Word: crowds
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...three hours the crowd swelled with new arrivals: miners from Silesia wearing their traditional long black coats and plumed czaka, railway workers from Lublin, bus drivers from Pulawy. Hundreds of thousands strong, they spilled out into side streets, waiting patiently in the early twilight while the tender strains of a Chopin piano concerto wafted from a loudspeaker. They had come to Gdansk to honor the memory of 45 workers killed by police and army bullets ten years before in riots along the Baltic coast. At long last a monument had been built: three slender trunks of steel crowned by crosses...
...Leader Lech Walesa, the improbable hero of last summer's strikes, bundled in his customary duffel coat: tumultuous applause. After a minute of silence, the city's church bells began to peal, and ship sirens wailed from the port, a keening cry that sent shivers through the crowd. The names of those who died at Gdansk and Gdynia in 1970 were read aloud, with the-workers shouting back after each one: "Yes, he is still among us!" Walesa lit a memorial flame, which at once burned brightly despite a light drizzle. Said he: "This monument was erected...
...tall and a trifle overweight. His face is an elfin caricature, the pale cheeks almost submerged under a wide mustache, the profile dominated by a prominent nose and an outthrust jaw. Yet he radiates an unmistakable air of authority, along with an infectious good humor. Working a crowd, he displays the charisma of a natural leader. Said a Gdansk woman worker after hearing him speak last week: "He is the right man at the right tune. He was able to give us hope...
...that he never passes a mirror without stopping to pat his hair into place. In interviews, he sometimes seems flippant to the point of arrogance. In private conversation, he has a marked fondness for first-person pronouns. In public appearances, however, he can exhibit flashes of deep humility. A crowd of miners in Jastrzebie last October asked Walesa who could teach them democracy. His answer: "Who? Not Lesio [a diminutive of Lech], for he is too small, too stupid. Yourselves. Everybody." Yet he can be remarkably highhanded when chairing union meetings, often interrupting speakers in mid-sentence and imposing...
William E. Colby, 59, former CIA director, repenting the agency's use of organized-crime figures in an early '60s Castro assassination plot: "You couldn't find a more inept crowd than the Mafia...