STRIKE

Radom, Poland, 2013-2015,​​​​​​​

Friday, 25th June 1976, workers of Radom, Poland, took to the streets in a protest against the communist authorities. It wasn’t an organized riot, the idea of “Solidarność” was not yet ripe, and no structures existed to lead enormous, spontaneous workers' protest. They didn’t arrange it. They just couldn’t bear another wave of humiliation. The price of meat was to rise by 69 %, and sugar by 100 %. But it wasn’t about the meat or the sugar after all. The idea was to manifest that they are humans. That they have dreams. They have aspirations. They want a just and free country. Without fear. Without lies in the television, electoral frauds, and delusions of success.

This is not a story about Radom’s events. This is about the people who went down in history. Some of them of their own free will, carried by the desire to show them, those communists, that they do not agree to such a life; others by accident, too young to understand what they’ve got themselves into or even against their will, bought during a street roundup. And it’s not about them as they were at that time but about how this one hot June day forty years ago had changed their lives. It’s not an easy tale. There’s a pain in it that has not yet passed. Pain that gave some strength but put others on a path from which there is no return. On a path of fear and resignation.

All of them, no matter if they had reached success in their lives or are still standing on the stairs a moment before the walk cycle, say that it was not the people who were punished the most. It was the town. The town who lived to see historical studies. But no one saw the story of these people as closely as we do.