The Consultative Council () is a non-government repesentative body created in November 2020 by the All-Poland Women's Strike (, OSK) in the context of the October 2020 Polish protests. The Council incorporates public participation as a mechanism for participatory democracy.
Creation
On 27 October 2020, during the October 2020 Polish protests, All-Poland Women's Strike (OSK) stated that it intended to create a Consultative Council similar to the Coordination Council created during the 2020 Belarusian protests, with the aim of working on "how to clean up the mess created by PiS". The Council was created on 1 November 2020.
Structure
Klementyna Suchanow described the Council as a "social movement", not a political party. She stated that it did not have a "first secretary and committee" in the style of the Polish People's Republic, and that it was not the base for forming a political party.
In 2023, Agnieszka Kampka and Dániel Oross described the Council as a case of public participation in decision-making in the context of constitutional and local decision-making processes in Hungary and Poland.
Membership
, the Council members were Barbara Labuda, Beata Chmiel, Danuta Kuroń, Jacek Wiśniewski (Mazovian branch of the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, KOD), Robert Hojda (founder of the Congress of Citizens' Democratic Movements), Mirosława Makuchowska (active in Campaign Against Homophobia), Bożena Przyłuska, Dorota Łoboda, Katarzyna Bierzanowska, Monika Płatek, Michał Boni, , Sebastian Słowiński, Paweł Kasprzak, Kinga Łozińska (Mazovian branch of KOD), Dominika Lasota, Nadia Oleszczuk, Katarzyna Pikulska, Aleksandra Kaczorek, and Karolina Micuła.
Aims
OSK states that the aims of the Coordination Council were gathered from the concerns and goals most frequently raised by participants in the October protests. Monika Płatek stated that the Council was created ad hoc to collect together the demands of the protestors; to be of service, to work out how to best implement the demands from the streets, and not to "govern, impose or set boundaries". She stated that OSK did not start the protests on 22 October 2020 but instead joined them, and that the Council was needed to help the grassroots protestors implement their demands.
The Council called for the resignation for the government. It described its aims as "a way out of the collapse in 13 key areas". Its strategies on how to carry out changes in Poland included: abortion in Poland, women's rights in Poland, alimony Klementyna Suchanow from OSK described the aims in terms of abortion as "legal abortion on-demand end of the story" (). LGBT rights in Poland secularism and the removal of religious teaching in schools independence of the public service from political parties the climate crisis short-term employment contracts with weak workers' rights ("rubbish contracts", ) animal rights education health services delegalisation of neo-fascist fighters' groups () restoring psychiatric services support for the disabled opposing propaganda and disinformation.
Council member Nadia Oleszczuk stated on 5 November 2020 that the protest actions would not "shift online". She stated that even if they quietened for some time, they would return as long as unsatisfied social demands remained.
Tactics and methods
The Council accepted to negotiate the conditions of the government's resignation, provided that the negotiation did not take place "by pepper spray" (). Monika Płatek stated that she hoped that PiS included people who disagreed with Kai Godek's call to send soldiers and police to destroy the protestors and disagreed with Jarosław Kaczyński's call to send extreme-right hooligans to attack the protestors.
On 14 November 2020, Klementyna Suchanow stated that two of the Council's immediate demands, the dismissal of Minister of Education and Science Przemysław Czarnek and medical personnel's demand for an increase of the fraction of the GDP spent on health services, had been ignored by PiS. Talks were under way for planning a general strike by doctors in response. Suchanow described the negotiations on strike planning as "very positive". Nadia Oleszczuk stated that the anger in Poland was so great that if the demands were not satisfied, the protests would escalate.