| 
4.1.3.2.1 Informal Local Monitoring and Public Intervention Campaigns
4.1.3.2.1 Informal Local Monitoring and Public Intervention Campaigns
The Anti-Nazi Group in Piła came to existence in 1994 as an informal group of adolescent punk musicians who wanted to create an active anti-Fascist opposition to skinheads. They began by painting slogans on the walls and physically confronting violent skinheads from Piła. Eventually, the group gave up this confrontational approach and became a part of the anti-Nazi movement, which became the basis for the association Nigdy Więcej. The Piła group has worked towards preventing the expansion of skinhead activities in their city for the past several years. Because there are no foreigners in Piła, members of punk subculture have become the obvious enemy for local neo-Nazi skinheads. Their unusual clothes and haircuts have attracted the attention of skinheads who often insult them by calling them »slobs.« Punks have also been victims of threatening telephone calls and letters. The interviewed representative from GAN-Piła, Joanna Naranowicz, said that her family received telephone calls threatening to kill her, and her obituary was hung all over on trees nearby her house with news about her death. She was beaten up three times, and once the attackers broke her ribs. This and similar incidents affecting other punks sparked the movement against neo-Nazi and skinhead violence, and they launched anti-Nazi campaigns. They spread information leaflets in their city, met with local authorities and the police, and informed them about each time neo- Nazis attacked. Piła is not a big city, so the members of the anti-Nazi group usually knew the perpetrators of the attacks. All information gathered was then handed over to the police and to Warsaw to be published in the Brown Book (see below) edited by Nigdy Więcej.
First and foremost, GAN’s cooperation with Nigdy Więcej helped to bring about significant change in the community. When the press caught wind of the attacks on punks, journalists began appearing at every meeting with local authorities. The police and the authorities could no longer remain indifferent and had to take action. The police launched investigations into every reported case. Because the victims usually knew the perpetrators, the police immediately came to their houses and took them for questioning. Some of the skinheads were punished, making their identities public and stigmatizing them within the local community. Their families put pressure on them to change their lifestyle. This helped to weaken the strength of the neo-Nazi group and stop their attacks; however, Joanna Naranowicz alleges that some exskinheads have joined other far-right organizations and are active on the Internet.
Another example of activities focusing locally on hate crime monitoring and public intervention is the informal group also called Nigdy Więcej in Oświęcim. This group started in the 1990s, and their first public intervention case concerned an attack that a group of local skinheads carried out against a young German man. Katarzyna Nowak, a member of the group who was interviewed, says the group prepared a public statement: »We wrote […] that we were outraged about [this attack], that the city [authorities] should in some way support people […] who are victims of such assaults.« The statement was presented at a meeting with representatives from the municipal office, and the city publicly apologized to the German young man.
Other public cases in which the group has intervened include:
• A conference for the police and representatives of educational institutions organized in 1996. Nowak says the group »noticed that there is a great need to educate them [the police and teachers]. We saw that they had no basic knowledge when it came to symbolism and youth movements, but they were open to cooperation.«
•The filing of an offense notice to the court in 1999 against Kazimierz Świtoń, a far-right religious fanatic who incited a movement to raise crosses at the Gravel Pit near the Auschwitz museum. This action antagonized Catholics and Jews, and Jewish visitors who saw the crosses viewed this as an offense.
• An educational project organized by Katarzyna Nowak in cooperation with the International Youth Meeting House against racist stickers appearing in public places (the stickers showed stereotypical pictures of Jews, black persons etc.). Young participants in the project submitted photographs, which documented the chauvinist contents of the stickers. The documentation was made public, which sparked shock in the community that its chauvinist contents were being publicly displayed in the town of Oświęcim.
• The demand in 2004 for the immediate removal of anti-Semitic graffiti in Oświęcim. The former management of the Auschwitz Museum had ignored the problem, and only after Nigdy Więcej had submitted information to the press was the graffiti removed.
Both informal grassroots groups discussed above are also part of a nation-wide network of volunteers who contribute to Nigdy Więcej’s monitoring project, whereby they prepare and send monthly reports for the Brown Book. (3)
These two examples of local monitoring related to intervention campaigns seem to be based not so much on specialized knowledge and skills necessary for long term and systematic research on hate crimes, but rather on very practical knowledge on local sites of tensions (relations between subcultures or inter-religious conflicts over symbolic space). These groups put effort into building and maintaining all kinds of social bonds and relations in a local community, as well as working to achieve recognition of local and national activities organized by Nigdy Więcej from representatives of major institutions and other significant organizations that might be influential in the local space.
3. Nigdy Więcej. Katalog Wypadków Brunatna Księga.
(OPP)
