The text message spread with viral speed between the cellphones of Polish youths. With national parliamentary elections coming up on Sunday, young people had a clear mission: “Steal your grandmother’s ID,” the text jokingly implored.
The message referred to the conventional wisdom here that conservative older women put into office the governing Law and Justice Party and the Kaczynski brothers — the famous twins with the round faces of aging cherubs who are prime minister and president. Without their identity cards, the grandmothers would not be able to vote. If they did not vote, the government could be driven out of office.
...
The small Polish Peasants’ Party quickly ran its own advertisement showing a grandmother catching her grandson in the act of snatching her identity card. She tells him he does not have to do it, because she plans to vote for the Peasants’ Party and not Law and Justice.
Young people are trying to get involved in the election here this time, in ways as small as texting or as big as starting efforts to encourage people to vote.
...
Young, Internet-savvy Poles are fighting that lethargy — and the image of their country as populated by angry old villagers rather than the urbane hipsters and flush young businesspeople who can be found in cafes and clubs here in the nation’s booming capital.
Pola Dwurnik, a 28-year-old painter, said she avoided political subjects in her artwork. But after almost none of her friends voted in the previous election, Ms. Dwurnik decided to wage a get-out-the-vote campaign.
Her reasons were serious — she disagreed with the fights the government picked with the European Union and other countries, like Germany — but her approach was not. She created posters in which she plays a series of characters — an aloof intellectual, an unmarried pregnant woman and a hip-hop artist, among others — who urge Poles to vote. She sent the images to about 500 people and, like the text message, they were quickly forwarded and posted on blogs.
...
Ms. Dwurnik’s posters brought her to the attention of the young women behind the Web site Wybieram.pl (the word means “I choose” in Polish). They asked her to design “I voted” buttons for their campaign, which is run out of the basement of Chlodna 25, a smoky cafe and bar.
...
Kasia Szajewska, one of the group’s founders, said it was surprisingly easy to persuade the Polish MTV channel to run their ads. “In the States you have Rock the Vote,” she said. “They’re really happy to have something similar.”
Andrzej Bobinski, her direct supervisor at the institute where she works, the Center for International Relations, has to be understanding about the time Ms. Szajewska spends on the group’s activities. Mr. Bobinski was involved at the outset in Wybieram and now is working on another project, kandydaci2007.pl, a Web site set up to monitor candidates’ views, modeled after an American site, Project Vote Smart.
...
“I think there are lots of people trying to start up these sorts of initiatives,” Mr. Bobinski said, pointing to Poland’s vibrant Internet and blogging communities. Polish is the fourth most popular language on Wikipedia, after English, German and French. “There’s this movement, especially among people disillusioned with politics,” he said.
If anyone stands to benefit from a Civic Platform youth wave, it will be a young parliamentary candidate from the party, like Krzysztof Tyszkiewicz, 27, who is trying to make the leap from city government to the national legislature.
On a recent night, after a full day of campaigning, his eyes sagged and he looked as though he might fall asleep on his feet. Asked if he was headed to bed, he pointed at stacks of fliers that still needed to be handed out before the election.
He was skeptical that young voters would break the mold and lead the charge to victory.
“Young people help me with my campaign,” Mr. Tyszkiewicz said, as his staff looked on, “but the electors which have the best discipline are older people.”
His volunteers nodded in agreement and set about preparing for another long day on the campaign trail, handing out leaflets the old-fashioned way.
Revolutions can be carried out via electoral politics. It will be interesting to see if the texting/blogging generation of Poles who don't remember the last revolution during the Cold War can pull off another this weekend.
Recent Comments