Maxine Betteridge-Moes: What is Wschód’s latest initiative, the Plan for Generations, and how does it differ from what you’ve worked on in the past?  

Dominika Lasota: To describe it properly, we need to go back a few years. It was 2022, the war in Ukraine had just broken out, and we knew that things were about to change very drastically. We already had the climate emergency to deal with, but the Russian invasion completely tore our world apart. Eager for change and seeking inspiration, we looked at many different movements in Western Europe, the US, and elsewhere. However, we soon realised that what we really needed to do was to look inwards and build something new: something truly Eastern European, truly intersectional, and truly ours. That’s why we created Wschód. 

For our movement to be successful, we needed to be proactive. We also needed to have our own agenda and to understand what kind of world we wanted to inhabit. At protests, we were always screaming that “they” were destroying our world, that the system was broken, and that we needed it to change. But then we started thinking: “What do we actually mean by all of this?”  

That conversation is still ongoing. From the inception of our movement, a lot of our work focused on the political situation in Poland. We mobilised to defeat the far-right government [of Law and Justice in 2023], and we helped what was supposed to be the better political option get elected. But when the good guys took office, we realised that they were not going to deliver the big transformation that we were hoping for, and this pushed us even more towards change.  

That is how the Plan for Generations came to be. It encapsulates our attempt to gather all of our solutions, dreams, and demands in one place, and to start building a very proactive coalition. It has been one of the most exciting things I’ve worked on as an activist. I did not expect the initiative to unleash so much energy in people. We are so exhausted with how bad things are, and we desperately need people to see that there is a way out of the current situation. In the face of all this horror, we can still do something good that works for everyone.  

The far right relies on fear and nostalgia to sell its vision. How does Wschód counter that to convey a sense of energy and hope for the future?  

The Plan for Generations is not a utopian document that sells people a better world on a plate. It’s a very serious summary of how things are at the moment, and we’re very honest about the different injustices and problems in the current system. The demands and solutions that we propose and fight for require drastic political action. When I was a campaigner during the Polish parliamentary elections in 2023, the democratic opposition was so weak and so detached from the people that the far-right party started gathering votes and support because it was tapping into the rebellious energy and frustration that had built up in the country. We realised that if progressive movements did not connect with people’s struggles, anger, and hunger for change, the far right would feed on these frustrations. Thus, establishing ourselves as the alternative rebels was immediately a tool to disempower the far right.  

Another important point is that we are offering viable solutions thanks to the many different conversations we have had with experts, trade unions, friends, and families. We are showing people these solutions, making sure to prioritise social security. We’re demonstrating that change is possible if we finally transform the priorities of our politics. 

You have intentionally omitted the word “green” from the Plan for Generations document. You’ve also dropped the word “climate” from your activism. What motivated that choice?  

It’s not that I completely abandoned these words, but I definitely stopped using them as often as I used to. There were two reasons behind this. First, the European Green Deal and climate policies in general have not had good PR in Poland. I realised early on that the people of Poland – a new democracy with a very different economic situation compared to France, Germany, or other rich Western European nations – seemed to care less about the climate because they were consumed by more immediate struggles. If I go out there and tell them, “The world is burning, and that is the most important crisis out there right now,” they will not be convinced. These people’s “end-of-theworld” is the fact that they don’t have enough money to pay for food or provide for their children. During my involvement with the climate movement, I repeatedly encountered this perspective. I spoke with many of my friends about this: if we are going to achieve climate action and climate justice, we need popular support. We need many hundreds of thousands of people on our side. For me, climate activism was never about saving polar bears – it was about improving people’s living conditions. 

The second reason was our aim to make the climate movement relatable and adaptable. So many climate activists feel nostalgic for 2018, when the movement was big and on the streets. We need to be very brutal with each other and say, “Let’s move on.” The people are somewhere else, and we should be where they are.  

So many people feel nostalgic for the climate movement of 2018, but we need to move on.

The media often prefers a sanitised version of activism, with clean slogans and palatable, nondisruptive anger. As you’ve taken on more systemic critique – of capitalism, patriarchy, or colonialism, for instance – how has the media’s reaction to you and your movement changed?  

I can’t imagine doing things differently from the way I do them now. At the beginning, the climate movement consisted basically of the youth and the likes of Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace, the Polish Green Network [a nationwide non-governmental organisation campaigning for environmental protection], and a few energy think tanks. Because I was so enthusiastic about the movement, I tried to meet everyone, and at a certain moment I realised that there were not that many people involved. It’s a very small bubble. We need systemic change, and so we need to build a movement on a massive scale.  

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a big shift because it pushed us to see the connection between that war and the climate emergency. When I understood that, I could see that there were so many more people and issues that our movement needed to speak to. It was then that we started approaching the workers’ movement, migrant associations, trade unions, pro-Palestinian activists, the feminist movement – and the list keeps growing. Expanding the movement has been highly effective.  

I think the media doesn’t fully understand us. We have not yet reintroduced ourselves, and making the movement and its priorities known requires a change in the way we organise. It’s not just words that we have been trying to change; it’s a whole different way of speaking about what we do, and it’s also a new way of taking action.  

In the absence of mainstream media coverage of your movement, social media can feel like both a lifeline and a trap. How do you personally use it to organise, connect, and resist – without burning out or falling into its pitfalls?  

We don’t use Twitter (X) anymore. Since it was taken over by Elon Musk, the platform has been terrible for the kind of work that we do. Still, for now, we need to keep investing our time and effort into building these channels of communication. A lot of our work is still really successful on Instagram and TikTok, but we are actively thinking about ways to build our ecosystem independently from the online world. It’s hard, and my best guess is that we should train our activists to build more grassroots groups. We also want to do a lot of in-person meetings across the country to build real connections with people.  

What are some lessons you’ve learned about building trust, commitment, and energy at the local level? How do you build cross-national solidarity in a Europe that often feels fragmented and divided?  

When we did the Embargo campaign in 2022 [a campaign to impose embargoes on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine], almost all EU countries had some kind of connection to Russia. They were buying fossil fuels from Putin and filling his war chest. We started with Ukrainian friends at the beginning, and then we reached out to our friends in Germany, Sweden, Italy, France, Spain, and basically any country we could think of. The sense of solidarity was very strong at that time; I could really feel that people from across Europe viewed the crisis as both a climate disaster and a peace struggle and knew that everyone had a role to play in the fight. Things became trickier later on, because we [in Eastern Europe] knew that if Ukraine fell, we would be next. So the Ukrainian struggle is very much our struggle too. We have been trying to build up Eastern European networks, and I find this very exciting. It gives us a chance to really demonstrate the power of our region and show that this margin of Europe has some of the most important answers to the big problems of our continent.  

Eastern europe has some of the most important answers to the big problems of our continent.

Eastern Europe also faces some unique challenges. A recent study shows Poland has the largest youth gender gap in politics in the EU, with a bigger proportion of young men leaning far right than in any other member state. How do you reach those young men to encourage them to join your movement?  

From its outset and going back to the strikes in 2020 and 2021 [nationwide protests primarily against restrictions on abortion rights], Wschód has been led mostly by women, but we have to keep building on that power. It’s not like young women are extra-privileged in this country – there are still many rights we don’t have.  

However, we have also tried many different strategies to bring men on board with our movement and to pay attention to what they have to say. In progressive spaces, there is often a competition over who is the most vulnerable, and gender and geography play a big role in such dynamics. A lot of our guy friends have drawn our attention to the fact that, while there are obviously many rights that women still do not have, the economic stress and patriarchal burdens imposed on young men also pose serious challenges. If we can’t empathise with their situation, they will feel isolated and lean more towards the parties that do see them, and that’s the far right for now. I wouldn’t say we have cracked the code on this, but we are working hard to build a community that also allows young men to play a leading role.  

I will never forget one of the conversations I had with friends from Wschód. My female friend and I were discussing toxic masculinity, and a male friend said: “Honestly, I’m so tired because we always keep talking about toxic masculinity, but when will we ever talk about healthy masculinity?” 

That was the first time I had heard the phrase “healthy masculinity”. I remember seeing his frustration and anger – and we’re talking about a very progressive person here – which made me realise that we were making a mistake.  

What does green freedom mean to you?  

Everything is about green freedom. We want to live in cities that are accessible and breathe air that doesn’t smell bad. We want to eat food that is sourced from our farmers, not big agribusinesses. We want to be able to get to our schools, universities, or workplaces by bus or tram. We don’t want to be worried about floods or droughts every year. We want to be warm in our homes in winter. And we want to be able to invest in new, modern energy systems based in our local areas and managed by people who care about others. To me, green freedom is about very simple, tangible things.  

To me, green freedom is about very simple, tangible things.

We need to speak about the large-scale transformation that the climate crisis requires in a very practical and relatable way, because that is how we can tackle people’s fears and concerns about the climate movement. Research on [Polish] people’s opinions on the European Green Deal shows that the majority of them are against it. But Poles are also very pragmatic: more than half of respondents in a 2024 poll said that measures to prevent climate change should be introduced, and 78 per cent were in favour of accelerating investments in renewable energy sources. People know what the sensible option is. They just need to see how it can be done and how it can work for them.  

The climate movement is not dying, but its previous form is. If we evolve into something new, the movement can emerge more powerful than before. I am very excited about that.