Choosing Not to Walk in Somebody Else’s Shoes

by Ashley Blackwell, Anna Wójcik, Martin Schinagl

You have one week to create a social media campaign about a minority group you know little about, have limited access to members of this group to learn from their personal experiences, and do not personally reflect this group’s background. Will you advocate on behalf of these people despite your limitations? Or will you choose a strictly informational campaign strategy? These are the questions that our group faced during the outset of our campaign.

In our case, we chose to focus primarily on bringing to the surface hate speech towards Roma people, and contrasting it with research and statistics that illuminate the reality of Roma people. We found that a majority of hate speech painted a caricature of Roma people as beggars and thieves who are living on the margins and unwilling to contribute to society. Roma societies have been a part of Europe and Poland from the middle ages on, but they have historically been marginalized. For example, one in three Roma are unemployed, 20 percent are not covered by health insurance, and 90 percent are living below national poverty lines. Using this as our springboard, we wanted to deconstruct these stereotypes and social conditions. Are they well-founded, or are there structural barriers to social mobility for the Roma population?

It became apparent from multiple reports such as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ 2012 report The Situation of Roma in 11 EU Member States and a report detailing hate speech in Poland that this population faced countless structural barriers. In regards to employment, healthcare, education, housing, among other essential spheres of life, Roma experience significant discrimination. This juxtaposition of research and hate speech gave birth to our slogan: Don’t Keep Roma Out, Keep Out Hate Speech. The images we created had a quote from hate speech found online and a statistic illustrating the circumstances of people who are Roma.

Figure 1 *Statistic from European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, The State of Roma in 11 EU Member States, 2012: p.24













Figure 2 *Statistic from European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights : The State of Roma in 11 EU Member States, 2012: p. 23














However, we also knew that research and statistics failed to capture the holistic experiences of members of the Roma community. To try to understand more personal experiences and reflections we contacted multiple existing Roma organizations in Poland. Unfortunately, we failed to receive a response from majority of organizations. Our best luck was coming across a few members of the Roma community in Warsaw by chance and a Skype interview with a Roma activist.
Another point of hesitation was that of the sustainability of our campaign. Should we use footage with people who are Roma if we are unable to sustain a relationship with them or this campaign beyond the duration of the fellowship? Would using Roma people’s stories and faces in our campaign be another form of exploitation of an already disenfranchised group? To what extent were we willing to go to attract attention to the problems facing this population? In this field, one must be careful not to fall into the trap of making false promises to the communities one seeks to build campaigns around.

As a result, we decided to use videos in our campaign to focus on the Poles’ perspective of Roma people and juxtapose this perspective with statistics illustrating the reality of Roma people. Our first two videos did not show any people, but utilized different images of closing doors that are layered with hate speech and statistics. We use this as a simple but concise metaphor of the effects that stereotypes and stigmas have in society by closing doors of opportunity. Through our final video, which is more of a short documentary, we actually interviewed passerby’s on the streets of the Old Town in Warsaw, to ask, first, what they know about Roma people and, second, if they know any Roma people. The portrayal of some people and exclusion of others in the final product of the video are a direct result of our reflection on the topic. For example, we did not show the faces of the interviewees, because it is not the opinion of one person that we are focused on, but moreover the opinion of the society that they represent. In the production we also decided to edit out a few scenes with two young Roma children that were playing the accordion. However, because of the way we filmed their whole faces and the fact that they were children made us rethink their purpose in the film, because this scene could have been easily misinterpreted as potentially perpetuating stereotypes of the Roma community. The power of the film is, as we see it, even stronger and clearer because we have edited out certain parts, and emphasized others.

In a circumstance like this, it is easy to look at the requirements for our social campaign to receive a benchmark of likes, views, shares of the images/videos we produce and use whatever means necessary to achieve those results. It is a tightrope walk to, on one hand, attract attention for the cause and on the other hand, use controversial images that may perpetuate stereotypes for the sake of garnering attention. This image of the “Liking isn’t helping” campaign led by Crisis Relief Singapore to address Facebook Philanthropy powerfully illustrates a similar sentiment we were confronted with regarding this exercise given our difficulties connecting with the community and time limitations:

So we were left with the question of how not to risk trivializing the plight of Roma people internationally or in Poland for the sake of our own self-congratulations? We are certain that engagement in the form of a social campaign cannot effectively function without an active outreach to and collaboration with the community one seeks to help. Just as important is the constant reflection on: at what- or whose- expense are you achieving your results? This campaign has been an opportunity to learn more about Roma people through research, though we are still a long way from understanding what the lived experiences of the Roma community encompasses on a daily basis. Sometimes, it is necessary to choose not to walk in somebody else’s shoes and instead recognize one’s limitations and find a different angle to ethically achieve the results. However, it is equally important not to be paralyzed when facing such a choice and worthwhile to take action in the face of hate speech.

Sexual Harassment Does Not Exist in Poland?

by Madeline Hung, Magda Miśkowicz and Hanna Pieńczykowska

Many people in Poland think that sexual harassment in the workplace is only physical and therefore, infrequent. When we told them about the scope of behaviors defined as sexual harassment, as well as the number of people who experience it in the workplace, they were surprised. We hope that our message and our campaign will begin to change this kind of thinking, one small step at a time.

The recent media scandal concerning prominent journalist, Kamil Durczok,  shows us that there is a certain disagreement over the definition of sexual harassment in Poland: on the one hand, the victim in this case had a broad understanding of what defines sexual harassment, but on the other, she was afraid to speak up about her experience. It is likely that this victim feared public backlash about her story, as many people do not consider unwelcomed verbal remarks and advances to be sexual harassment. Individuals are not the only ones to hold this view. Many companies do not recognize the verbal forms of sexual harassment, just as Polish law provides inadequate protection against many forms of sexual harassment in the workplace.

The central idea of our campaign was to address this misunderstanding and inform people that physical, verbal and even non-verbal activities may act as sexual harassment if they are unwanted by the victim. Early on, our team decided that developing a campaign to advise victims to report their experiences would be very challenging. Considering the timeline of the campaign as well as the resources available to us, we decided that it would be inappropriate to encourage victims to report if we could not be sure that they would not face negative repercussions without adequate support. For these reasons, our team decided to focus on raising awareness about the various forms of sexual harassment and to show that not only victim, but also bystanders, and coworkers can – and should -  react.

From here, our strategy with our graphics was to show how acts of sexual harassment have become a normal thing—one of many tasks in the office during the day. We then coupled images of “normalized” sexual harassment acts with disturbing questions such as, “What’s wrong with this agenda?” Similarly, our campaign videos showed exaggerated and funny reactions to instances of sexual harassment, forcing viewers to rethink how they react in these situations– and if they react at all.

The first challenge we had in presenting this content was to address our audience’s presumption that we were only going to present female victims and male perpetrators. With any activism work, we always have to face some critique regarding the choice of the issues we want to address, even before we present the whole idea! While we had developed content featuring a variety of victim-perpetrator pairings, we had to release this content over the course of several stages/days, therefore leaving us vulnerable to critique. This goes to show, once again, that you cannot plan everything in advance because there will always be audience responses you just have to react to.

The second challenge was engaging our Facebook users. Although we managed to get almost 300 likes in a week, our followers did little beyond clicking the like button. We received very few comments, and almost no one shared their workplace experience. That is why we came up with the idea of an offline event on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street. Here, we interviewed young people about their workplace cultures and asked if there was anything that these individuals wanted to “take off their agendas.” This event was very exciting for us because people finally expressed interest in the campaign and some of them shared their personal experiences. However, this event also confirmed that a social campaign extending the meaning of sexual harassment is needed in Polish society. Some of our interlocutors admitted that they have to listen to many rude remarks of sexual
nature in their offices, but had not considered that such acts might be sexual harassment.
Ultimately, we haven’t changed the world yet, at least as of presentation day, but we hope that at least some people who stumble upon our videos or pictures in the future will think twice: is sexual harassment really what I think it is, and who defines it? Do I react by helping the victim or maybe just reproduce the misunderstanding that sexual harassment is only physical? Do I care about my workplace culture? Maybe I don’t give a shit about it at all.

Do you care?

The blog entry refers to social campaign “Wykreśl z grafiku. Take It off the Agenda.” Developed by Madeline Hung, Magda Miśkowicz and Hanna Pieńczykowska.
www.wykreslzgrafiku.org
www.facebook.com/wykreslzgrafiku

A social Campaign against hate speech: Gay in Poland?

by Anula, Aleksandra, and Anna

How do you create a campaign against hate speech directed towards LGBT people?

That was our question. …

So what’s our answer after 10 days of intensive planning and implementation?

There were about 100 discussions, 100 disagreements, 100 late night conversations, 1000 ideas, and more.

We started by focusing on the problem – what is the problem? Answer: Hate speech directed towards sexual minorities in Poland. Simple enough, right? Wrong… We dove deeper into the topic becoming more and more aware of the issues at hand. The amount of hateful comments we came across in public spaces, the Internet, and pretty much everywhere was unbelievable. Worst of all, people have become desensitized to such hate speech, ultimately decreasing safety not only for LGBT people but for society as well.

The next step was to create a social campaign, which, let’s put it out there: it’s not that easy. We had a lot of ideas but they were all missing something… After meeting with Creative Director Marek Dorobisz we realized we did not have a solid message –which is the core of a campaign. Our message was not detailed enough, much less did we have a target audience we wanted to reach. Director Dorobisz threw out ideas and we got to work.

Gay in Poland? This is the title of our social campaign against hate speech. Let us tell you our mission:

Gay in Poland? is a social campaign against hate speech committed to raising awareness of what it might mean to be gay in Poland (we use the term “gay” to encompass those who identify as LGBT people). For someone who is not part of the LGBT community, the typical image they have of gays is through the lens of Pride Parade and other major community events. We aim to illustrate the multi-faceted experiences of gays in Poland through these digital initiatives. Gay in Poland? believes in combating the injustices targeting individuals’ expressions of who they are. We aim to create a discussion challenging the way people think and talk about the Polish gay lifestyle, ultimately increasing awareness of hate speech towards LGBT people.

We then decided to start a Facebook fan page, check it out! Gay In Poland? Here we post relevant articles, graphics, videos, and statistics about hate speech against LGBT people and how to combat it. These are some of our graphics:

After four days up and running, our Facebook Fan page has gotten over 100 Likes and has had more than 5,000 reaches! This is just the beginning…

In addition, we developed three short video clips designed to visualize our social campaign’s mission statement. We worked to show the multi-faceted experiences of gays in Poland and raise awareness of the challenges and intolerance sexual minorities face in Poland. Check out our videos! Below are the links:

Parade:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XqqnTFy-dTeFJkUll6N0xPUFE/view?usp=sharing

Drag Queen:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XqqnTFy-dTc0FMc0Zic1hlWjQ/view?usp=sharing

STD:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XqqnTFy-dTV013RWVrYnhBRFU/view?usp=sharing

So what is a more detailed answer to our question – how to create a social campaign? The answer is: We don't know:) However, important characteristics in developing a campaign may include and are not limited to: commitment, perseverance, and resiliency, mixed with a bit of hope and much more.

We would like to thank the Humanity in Action Polska 2015 team for their hard work and effort in organizing this summer for us. We have a new set of experiences, knowledge, and network. Thank you for what you do. 

"At first, they abused us verbally, then physically…..” Nobody helped them!

by Surya Karki, Nora Lassahn, Vu Thuy Ahn Phan

From 2010 to 2014, Poland saw a 472% rise in reported racist and xenophobic crime. We – three 2015 Humanity in Action Fellows – embarked on a journey to try and understand the situation of people of color in Poland.

“At first, they abused us verbally, then physically. They beat us and kicked us, breaking my brother’s arm,” said one of the two black Dutch brothers that were abused in Wrocław, Poland in January of 2010. The incident was one of 182 racist and xenophobic crimes reported in 2010. It is astonishing to see its exponential rise to 1042 cases in 2014. Will the hatred against the 1.23% of the Polish population continue to rise? Or will the civil society stand up to the injustice?

After conducting the research online and meeting people, subjected to discrimination and racism, out team came to a deeper understanding of the symptoms of the problem – being treated as an object, stereotypical staring, and physical violence. We also came to learn an astonishing fact that 70 percent of Polish youth encounter hate speech on the Internet and most of the hate speech is directed against black people. The problem is on the rise, and, for our team, turning one’s back on the issue was the problem we wanted to tackle head on! We decided to launch social media campaign “Don’t Turn Your Back!” to call for civic courage and action for in our understanding, indifference and neglect could be equally contributing to the unjust situation as the direct action.

Don’t Turn Your Back! became a social campaign, aiming  raise awareness about discrimination and racism directed against people of colour in Poland. We had a specific focus on people of Black African background, identifying them as the ones being subjected to racism the most. In the beginning, our team faced several challenges. The most apparent one was that none of us were from Poland/Polish speakers. Coming from Germany, Nepal, and Vietnam-Ukraine, we were new to the Polish context. Another challenge was the sensitivity of the subject – talking about historically charged ideas of “race”, “colour”, “blackness” vs. “whiteness” was never easy. While brainstorming the ideas for our campaign, we asked each other: “What kind of story would be the most compelling one to convey in our campaign? How can we portray the situation without replicating the same stereotypes or even aggravating the situation? What if the problem is so small that by presenting it in our campaign, we would create a backlash?”

We decided to go out there “in the field” and find out the situation by talking to people, who have actually lived in that environment and experienced unjust situations themselves. We visited La Mama Restaurant, which was run by people from Nigeria, and started conversations with them. Several people agreed to be interviewed. In the end of our research phase, we decided that our campaign should certainly talk about uneasy and even negative things, but in the end of it all, we would call people to react and take actions, so those uneasy and negative things would not repeat themselves.

“Don’t Turn Your Back” came into being. Our team decided to use social media platform Facebook to target as many Polish citizens as possible in the campaign that combined series of videos, interview-stories and visual graphics with a principle “first - show the situation, second – call for action”. In our video series, we chose to depict day-to-day situations of discrimination and racism shot from the first person perspective. The audience cannot see who the subject experiencing the discrimination is, but they can see that people don’t treat that person well. In the final video episode, the audience gets to know that all the mistreatment was done because of the subject’s skin colour.

Black people live at the core of discrimination. They don’t choose to be in either position but are forced into it. One of our interviewees put it wonderfully: “We get marginalized, stared, tokenized, and objectified so much that we have got used to it. Being stared at on a bus/street, and being called names is now a normal thing for us because every person on the street thinks it is ok”.

In our page, “Don’t Turn Your Back” call for us meant not to ignore incidents of discrimination, whether it means to “step” in or report it, and not to be a perpetuator in these incidents. While injustice and discrimination is accepted by majority of Poles, there are few effective and efficient organizations and campaigns (Never Again, HejtSTop, HIA Polska, and Afryka.org) mainstreaming the issue of racism and xenophobia that 1 in every 4 Black Africans living in Poland are currently subjects of.

We provided the links to those sources on our Facebook page. Our team also hoped that with the absence of effective official channels to tackle the situation, citizens can take an active part in creating new channels for actions and dialogue themselves and that our social media campaign has contributed to that. After our first week of campaigning online, where we were actively contacting other NGOs in Poland, we have received more than 200 likes, including from the organizations that work for African communities in Poland and followers who oppose discrimination and racism.

So what was the main take away from our one week campaign then? Well, working as a team we came to understand that the issues of discrimination of colored people in Poland has been ignored by the majority and will continue to be ignored from political as well as civil discourses if everybody continues to turn their backs. In the end, the relevance of our campaign might be obscure for those, who have not been so familiar with the situation. But trust us, the 40,200 national or ethnic minorities living in Poland need you to understand that the feeling of being mistreated, marginalized and discriminated isn’t warm and fuzzy. Therefore, the change should start with us not turning our backs and taking action!

Team Refugee in Action

by Karolina Osiak, Robert Tessier, Sasha Zmiyenko

Opening a newspaper these days is quite telling: among the Greece crisis and ISIS horror, there is another poignant issue that makes Europe cry out loud – the situation of refugees. Poland is far from being collaborative on the topic: the government has declined the refugee quotas suggested by the EU and Poles themselves are not too welcoming. A 2013 study (by Centre for Research on Prejudice) shows that as many as 69% of Poles do not want non-white people living in their country. The situation is mind-boggling, especially considering Poland has one of the lowest refugee intakes in Europe. “So what do we do about it now?” – was a question we had to ask ourselves, touched by the current state of refugees. “Let’s take action and make a social campaign!”. And that’s how Team Refugee was born.

Team Refugee is only one third Polish, and only two thirds European. Only one third of us had ever worked on a social campaign, and one third of us had any experience with video or image editing. At least since we only have three people on our team, so there weren’t a lot of people to teach.

 That’s us, lots of sass and not much experience.

We had 10 days – a mind-twisting number that made some of our more panicky team members (*cough* Karo *cough*) get into hyperactive mode. To keep it simple, we decided to focus on a target group we actually understood: young people. We made our goal accessible: change some negative attitudes about refugees. In retrospect, that goal was a little too broad. However, we still think we made a small impact.

With our goal in mind we set up social media pages and worked frantically around the clock. We sent out dozens of press releases, invited friends, posted in other pages, and more. We did all this to combat existing stereotypes and increase the acceptance level of the refugees into the Polish society. We also aimed to have some more tangible results, to check our campaign efficiency: 500 likes was what we pushed ourselves to reach. In the end we didn’t even come all that close really, getting only about half way. But we tried!

 We created content that we hoped would catch the eyes of young people and personalize the struggles of refugees. We came up with two main visuals concepts: „Plans” aimed to show the absurdity of the notion that refugees have a choice and come here to use the social benefits and „Misconceptions” countering the overly repeated arguments about why refugees should not be accepted.

„Plans”















„Misconceptions”

We created a mixture of aggressive images like these ones and more lighthearted ones.

We then met up with two refugees and interviewed each of them. Unfortunately, we obliviously ruined the sound on the interview recordings by leaving the case on the Go Pro…oops. We managed to do a follow up with one of the refugees and used that to create two videos. We also put out a set of images with pictures of her and quotes from the conversation. We used her narrative to bring people closer to refugees on World Refugee Day. People really responded well to the content with her. We’ve received messages and comments with positive reviews. Our Facebook page has gathered not only our families and friends, but also people interested in our campaign. Some organizations have sent us supportive e-mails in response to our press releases, some of them also shared our content.

There was also one woman who works in movie production that approached us during the campaign presentation event in Warsaw and asked for cooperation. She was impressed with our short movies of interviews and the topic we’ve picked. We’re happy to continue our work on this project. Our conversations with refugees were truly important to us and we would love to share the real image of people “hiding” behind the “label” of refugee. Karo (Karolina Osiak) and Sasha (Alexandra Zmiyenko) are trying to design an idea for their action project in connection with this campaign.

Overall, the campaign was difficult but we all learned a lot! Karo (Karolina Osiak) learned to use Photoshop and to think before doing things. Sasha (Alexandra Zmiyenko) learned that networking means a lot and that the Russian internet has everything (especially in terms of acquiring some movie-making skills). Rob (Robert Tessier) learned that social campaigns are really complex and in the future he’ll hire someone if he needs to make one. But most of all we learned that the HIA Polska team is the best team around (we’re a little biased) and we couldn’t have been more lucky than we were to be involved in this incredible program.

“Women” not “bitches”

By Camille Erickson, Aleksandra Mosiolek and Katarzyna Siemasz

"Stupid white whores spreading their legs without marriage.” “Fuck her, plow her, and get politics out of her head.” These were just two of the examples that we came across while searching the web for gender-based hate speech. We did not find them on some extremist websites, but rather on the top 10 popular portals in Poland.

The social campaign, “Nie Ma Zgody Dla Tej Mowy,” aims to provoke discussion about gender-based online hate speech by launching social media efforts in the form of videos and graphics primarily on Facebook. Our campaign aims to catalyze debate and discussion through provocation; we believe in order to insight people to care about this issue we need to take drastic action to catch public attention.

We created bold, colorful graphics that would spread throughout the web. The graphics feature texts of the very instances of hate speech found online in Poland. At the bottom of each graphic we explained the purpose of reappropriating this speech. The graphic stated: “Surprised to see this here? You can find it online everyday. End hate speech online.” By bringing these instances of hate speech that are ignored or go unreported back to the public attention, we hope to recontextualize the words to demonstrate the absurdity and violence of the hate speech that goes unreported each day.

We also took examples of sexist and misogynist comments from online into the center of Warsaw by staging a performance and interviews. The performance aimed to track how people respond when the hate speech that is often seen silently online is spoken out loud in a public space. Using a megaphone, we sought out a central location in Warsaw and screamed these examples of hate speech. After speaking these examples out loud we explained the purpose of the campaign. To our surprise, the response of the public was neutral and indifferent. The majority of people walked past without paying attention to our happening. Through this performance we became more aware of the normalization of this issue. Since we anticipated some reaction from the public, this unexpected result helped direct our campaign in a more provocative direction; we seek to provoke and bring this hate speech (silently and violently taking over the internet) into a more public forum.

We believe that bringing these instances of hate speech offline into the public sphere was an innovative way to develop a social campaign. While we have each personally experienced hate speech online, saying these phrases out loud was a very intense and thought-provoking experience. We each shared how the performance impacted us on a personal level and reminded us of how important combating this issue is. We believe feeling a personal investment in any social campaign is critical. We also think that collecting the opinions of participants and basing the direction of the campaign on their own experiences also remains an important step in any social campaign. It is essential to understand the issue before attempting to find solutions.

There still remains a lack of research and understanding of gender-based hate speech online in Poland. When reviewing different hate speech definitions available on Polish websites we found that the category of women was often excluded.  According to a report by the Feminoteka Foundation, gender-based hate speech towards women “preserves gender hierarchy in the cyberspace” and “reinforces male domination by eliminating or silencing women’s voices on the Internet.” We believe freedom of speech ends when it violates another person’s human right to safety. While reporting instances of hate speech to companies is still a worthy step in combating online hate, this campaign is initiated from the conviction that more action is needed from internet users to expose the enormity of violent comments. The freedoms and opportunities provided online should be available to all. We demand more effective complaint mechanisms and laws governing hate speech online should go into effect in Poland. Attention to the marginalization of women online needs to be a priority when fighting for human rights online.

We created a Facebook page that each day presented information on hate speech through articles, reports, and other resources. By providing a forum for active Internet users to express their grievances about being victims of hate speech, we want to provide a site of empowerment, education, and solidarity. By breaking the silence around this issue, we hope to encourage the public to report and respond to instances of hate speech. We want to show to perpetrators that what they are saying online hurts and is unacceptable.
We understand that responding to each and every instance of hate speech towards women online is a large task, especially when you are the victim. Therefore, we also plan to write up potential responses for users to cut and paste into comment threads when they come across sexist or misogynist speech. This resource displaces the responsibility of eliminating the issue from the victims of hate speech online by providing everyday Internet users a fast and effective way to speak out against this violence.

We seek to change the sexist culture permeating the web that permits hate speech towards women, seeing it as somehow acceptable and normal. The anonymity of the online sphere also means that there is little accountability for perpetrators of hate speech. Yet, with the voices of many combating this issue, and each of us playing our part, we believe we can change the violent, discriminatory virtual sphere that silences so many in our communities.

Using the tactic of provocation ended up being a strong campaign strategy to bring attention to an issue that many would rather ignore. We were able to use the controversial phrases as a means to draw attention to the issue and encourage Internet users to consider their role in solving this issue.

…You Won’t Change People’s Minds…

by John Esteban, Maja Lepieszka, Marta Siwka

When we started brainstorming for the first time, we came up with an idea quite quickly: Why not to fight the anti-Muslim campaign we saw a few days earlier while walking around Warsaw? As much as we loved the idea, the implementation was not about to go smoothly.

All three of us had different visions of the campaign itself as well as of how we wanted to achieve the set goal. Considering our different backgrounds, knowledge about Muslims, in particular those living in Poland, and similar temperaments, altercations were unavoidable. Our opinions varied on distant elements of the campaign – from its outreach to the design of the main poster. Even font style used in our logo became a subject of a passionate discussion.

Logo of Campaign 

Once we figured it out, we could visit the mosque, make an appointment with Imam and take a few photos… and again, meet some obstacles. Who would think that without an approval of Imam, Muslims would not want to take a photo? And who would think that a Polish Muslim woman who lived in Iraq for 40 years would give us such an advice “Oh girls, give it a rest! You won’t change people’s minds. That’s how they are here”. Well, it’s still worth to try, we thought.

Our day, however, was not lost. We managed to find several warm-hearted souls ready to help us.

Maaz

We met Greg (Grzegorz), a Polish convert to Islam. He bought our hearts with his openness, willingness to talk and tranquility that emanated from him. Thanks to Greg we completed a part of our mission – creating our first video!

Greg (Grzegorz)

Next day we visited mosque again and met with Imam – a Syrian who has lived in Poland for 33 years. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree to record our conversation.

Our group managed to conduct a few interviews and collect some information that are available on our Facebook Fanpage. You can also watch there our second video. It was created with help of Muslims friends who live in Poland for few years and were happy to help us with our campaign that they found interesting and valuable.

Facebook Fanpage of our Campaign 

If you think that we couldn’t have faced more obstacles, well… keep on reading.

None of the Muslims we talked with was a target of hate speech! How is that possible?! Statistics show that 56% of Poles have anti-Islamic sentiments (CBOS 2015) and yet, our Muslim friends find Poles tolerant, open and kind. We came up with the conclusion: if there is no hate speech in real life then we should focus on fighting against hate speech online.

Thus, we decided for our campaign to aim at increasing visibility of Muslims living in Poland. We recognize that engaging with Muslims, providing them with a platform to voice their own experiences and, therefore, bringing visibility to their narratives and their stories is the first step in neutralizing hostility that Muslims face, both public and virtual spheres. The second step, we believe, is actually fostering a different kind of environment where relations, dialogue, conversations, and negotiations take place between Muslims and Poles.

Having our most intense days of the campaign behind us, we feel as much proud as relieved. It was hard and nerve-racking experience but we’ve learned a lot. On one hand, now we know how to interview people, film and combine different ideas. On the other hand, we’ve learned that we have to be flexible and patient.

Maja , Esteban, Marta

Nevertheless, every cloud has a silver lining and we achieved a lot in terms of self-development, and we don’t need any more “likes” on Facebook to know it was worth it.

Changing the Use of a ‘Jew’ in the Republic of Poland

by Oleksii Bondarev, Nina Gabryś, Elliot Mamet

On 15 June 2015 we started to work on our social campaign on the topic of counteracting anti-Semitic hate speech in Poland. The topic was especially broad, and we struggled to find a place to start. We spent two days trying to clarify the problem. Finally, with the help of our colleagues, we decided to focus on the misuse of the word ‘Jew’ in the Polish language, because it creates some stereotypes and leads to anti-Semitic hate speech. For example, consider how the infinitive ‘to Jew’ is often used as a substitute for ‘to cheat.’ Moreover, it was a feasible idea that can be addressed by work of a group of three people.

We understood from the very beginning that the name of our campaign should be provocative, because a provocative campaign would attract the most attention and thus most effectively expose our message to our target audience. After some reflections the title “Use ‘Jew’ Correctly” was proposed and received positive feedback from the Fellows and members of the Jewish community, as well as HIA Poland staff. 

Our challenges continued: Over the course of two days we tried to draft the concept of our campaign, but a consultant convinced us that we only had an emphatically boring idea and the only good thing we had was the name and slogan of the campaign. This feedback energized us to make our campaign more attractive. 

Working together in a group was really slow. We couldn’t agree on anything except the name of the campaign and were really frustrated. The American approach of putting everything in one document for further discussion didn’t work for us. And every discussion about how to use a ‘Jew’ was a mess. 

Finally we found a balance between all our ideas and decided how we were going to use a ‘Jew’. We launched our Facebook campaign “Use ‘Jew’ Correctly” on Friday, 19 June 2015. And due to Nina’s personal connections, we started to rapidly scale up our visibility. Amazingly, in only four days, we received over 600 likes, and our content was shared and commented on across platforms. We were especially pleased with the engagement with our campaign from the general public and from our target population.

But we still needed more content for our page. One of the problems was shooting a movie. We had one very good idea but due to lack of time and resources we changed our approach and drafted three other scripts. And, what is really cool, we got a professional film crew, again thanks to Nina. With professional it took us two and a half hours to shoot a movie. Elliot had an opportunity to show his acting talent and proficiency in Polish language. Nina was a director of the movies and did her job very well, as you can see on our Facebook page. 

Please feel free to join our campaign and Jew a Jew Jewly. Don’t understand? Go to our Facebook page and our dream team will explain you how to use this word.

           

The Enthusiasm To Be Frustrated

by Nora Lassahn

Looking out of the window: How to turn a complex issue into a single image

What makes a good human rights campaign? Should it be provocative? Surprising? Simple? While trying to come up with an answer to that question, I realized that it also always more difficult than you anticipated.

When I entered the conference room, where we hold our daily meetings during the HIA Fellowship, somebody was looking in from the outside, dangling right outside the second floor. Today, at the start of our picture and video-workshops, window-cleaners were clearing the massive glass facade of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Initially I was startled. But they could not have chosen a better day then the transition from our input phase to the planning of our actual campaigns. After acquiring knowledge about social and political issues in Poland, we are now trying to transform this knowledge into campaigns for social change - and to reach other people with our ideas. It's time to look out of the window!

But this turned out to be more difficult than I had expected. Putting your ideas into practice also shows you how your first enthusiasm is limited by technical restraints, and leads to the question of how to break down a complex issue into one single message. During the workshops with Mateusz Grabowski from Rochstar ("Graphic-design for Social Change") and Marcin Swystun from OP1 ("Short Introduction to Movie-Making") the other fellows and I got first insights into how this could be achieved. By looking at good examples of successful campaigns - one campaign showing posters of babies resembling dictators, another putting stickers of crouched prisoners into university lockers and finally, another illustrating how a condom can mark the difference between fun and funeral - I asked myself: What do these pictures have in common? Provocation? Sometimes. Creativity? Always. Surprise? Simplicity? Yes! Good campaign pictures have to be understood after once glance and carry a universal message. For me, provocation does not help as much as simplicity - life is so complicated; it is refreshing to feel that for once you can comprehend a matter just by briefly looking at it.

So, not only is a picture worth a thousand words. It also bridges language barriers because it can be internationally understood. Pictures can make communication easier and can unite people to tackle a common cause - whether they refer to this cause as the issue of "refugees", "uchodźca", "біженець" or of "Flüchtlinge".

Marcin Swystun from OP1 combined the message of the universality of images with very practical advice. Not only did he tell us that, "In hell there is a special place for people who shoot their videos horizontally" but also that, "the message is always the king". As a preparation for the first workshop we shot videos in public transport. This was an uncomfortable exercise: People turned away from me, didn't want to be filmed and reacted surprised. Or, even worse, they were doing something very interesting, but by the time I had found my camera in my big "Humanity in Action" bag and had waited for it to load, the person had already walked away.

It is very easy to be a successful human rights activist in your mind, to achieve great goals in theory, and to fantasize about what might happen, once you start campaigning for what you believe in. Real action is more difficult. You have to be at the right place at the right time, be fast and have a good idea. Plus, it can be frustrating and uncomfortable. Some people may not like your campaign; some might ignore or misunderstand it. But nonetheless, it is the only possibility to achieve change. Let's hope that still I'll always have the enthusiasm to be frustrated.

Rainbow Revolution
by Karolina Osiak

June is in full force and Warsaw is in a siesta state of mind on yet another Sunday evening. The enticing atmosphere of relaxing silence today strikes me as unnatural after the whirlwind of emotions of yesterday. From Al. Ujazdowskie, up to Plac Zbawiciela, the rainbow flags were unfurled, platforms were dusted off and filled with dancing. On June 13th the Equality Parade transformed the city into a safe bubble, where everyone was equal.

This was my first parade and I could not help but feel a trembling sense of excitement when I saw a gathering of people waiting for the event to begin. A big platform was in the center of attention with activists approaching it to share their views and mobilize the audience. “This is a majority parade, as equality is for everyone!” – a strong voice screamed and received a powerful round of applause. Among the revelry, the atmosphere was stirred by another voice supporting the currently elected government. He received instant backlash, and was replaced by a speaker who brought positive news to the crowd: the Palace of Culture would forward the powerful equality message of that day even further. The building would gleam with the seven colors of the rainbow.

After the first part, I quickly jumped on the platform, which became an open space for sharing smiles and small conversations with strangers, mastering the art of dancing as if no one was watching and waving at the observers videotaping us from their windows. There was a sense of innate freedom that filled my throat, triggered my body and untied my words. Never has anything been as simple and natural as the concept of equality. Appreciation of diversity was not an illusion anymore: it was shining brightly right in front of my eyes. I was longing for the utopia to be present every day and the celebration of equal rights to never end. Could this fabled dream ever become reality?

Photo credit: Alicja Szulc

I dare to say that we are still very far from reaching this goal. The first question that arises is: who are the people supporting this matter? Considering that we live in a society where our Equality Parade gets funded by Economic European Area Funds coming from Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein, it is painfully obvious that there are still not enough people on board to fight for this cause. This rings especially true for the higher circles. While the progress can be seen in Poland (the first openly gay city mayor of Słupsk, Robert Biedroń; the first transgender Parliament Member, Anna Grodzka), you might need a magnifying glass to spot any real changes. Poles are still nowhere near civic partnership, as we have still not managed to effectively implement this proposal into Polish law despite five recent attempts. The act that SLD (left wing) put on the agenda included shared taxes, hereditary amendments, and social protection after the death of the spouse for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. It was rejected, and the discussion will most likely go back to being a political tool used to win public support during elections.

Surprisingly, the right wing did not speak up too loudly either. During the parade I stayed constantly alert, fearing that extremists would sense the opportunity to inflame the conflict. Yet the only signs of their presence were difficult to notice: only some individuals were standing in a distance holding a Polish flag with insulting captions. Some others were trying to bribe the participants with candies to take leaflets describing in a detailed way their wrongdoings. The big group of policemen seemed startled as well, in the beginning spending the time with little to do.

After the parade I got tempted to ask my foreign friends about their impressions. They are more familiar with parades and pointed out the differences. While the parade of New York was deemed to be more flamboyant, glittery and courageous, ours still appealed to the crowd, bringing colors to the usually grey (as the Varsovians themselves would say) Warsaw. The relative conservatism is however making me think: is it an expression of our country’s background, the comparably short history of such events or the fact that the parade has been only legal (again) since 2012?

Photo credit: Alicja Szulc

Or maybe it’s just because we don’t have that much to be loud and proud about, when it comes to our social equality achievements? After all, hate speech towards LGBTQ people receives the highest amount of acceptance in Poland, and as we have also been learning, levels of physical violence are still very high towards the community.

Even though the problems are on the table and the LGBTQ community is well aware of them, this did not impede on the celebrations of equality. In the end, I loved the notion of us all being equal for a day. As one of my American friends said, “We can celebrate, but we still have a lot of work to do.” May this June day every year bring us closer to having a life-long equality celebration.