The City Is Ours

Last updated
The City Is Ours
Miasto Jest Nasze
AbbreviationMJN
Chairperson Eryk Baczyński [1]
Founded30 December 2014 [2]
HeadquartersGabriela Piotra Boduena 4,
00-011 Warsaw [2]
Ideology
Political position Centre-left [6] to left-wing [7]
National affiliation The Left (2024 Warsaw local elections)
Colours  Yellow
Warsaw City Council
3 / 60
Warsaw district councils [8]
13 / 425
Website
www.miastojestnasze.org OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Miasto Jest Nasze members, 2018 Czlonkowie Stowarzyszenia Miasto Jest Nasze.jpg
Miasto Jest Nasze members, 2018
Map of reprivatisation 2.0. Mapa reprywatyzacji2.0.png
Map of reprivatisation 2.0.
"Cigarettes for children" campaign Smog. Papierosy dla dzieci.jpg
"Cigarettes for children" campaign
Election campaign Kampania wyborcza.jpg
Election campaign

The City Is Ours (Polish : Miasto Jest Nasze, MJN) is an independent citizen platform launched in 2013 in Warsaw, as of 2014 registered as a non-profit civic association. Miasto Jest Nasze is considered to be one of the major urban movements in Poland. In 2018 Polish local elections coalition formed by Miasto Jest Nasze took 22 seats in Warsaw district councils.

Contents

Organization

Miasto Jest Nasze counts more than 250 members (February 2023) and is led by board headed by Barbara Jędrzejczyk. The association is present in 12 of 18 Warsaw districts. [9]

Activity

Since its beginning, Miasto Jest Nasze focuses on exposing and publicizing malfunctions of Warsaw authorities. It supports transparency across all city functions as well as civic participation through participatory budgets and public consultations. As part of its activity, it monitors the work of politicians and city officials by publicizing irregularities in Warsaw's management and pressing on the importance of accountability. MJN uses tools typical to bottom-up organization (e.g. throwing up a street dance party) [10] [11] political party (e.g. running in elections) and think tanks (organizing conferences [12] and publishing expert reports presenting alternative solutions [13] ).

Among its scope of interests are such issues as: sustainable transport in the city, community rights, environment (especially smog and preserving green areas in the city), land management, [14] reprivatisation of Warsaw properties, [15] participatory democracy. [16]

Miasto Jest Nasze activity has been focusing on identifying and addressing critical issues, inter alia including the following:

Over the past years the activity of Miasto Jest Nasze has also been commented on in various foreign non-English press articles (including Frankfurter Rundschau , [25] Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , [26] Le Monde , [27] as well as Czech [28] [29] or Slovak [30] [31] media).

Warsaw municipal elections

2014

In 2014 local elections MJN won 7 seats in three Warsaw district councils (4 seats in Śródmieście, 2 in Praga-Północ, and 1 in Żoliborz). [32] [33]

2018

2018 local elections the coalition of local urban movements led by MJN received 5,72% of votes, winning 22 seats in 7 district councils (Mokotów, Ochota, Rembertów, Wawer, Wesoła, Wola, Żoliborz). Justyna Glusman, MJN candidate for mayor of Warsaw, received 2,32% of votes. [34] After the election she became member of the Warsaw mayor board as the Warsaw City Hall coordinator responsible for sustainable development, green area management and fighting smog. [35]

In the local elections of 2018, Miasto Jest Nasza launched an informative campaign to encourage EU citizens living in Warsaw to register and vote in the elections. The site allowed to generate a fast and user-friendly registration application, an innovative solution aiming at promoting the participation of the wide group of foreigners living in the capital. [36]

2024

Upon the 2024 local elections MJN signed an electoral agreement with the Left Together on 29 January 2024, [37] [38] [39] and run from The Left electoral lists. [40] [41] They gained three seats in the Warsaw City Council and twelve seats in Warsaw district councils. [42] [43]

International cooperation

Miasto jest Nasze is a member of the federation "Urban Movement Congress", which groups 40 organizations from around 20 Polish cities. [44]

In June 2017 Miasto Jest Nasze members participated in the Fearless Cities Summit in Barcelona, organized by Barcelona en Comú within the global municipalist movement “Fearless Cities network”. [45] In July 2018, Miasto Jest Nasze hosted the Fearless Cities CEE International Municipalist Summit in Warsaw. The first such conference to be held, it was a platform to exchange experiences on urban activism in the region, regrouping more than a hundred participants from Central and Eastern European municipalist movement organizations (including Spasi Sofia from Sofia, [46] Ne Davimo Beograd from Belgrade, Praha sobě from Prague and Iare Pekhit from Tbilisi). [12] [47]

Ideology

The main goal of the association is to protest undemocratic and profit-driven forms of urban planning, such as reprivatization and gentrification projects. The party organized blockades to prevent evictions as well as destruction of districts that house low-income tenants or which are important for local culture. The association argues that city authorities in Poland have developed a "mechanism of destroying the everything in order to make money". Miasto Jest Nasze is strongly critical of neoliberal policies, which it sees as the cause of growing wealth inequality; it is also strongly critical of the Civic Platform party, arguing that despite being the main rival to populist Law and Justice, it fails to provide a real alternative given its support for privatization and neoliberal policies. [5]

The association also promotes green politics and sustainable economics, including environmentalist urban planning methods. [5] It advocate the development of green cities and serves as a watchdog for environmental causes, campaigning on the need to curb air pollution and smog in Warsaw. [48] It is particularly well-known for publishing the "Map of Reprivatisation", which exposes connection bewteen politician and real estate companies involved in corruption and reprivatization programs. [49] It also launched Warsaw Smog Alert and published the "Warsaw Map of Dirty Stoves", providing data about buildings that use low-quality coal stoves and their contribution to air pollution. [50]

The association is positioned left of the political centre and advocates for egalitarianism and participatory democracy in urban planning. It aims to represents 'communities marginalised the in the mainstream (neo)liberal discourse' and is considered a tenant committee as well as a radical democracy association. It seeks to alleviate wealth inequality in the cities and urban decision-making, contents the capitalist-based power hierarchies in the cities, and challenge the "impenetrable ruling political class". Miasto Jest Nasze is strongly critical of capitalism as well as neoliberalism. [4] It advocates a socialist economic system, and is known for slogans such as "housing for millions, not for millionaires" and "strike, strike against capitalism, our way is socialism". [3]

Election results

Warsaw mayoral election

ElectionCandidate1st round2nd roundResult
Votes%Votes%
2018 Justyna Glusman 20,6432.32 (#5)Lost [51]
2024 Supported Magdalena Biejat [52] [53] 99,44212.86 (#3)Lost

Warsaw City Council

ElectionVotes%Seats−/+
2018 50,0025.72 (#4)
0 / 60
New [54]
2024 102,00913.30 (#3)
3 / 60
Increase2.svg 3
As part of The Left which won 8 seats in total.

Warsaw district councils

ElectionSeats−/+
2014
7 / 423
New [33]
2018
22 / 425
Increase2.svg 15 [55]
2024
12 / 420
Decrease2.svg 10
As part of The Left which won 29 seats in total.

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References

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