but I missed the 10.30pm train and now have to wait until just after 2am for a night train. I was delayed at the theatre where I worked as a director. Like moths to a light bulb several approach me asking for loose change, asking for a cup of tea. I send two with enough money to buy a large tray of tea and another of coffee and bring them back to the waiting room.
Some of the others and me we get talking. Who are these people? Why are they here?
Most of them were once part of the Polish Solidarity movement. They were the smallholding farmers and agricultural workers, factory workers, engineers, teachers, and they all had educations, families and once had homes and livelihoods.
The above were all the things they risked through the time of martial law and under the former regime distributing pamphlets, organizing strikes, marches, meetings, and so on. They risked interrogation, internment, imprisonment, loss of civic rights, or even worse. Even as late as October 1984 agents from Department IV of the Polish Internal Ministry murdered Father Jerzy Popieluszki for his Solidarity activism.
They all shared that common dream of freedom and liberty. The dream that became reality in 1989.
The reality was short-lived. Lech Walesa taking power started a new era in Poland, just like in the West, when factories were closed down and sold off and the smallholdings and farms privatized and the tenants evicted. For many it was a slippery slope of unemployment, poverty, divorce and homelessness.
Many of them didn't receive anything like welfare. Life was no more than a constant daily walk with meals foraged out of dustbins and litter bins and smoking discarded butt ends from the pavement when one was fortunate enough to have matches or a lighter.
They asked me to do something to help them or people like them and I promised them that I would.
This is why I'm an activist. I'm one of the lucky ones, I'm fortunate to have had some success from my artistic work and I'm in a more comfortable situation because I can afford to be openly trans. However since coming out and transitioning I feel morally obliged to devote some of my time to people who are less fortunate and don't have my possibilities.
Yeah sometimes I get positive attention from people and admiration even though I'd rather not. Rather than standing round and admiring me I'd much rather people followed my example and did something - just one thing - for people who are less fortunate than they are.
You see you could have a million other activists like me (you probably have many more), you can have an entire government of politicians passing all types of anti-discrimination legislation but none of this work has any meaning or value unless people make it part of their culture and mindset to stand up and be counted in the face of oppression.
After all, isn't this what solidarity is all about?
