This is the kind of promise that sounds “strong” and “clear” until you sit with what it actually means: someone is running for mayor and leading with a pledge to pull down flags and put up crosses. That’s not city leadership. That’s culture-war theater dressed up as courage.

Based on what’s been shared publicly, Marianna Schreiber — an MMA fighter and a candidate for mayor of Krakow — says that if she wins, she will immediately remove the EU and Ukraine flags from city buildings. She says only the white-and-red Polish flag will remain. She also says crosses will return to schools as a symbol of faith and identity.

Those are the facts. And yes, symbols matter. But when a politician makes symbols the headline, they’re telling you where their attention will go once they have power. Not to transport, housing, safety, budgets, or the boring stuff that actually decides whether a city works. To fights that produce photos, not results.

I’m not pretending I don’t understand the emotional pull here. A lot of people are tired. They want something stable. They want to feel like their home is theirs again. They see foreign flags and they read it as pressure, guilt, or a demand to take sides forever. And in Poland, the cross is not just decoration. For many families it’s memory, tradition, and real comfort.

But there’s a difference between respecting identity and using it like a weapon.

Taking down the Ukraine flag isn’t some clean little “we’re focusing on Poland” move. It’s a message. It says: your suffering is no longer welcome here. It says: the city wants distance from you, even if you live here, work here, study here, and your kids sit in the same classrooms. And it’s not happening in a vacuum. A Ukrainian flag on a building isn’t just cloth. It’s been a public “we see you” at a time when Ukrainians have been running for their lives. You can argue about how long those gestures should last, sure. But ripping them down “immediately” is not a policy choice. It’s a performance.

And performances have consequences.

Imagine you’re a Ukrainian family in Krakow, trying to keep your head down, trying to be grateful, trying not to be “a problem.” You walk past a city building where you used to see a symbol that told you the city wasn’t hostile. Now it’s gone, by design, with a speech attached. Do you feel safer? Or do you start thinking twice before speaking your language on the tram, before posting anything online, before putting your kid in an after-school program?

Now imagine you’re Polish and you never liked the flags. You vote for this. You get your clean building fronts: only white-and-red. For a week, it feels like a win. Then what? Does your rent go down. Do your streets get fixed faster. Do you get shorter lines at clinics. Does your kid get a better school day. Or do you just get the next argument, because once you turn politics into a constant identity test, it never ends. Today it’s flags. Tomorrow it’s who gets funding. Then it’s which teachers are “proper.” Then it’s what art is allowed. People who love these battles always need a new battlefield.

The cross-in-schools promise is the same pattern. If you’re religious, you might hear “finally, respect.” If you’re not, you hear “the city is taking sides.” Schools are where kids learn how to live together. When the mayor makes the classroom a symbol fight, kids don’t become more moral. They just become more divided. And it doesn’t even protect faith. It turns faith into a badge you’re forced to see every day, which is the fastest way to make some people resent it.

There’s also a practical issue nobody wants to say out loud: mayors are not kings. Cities have rules, school systems have rules, public buildings have procedures. A candidate promising instant, sweeping moves on hot-button symbols is either overselling what they can do, or they plan to push boundaries and dare institutions to stop them. Either way, that’s not “order.” That’s conflict as a governing style.

To be fair, there is a real argument on the other side: a city should be careful about which causes it endorses on public buildings. People pay taxes. Not everyone agrees. Keeping government symbols limited can be a form of respect. If Schreiber had said, “City buildings should be politically neutral, and we’ll set clear rules for when any non-national flag is flown,” that’s a serious conversation. But that’s not what “I will immediately remove the EU and Ukraine flags” signals. That signals punishment. It signals a target.

And the EU flag part matters too. You can dislike the EU, you can want more national control, fine. But removing that flag isn’t just about pride. It’s about telling investors, students, partners, and neighboring cities what kind of place Krakow wants to be. A city can be proudly Polish and still outward-looking. Cutting visible ties for applause is an easy way to make a city smaller without admitting that’s the goal.

So yes, symbols matter. That’s exactly why I don’t like this. When someone makes a mayoral run about which flags get to exist and which identities get to be officially blessed, they’re not solving problems. They’re picking winners and losers and calling it leadership.

If you lived in Krakow, what would you want your mayor to do with public symbols when your neighbors disagree deeply about what those symbols mean?