Solidarnosc

In 1980, while Poland was still under communist rule, Danzig's shipyard workers went on strike. The Solidarity trade union was formed and the concessions they won were the beginning of the end for communism in Europe. This is the shipyard gate in 1980, when thousands of people waited outside for news of the strikes.

And this is the shipyard gate in 2012. On the right you can see the two boards where the shipyard workers wrote their list of demands. Most of them were the sorts of things that every worker everywhere should be entitled to (and they were, in large part, granted), but the one that made me laugh was three years of paid maternity leave. "And we're still waiting."

 

Of course, it wasn't an easy path from the strikes of 1980 to the fall of communism in Europe. The communist regime struck back with a wave of pretty vicious oppression in 1981 and things definitely got worse before they got better. Members of the resistance started wearing electrical resistors as a sign of their opposition to the regime. Cool, yes?

An aside: While I was in Danzig, the hero of the shipyard strikes and former president of Poland, Lech Walesa, publicly endorsed Mitt Romney. You were doing so well, dude! What happened?