Global action day in solidarity with teacher Federico Puy in Slovakia and Czech Republic

13/09/2008

A short and incomplete summary of actions organised in Slovakia and Czech during the last week of August as part of the IWA campaign in support of Federico Puy - a teacher and FORA-IWA member sacked from Red Cross branch in Buenos Aires.

WHAT WE DID

1) A protest action and a delivery of official protest note to the nearest branch of the Red Cross

Red Cross has branches in a lot of even small towns. This was a great opportunity for people who were outside the “centers of activism” to organize their own actions. 

Two of our comrades made a small action on 15th August in the small town of Bardejov in Slovakia. And it went very well. Two people were enough to go to the RC branch office, told employees there why they came and talked with them a little or gave them the leaflet. Then they asked to meet the office boss to give her a protest letter.
Our members, comrades or friends also visited local branches in Bratislava (photo right), Košice, Prešov, Žilina (photo with poster below), Žiar nad Hronom, Trenčín in Slovakia; and Olomouc, Písek, Ostrava, Karviná (and possibly more as Czech part of Czechoslovak Anarchist Federation also took part in the campaign) in Czech republic. With aim to spread the campaign also in Czech Republic and with cooperation with comrades from Czech we made leaflets, posters and protest e-mails also in Czech language.

2) Posters were placed near the offices of the Red Cross in Slovakia and Czech cities/towns

There were two types of posters that people used. One was for the teachers to encourage them to show their solidarity in some way. The other one was for general public (just with informative effect). Posters for teachers were placed at front doors of schools in Bratislava (altogether over 30 schools!). Posters with general information were placed on much less places as we concentrated mostly on teachers this time. Several comrades and friends asked their former teachers for solidarity by e-mail or face-to-face. Except above mentioned towns, people public see the posters also in few other towns mostly in mid-Slovakia.

3) E-mails and faxes were sent to all branches in our country + to the headquarters in Geneva and to the branches in Argentina

We provided people with all possible addresses and model letters to send. This way they could send e-mails to Argentina, Geneva, Slovakia and Czech Republic in a few minutes. We know that people responded to this appeal quite well also because when activists visited local branches in some towns they have been informed that RC knows about Federico’s case because their branch received a protest e-mail(s).

We have also informed mass media (and few local media) by sending our press release but we received no feedback and we suppose no-one printed it out. At this moment we collect all the reports from different towns and plan to put on our website an overview article about all actions in Slovakia, Czech and worldwide. Thus we would welcome info on action organized in other countries.

See also:
First article on our website with appeal and all important information we had.

To download:
Leaflet (in Slovak)
General public poster (in Slovak)
Poster for teachers (in Czech)