Word: walesa
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...barefoot. Many Poles with a flair for the dramatic still dress in black, or at least wear a black ribbon, as a sign of national mourning over freedom lost. Others flaunt plastic badges of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, the religious emblem associated with imprisoned Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa. To show they have not lost their sense of black humor, still others express resistance to martial law by quite literally wearing a resistor, a tiny radio part, as an ornament...
...brief moment last week, the heady days of Lech Walesa's Solidarity labor movement seemed to return to Poland. Heeding an appeal broadcast by the union's clandestine radio station, Warsaw motorists honked their horns at the stroke of noon and snarled traffic for 15 minutes in the city's busiest intersection. Several thousand onlookers, many flashing victory signs, cheered the drivers with chants of "Solidarity" and "Free Walesa" as part of the suspended union's efforts to protest the imposition of martial law five months before...
...protests were hardly a replay of the nationwide strikes of August 1980 that gave birth to Solidarity and catapulted Walesa to world prominence. Last week's brief and sporadic protests seemed more like a gesture of frustration than a show of force by the union. Still they were proof that Solidarity was alive-if not entirely well-after a harsh winter of repression...
Undeterred by the show of force, Solidarity members and supporters put up a huge poster of their leader, Lech Walesa, who remains interned. When banners bearing the suspended union's familiar SOLIDARNOSC logo were unfurled, the crowd's cheers were interrupted by the shrill sound of police loudspeakers issuing orders to disperse. Then the militiamen charged, beating demonstrators and bystanders indiscriminately. When the protesters responded with shouts of "Gestapo!" the militia began firing flares and tear-gas canisters into the crowd. High-powered water cannons drove some demonstrators into side streets. Others, less fortunate, were knocked down...
Many of the workers, farmers and intellectuals who were freed late last week seemed stunned by their sudden good fortune. Cautious in commenting about prison conditions, they did not claim to have been maltreated by the authorities. Neither Walesa nor any other top leaders of the banned Solidarity union were among those released. In fact, there were reports that some Solidarity advisers, including Historian Adam Michnik, had been moved to Rakowiecka Prison in Warsaw and would be tried for antistate activities. Said a former Communist Party member: "It is possible that the authorities plan to release all but the most...