Showdowns between Polish activists and its ultra-conservative government could help build a more tolerant future
- Agnieszka Holland is a film director and president of the European Film Academy
- Olga Tocarczuk is a writer and laureate of the 2018 Nobel prize in literature
If you want to understand the currents of change shaping our world, look to the periphery. Countries and people pushed to the margins teach us a lot about the health of democracy. They paint a picture steeped in paradox. As storytellers from one of these strange borderlands of western culture, we have made it our life’s work to truffle-hunt for narratives of hope and perseverance in dark places. Our homeland, Poland, is filled with such stories.
Take Elzbieta Podleśna, a veteran civil rights activist, who was drawn to Płock, a town in central Poland where the clergy wields unchecked political power. She led a group protesting against a church exhibition that encouraged believers to battle against so-called LGBT sins. Overnight they plastered posters of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow-coloured halo around the church – and promptly drew the fury of the police, the Catholic church hierarchy and lawyers brandishing the blasphemy laws.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3A9QEbc
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