Lech Walesa Says "No Way" to Occupy Wall Street

Lech Walesa was rumored to be heading to New York to address the Occupy Wall Street protest, but it turns out that once he found out the true nature of the organizations behind it he backed out - in a hurry. From the Big Government blog:

The Polish champion of freedom and liberty, founder of Solidarity, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, and first President of modern Poland Lech Walesa had been rumored to possibly be traveling to New York to stand with Occupy Wall Street protesters. Press accounts reporting this “breathless” news had given all of us pause.

We suspected that the European news media had filtered out accurate information about the genesis of Occupy Wall Street (OWS).

When Walesa’s comments hit the AP wire last week, my team immediately reached out to our Polish contacts. We made the point that the political themes of Occupy Wall Street may have started out with some of the principles that we share, but OWS themes were rapidly being morphed into anti-freedom and anti-liberty messages. At the core is the want for a big, powerful central government to dominate the lives of individual citizens.

Using biggovernment.com plus other news sources, rapidly we painted an accurate picture of the groups training, leading, and organizing the “movement.” The movement is organized by anarchists, Code Pink, the American Communist movement, jihadists, anti-Israel, socialist, and anti- free enterprise interests. OWS folks are politically to the left of President Barack Obama.

At the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation in Warsaw, they were thankful to receive this information.

Based on our discussion and intervention, President Walesa is not going to get involved with the OWS. He is not comfortable with the “organizations” behind the movement. It was not a difficult discussion.

The lifetime of good work exercised by President Walesa has lifted people around the world fighting tyranny. Through the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation in Warsaw, Walesa has supported freedom and liberty around the world. As a man primarily responsible for vanquishing communism in Poland, Walesa has a personal bent toward helping the underdog and the downtrodden.

This spring, when President Obama visited Poland, President Walesa refused to meet with him.

Lech Walesa is a genuine hero of resistance to the totalitarian state. Getting him to speak would have been a tremendous propaganda coup. But unfortunately for the leftists behind the movement he has been around the block a couple of times and isn't going to fall for their tricks.

I especially noted the part about President Walesa refusing to meet with President Obama. Obama has treated Poland abominably over the whole missile defense system issue. A free Poland should be a valued ally of the West and the US in particular.

Maybe we ought to be as concerned as Lech Walesa about the hard left manipulation of the OWS protest.