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Lech Walesa in 2009
Poland's former labor union leader Lech Walesa
said on Thursday he might join demonstrators on Wall Street holding a
long-running protest against the iniquities of U.S. capitalism.
"I'm considering it, checking the possibilities, and it seems that
I will go," Walesa told the Polish Press Agency after he received a
letter from the protesters asking for his support.
Walesa said he might make the trip to New York next month, and
would give his support as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which
he received in 1983 for his fight against the communist regime as
leader of the trade union movement Solidarity.
"I agree with the protesters when it comes to the diagnosis that
the capitalist system is no good," Walesa said.
"However, there is no third road. We certainly must mobilize the
labor unions in this situation, so they would not allow people to
get fired when, for example, a machine takes their place."
Walesa fought communism by holding protests in the shipyards of
Gdansk on the Baltic coast in the 1980s. He later served as the
country's president from 1990-95.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is led by 200 to 300 people, who
have shown no sign of budging to police pressure that rings the park,
where they have camped since Sept. 19.
They are protesting against corporate greed, excessive use of
force by the police, home foreclosures, high unemployment and the
country's treatment of minorities and Muslims.
