Political scientist Ondřej Slačálek has informed the Czech Press Agency that the famous Czech anarchist and defender of the rights of Romani people, Jakub Polák, passed away yesterday. The activist succumbed to cancer just after turning 60. In the months before his death he was engaged in the case of the evictions of people living in the buildings on Přednádraží street in Ostrava-Přívoz.
Jakub Polák was born on 1 September 1952 in Karlovy Vary and became involved in public life in 1968, as a result of which he was forbidden from enrolling into higher education. He was part of the dissident and underground movements in the years after 1968. In 1989 he was a co-founder of the strike committee and actively contributed to the events of the Velvet Revolution. However, from the beginning of his public life he advocated for alternative political stances, which led him to join the ranks of the “Left Alternative” (Levá alternativa – LA), where he was active as its executive secretary. There he became a member of the anarchist wing of the LA, which later left the LA to become the Czechoslovak Anarchist Association (Československé anarchistické sdružení – ČAS). In 1990 Jakub Polák co-founded the first squat in Prague on plk. Sochora street. Together with people from ČAS he began publishing the A-Kontra magazine in 1991, which became the main publication of the anarchist movement as it came into being during the first half of the 1990s. At that time he was considered the unofficial spokesperson of Czech anarchism. [Read More]
