Word: walesa
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...neck tucked into his collar. The government deputation he brings with him are all stamped from the same mold, and to a man they exhibit the same well-paded faces. Across the table are the strikers, looking very different from the officials and from each other. Walesa, in his sports jacket and open collar; Bogdan Lis dressed casually, almost sloppily...
...Vatican, made this revolution possible. If religion breeds docility in some places, and surely it does, it can also have the opposite effect--empowering, emboldening, bolstering courage to the point where men will take risks like these. Catholic Mass becomes political in two senses in this movie: Walesa's repeated demands for free worship are important, surely, but even more important are the actual fact of the church services themselves, carried on inside the shipyard when the cause is human dignity, the words of the Our Father or the repeated Hail Marys must take on new, hopeful meanings...
...POLES," Walesa (and for that matter Jagielski) repeats several times in the course of the negotiations; when the bargaining is over, they solemnly rise to sing the national anthem. The devotion of Solidarity to its nation is obvious (though in a country with its own pope, much nationalism is subsumed in religious fervor), Clearly, though, the hopes of union members for reform go well beyond the boundaries of Gdansk, and, more important, well beyond the boundaries of the working class. Again and again Walesa that there shall be no agreement unless dissident intellectuals are released; if harassment continues, "We will...
...capitalist overloads, but of distant state bureaucrats, who inflict as much pain and humiliation as any factory owner. More the unity of the oppressed than simply of labor. Solidarity represents a radical national ideal--a state where the citizens were really in control of all social facets of life. Walesa et al do not want to rid the country of socialism. They want to run the factories themselves (an idea which makes American conservative applause for the movement both hypocritical and ironic). And what is more, they want to guarantee individual liberties at the same time. No more the dichotomy...
...talks pictured in Workers '80 wore on, the government representatives grew ever more feeble, ever more dominated. By the end, eager to sign an agreement,Jagielski tried to brush aside the dissident question with vague promises of inquiry. Rather than initial the document, Walesa said, "Why don't we take a ten-minute break?" "No, we're so close, let's sign," Jagielski responded. "Perhaps a 20-minute break would be in order," was Walesa's reply. Half an hour later, Jagielski delivered the goods on the jailed dissidents, and the pact was announced...