Paweł Adamowicz and the Civic Ethos of Inclusion: Urban Democracy After the Assassination

The 2019 assassination of Paweł Adamowicz, Mayor of Gdańsk, marked a decisive moment in Poland’s political trajectory, revealing how anti immigrant rhetoric can harden into physical violence. This talk examines Adamowicz’s death as the culmination of a sustained campaign against pro integration politics – a campaign directed at him precisely because he advanced a vision of national belonging rooted in civic openness rather than ethnonationalism.

Adamowicz’s integration agenda drew on Christian social teaching, including papal messages on migration and the Catholic principles embedded in Gdańsk’s Immigrant Integration Model. His approach aligned with Benjamin Barber’s conviction that cities, rather than nation states, function as democratic bulwarks: pragmatic, diverse, and dependent on newcomers for social and economic vitality. For Barber, immigrants do not threaten urban cohesion; they generate it, bringing skills, energy, and civic potential that strengthen cities’ capacity to innovate and govern. Adamowicz’s Christian inflected urban pluralism — grounded in hospitality, dignity, and shared responsibility — thus stood in stark contrast to Poland’s rising illiberal currents.

This pluralism extended beyond migration. Adamowicz championed LGBTQ+ inclusion through initiatives such as the Model for Equal Treatment, municipal anti discrimination programs, and public support for Gdańsk’s Equality March. These policies articulated a broader ethics of belonging: a city that protects its minorities protects its democratic future. Figures such as Karol Nawrocki (today serving as President of Poland) publicly attacked him, claiming that he was “a politician who does not recognize what is sacred,” a charge that inverted Adamowicz’s own reliance on Catholic doctrine to defend inclusion.

Yet the aftermath of the assassination revealed a different trajectory than the one intended by his attackers. Instead of producing civic chaos or deepening polarization, Adamowicz’s death generated an unprecedented public outpouring of grief and solidarity. In Gdańsk, tens of thousands mobilized around the very principles he had championed — openness, equality, and the protection of newcomers — reaffirming inclusion as the city’s guiding civic ethos. In the years since, Gdańsk has continued to develop policies rooted in this ethic, demonstrating how urban governance can transform trauma into a renewed commitment to democratic pluralism.

This talk argues that Adamowicz’s legacy lies not only in the threats he faced, but in the inclusive civic imagination that survived him: a model of urban democracy in which cities respond to violence not with fear, but with deeper solidarity and an expanded sense of who belongs.

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Izabela Morska is a Polish scholar and writer, Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Gdańsk. Her current research on Paweł Adamowicz examines civic ethics, pluralism, and the cultural imaginaries of democracy. She holds an MA from the University of Gdańsk, a PhD from the Polish Academy of Sciences, and an MFA from Mills College, and has held research appointments at the University College Dublin Humanities Institute, the Open Society Archives at CEU Budapest, the Russian Institute for Advanced Study in Moscow, and the Beatrice Bain Research Group at UC Berkeley. A recipient of the Polish Ministry of Culture scholarship for The Legacy of Paweł Adamowicz project, she works at the intersection of media studies, border studies, and narrative ethics. Her teaching and writing explore American political imaginaries, embodiment narratives, subaltern studies, and creative nonfiction.