Do I stand alone again in my endless search for freedom? Challenging their might, defeated? Falling helplessly away Crawling from the wreckage, their destiny is my future? I feel the coldness as I step out into their darkness So I stand alone the same in my hopeless chase for freedom Clawing, I call, I call out, but again, I’m never answered You stand there in your lonely world, in your careless search for freedom While we struggle on, you turn hopelessly away Destroyed and recreated, our destiny is the future Now I feel the warmth, as the eclipse is forced away
Following the end of the event “Revolutionary memory and perspective of the struggle” in Mesologgiou street, a crowd of comrades descended to Kolettis and Themistokleous streets to defend the liberation of the building. The following is the self-introductory communique of the occupation:
The silence of the metropolis weighs like a stone on our shoulders. The streets are filled with worn-out stares, bodies crawling out of habit, out of fear, out of submission. The world moves along predetermined paths, without a second thought, tempering its dreams. Everything is programmed to work exactly as they want: work, consumption, obedience. Yet, always, beneath the surface, something is boiling. History is not written by the obedient. A few choose to bear the burden of disobedience. To crack the concrete of normality. To confront the invisible hand of power that chokes every aspect of our lives. Refusing to submit is not a mere stance. It is a call to question, to overturn, to take back everything that belongs to us. We are comrades, anarchists who derive from different political and ideological backgrounds, but we have found ourselves in the very same fires of struggle. It is there, where our common struggles and collective experiences united us, that we recognized the vital need for the creation of a space for meeting, political maturation1, exchange of views and organizational empowerment. At a time when isolation is imposed and communities of struggle are being dismantled by repression, the formation of such spaces is not only necessary – it is crucial. The repressive blows of recent years have not come by accident. The authorities are attempting to eliminate any focus of resistance, to crush any form of self-organisation and to extinguish the flame of contestation. Great achievements have been lost, the movement has been put on the defensive, the recession is now on the horizon. But we know that history is written by those who do not fall back, by those who are not afraid to confront reality. To remain on the defensive is to accept defeat. And that is not going to happen. The time is now to turn words into action, to move from defense to attack. So let’s make it clear that the enemy will not get rid of us so easily. We must define our own field of struggle, reclaim our space and time. To liberate territories from domination, to create a vibrant centre of resistance, a radical cell for mobilisation2 both in theory and action. We perceive the occupation as an integral part of the movement and the movement as an organic element of the occupation. The existence of territories of struggle is not just a practical question, but a deeply political one. Squats are not just places to hang out, they are not just places of hospitality. They are strongholds of resistance, laboratories of radical practices, cracks in the normality they try to impose on us. And this is a non-negotiable reality. Every neighbourhood, every street, every square is not a neutral ground. It is a vibrant map of oppositions, conflicts and claims. Cities are built on the basis of discipline, policing and the sterilization of public space. Squares are filled with surveillance cameras, walls are painted grey, buildings become inaccessible bastions for those who cannot afford to pay the price of existence in a world where everything has a tag price. Dominance is implementing a strategic plan of universal control of the metropolises, crushing any source of resistance. Armed with black propaganda and ideological warfare, it attempts to shape consciousness, while the deliberate degradation of neighbourhoods through the spread of organised crime and the violent expulsion of the local population is paving the way for its complete absorption by capital. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Beneath the concrete, something is burning. Statement regarding the occupation of a building and creation of Rasprava Squat”→
On Thursday 23/6/22, a group of comrades attacked and destroyed with hammers and sledgehammers the facades of three luxury hotels of Israeli interests located on Kleisovis Street in Exarcheia. In one of the hotels, paint was also thrown inside the hotel, where the dining room and wine-bar are located. Leaflets were thrown at the spot which read:
“TOURISTS GO HOME! This is class-war Zone” “Cops and big investors out of Exarcheia”
These hotels, with a cost of 100+ euros per day, like so many others that spring up every day in the area, are part of capital’s strategic planning to “gentrify” Exarchia and turn it into an investment philanthropy, where the human geography of the population will be shaped for the needs of capital.
The struggle for Exarcheia to remain a militant, multicultural neighbourhood, a symbol of resistance and rebellion, is going to be a tough one. It is a class struggle and it is about our survival both as workers and residents in the neighbourhood and the preservation of the revolutionary memory and the insurrectionary flame.
We support the struggles against the privatization of the Strefi Hill, against the construction of the metro in Exarcheia Square. We fight together with thousands for the Exarcheia of Social Self-Organization and Class Solidarity against the state repression, the violence of capital, the museumization of the Polytechnic, the drug mafias and the thugs who are an arm of capital and the state.
Comrades.
PS: We express our unconditional solidarity with the anarchist political prisoner G. Michailidis who is on 60 days of hunger strike demanding his freedom. Freedom or Death
Athens, Greece: Taking responsibility for an incendiary spree and calling for an incendiary campaign
We do not intend to dwell on yet another great political analysis of what is happening today. The time for that is over. All that remains now is our actions. This life is not sustainable. A large part of society knows it and is finding out more and more each day, even if it tries to ignore it or put the blame elsewhere. Pandemic, war, impoverishment. Economic crises on top of economic crises. Depravation of life. The State and capital march unmolested and trample our lives. They have declared war on us. We simply respond with the means at our disposal. We know who stands against us. The State and its minions, the petty bourgeoisie, the nouveau riche, the bosses. We are coming for you! We will attack you until the cops are forced to guard every house, every shed, every car.
But we come these days for another reason. Comrade Giannis Michailidis is on his 16th day of a hunger strike demanding his release. The State vindictiveness he is facing has to do with the unrelenting attitude he has taken all these years inside and outside prison. He is part of an all-out attack launched by the neoliberal Greek State, trying to crush everything that goes against it and stifle all revolutionary memory.
Logics and practices like Giannis’ are the ones that the State wants to keep out of trouble once and for all because in the previous years they created a headache and exposed it. We ought to preserve and adopt them. We ought to create a revolutionary perspective again, make Anarchy dangerous again.
We therefore take responsibility for the incendiary attack on:
a Porsche in vironas at midnight on 30/5/5
5 luxury cars of a dealership in Amfithea Avenue at dawn on 1/6.
a van of the Vechro construction company in Kaisariani at midnight 4/6
We call for an incendiary campaign on luxury vehicles and corporate vehicles in solidarity with Giannis MichaIlidis.
RESPONSIBILITY CLAIM FOR THE ATTACK ON THE MAT SQUAD IN CH.TRIKOPI
On Saturday 2/4 we chose to attack the MAT squad in front of the PASOK offices in Charilaou Trikoupis. The attack turned out exactly as we had planned where, with great ease and comfort, we arrived in front of the frightened eyes of the cops who started with quick steps backwards throwing tear gas from a distance, not having the possibility to do more.
The plan had two stages, with the first being to attack the cops at the PASOK offices with 30 Molotov cocktails and the second being to create fires in the surrounding streets simply as a demonstration and reminder of how easily we can be next to you.
While the second part of the plan was being implemented the DELTA/DRASI group made their appearance. Of course from our side there was no concern from their presence as their appearance was part of our planning and those comrades who had the role of attacking them attacked them. The reaction of DELTA/DRASI was to be expected, they stayed pinned to their motorbikes, sent from afar what they could send and did not take a single step to approach us. The mere sight of a few Molotov cocktails and the ready crowd, terrified them and awakened memories of old times. As a consequence of this fear, we were given the comfort of entering the Exarchia neighbourhood with the crowd of people without any problem. We then remained for some time in the surrounding alleys observing their movements for future attacks.
The choice of the Exarcheia neighborhood to carry out the attack was not accidental. The rebellious Exarcheia is a reference point for the antagonistic movement, a neighbourhood of politicisation, fermentation and insurgency. From the anti-dictatorial struggles and clashes of the Polytechnic uprising of ’73, the murder of comrade Michalis Kaltezas* and the Chemistry revolt of ’85**, the murder of the student Alexandros Grigoropoulos and the December 2008 uprising to the defence of our neighbourhood by groups of fascists and parastatals in the ridiculous Macedonia rallies of 18-19, Exarcheia has always been a place of freedom, comradeship and struggle for those who fight to overthrow the rotten reality of the state. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on the MAT (riot squad) at Ch.Trikoupis”→
Revolutionary memory is not an empty letter. It is not a museum affair. It is not a dry ritual that is exhausted in anniversary recurrences. Revolutionary memory is the thread that binds the past to the present and that lays the foundations for a future that will do justice to those who sacrificed for a different world. A world where no one will see the sky through barbed wire, where no one will have their bodies broken in the sweatshops of class exploitation, where no one will be murdered on land and sea borders, in police stations, in the urban ghettos of metropolises. Revolutionary memory brings together those who are missing from our side, making them complicit in our subversive projects and dreams. Revolutionary memory, if we give it the value it deserves, becomes a subversive project, a springboard for struggle, a source of inspiration and disposition in the beautiful cause of freedom. For the words that will form a conceptual framework different from the one spoken today by politicians, economists, military analysts, industrialists, the golden boys of the stock exchange, journalists. Or they will be words armed ready to become an impulsive energy. Or they will be nothing.
The metropolises are the modern steam engines, they are the universal factories of capitalism. The transparent sweatshops where capital’s domination, control and repression of the explosive contradictions it produces are absolutely institutionalized.
The crimes of the state and capitalism within the metropolises become isolated incidents. They are recorded in fragmentary narratives by the bourgeois ideology that imposes its hegemony. Our own memory, which should highlight them and transform them into social consciousness, into a perception of our role and position, is constantly absent. When it is not, it is blurred, colourless, non-existent, empty of content. Fascist censorship here has for the moment been replaced by a new form of active censorship. The production of incessant distorted knowledge, the methodical reversal of facts, their insidious substitution. It is revisionism that attacks consciences, memories, the very history of the struggles. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: 4-11 June Week of Reconstruction of the Alexandros Grigoropoulos Monument”→
A medida que nos acercamos a esta fecha tan histórica y trascendental, a lo que la lucha revolucionaria representa, desde lxs anarquistas en Uruguay nace, surge y se cuestiona el posicionamiento del movimiento, tanto colectivo como individualmente. Sobre todo teniendo en cuenta y recordando la historia de lucha que lxs anarquistas han aportado al movimiento obrero y la lucha en general. Hoy en día la situación es diferente, no son los mismos tiempos, la sociedad, el estado y el capital sufrieron transformaciones; sin embargo hay cuestiones que no cambian…y hablamos, nada ni nada menos, que de vivir en base a la explotación, ya sea de la tierra o de los cuerpos la idea es la misma, exprimirnos hasta la ultima gota.
La vida en Uruguay no es ajena a esa explotación, el negocio inmobiliario, el turismo y el ¨campo¨ se llevan el podio (y toda la moneda) a la par que contribuyen a la precarización de la vida. Si a todo este cóctel le sumamos la tibieza de algunos sindicatos pertenecientes a la central obrera y los clásicos ¨teje y maneje¨ de la política empresarial de turno…el resultado es evidente: paz social – espejitos de colores y mucho humo. Podríamos estar rato largo evidenciando y contándoles lo ¨bonito¨ que se ve Uruguay desde afuera y la realidad de lo que nos toca vivir por estos lares, pero no es la idea de este llamado.
Escribimos esto para alentar e incitar a la acción en la calle!!! Para que no sea un 1ero de Mayo mas, sino uno bien pesado y encendido, ruidoso y revoltoso, que se note en las calles el descontento y la memoria de lxs compañerxs caídxs. Nuestra lucha no la marca el calendario pero las fechas nos recuerdan la importancia de la lucha, nos hace reflexionar sobre el pasado y el presente. Luchamos a diario por otro mundo…un mundo libre donde la injusticia, el hambre y la explotación no exista.
Lo que estas leyendo es una incitación a seguir conspirando, a juntarte con tus compas de laburo, con tus ñeris del barrio o del liceo y salir a la calle, las formas de agitar y la imaginación no tienen limites, la desobediencia es encantadora.
VIVA LA MEMORIA COMBATIVA DE ¨LOS MÁRTIRES DE CHICAGO¨
We take responsibility for the burning of the Exarcheia Police Station on 4.2.22. The attack was carried out by a group of comrades who, armed with the weapons of comradeship and organization, defied police state and succeeded in destroying the myth of omnipotence that the police systematically cultivates in this area. We attacked with more than 10 Molotov cocktails at the outpost and the entrance of the police station, driving the cops outside into disorderly flight.
A few words about the incident
The tragic management of the pandemic, the sweeping changes it has brought about and the developments of the period are revealing of what it has brought about to the social base. Inflation, poverty, energy poverty, the daily deaths from COVID-19 which reach 24,000 are the results of capitalist management in order to recover the profitability of capital.
At the same time, the indirect reduction of wages against the government narrative, the ever greater devaluation of the Ε.Σ.Υ. (National Health Service) are increasingly impoverishing the social base. On the other hand, the cynicism of the rulers is reflected in their statements showing how indifferent they are to the lives of the impoverished.
The recent statements of Mitsotakis: “we may have had 16,000 dead but we saved tourism”, the admission of Plevris: “we have no communism and everything that is commanded is paid for” and the reference of Skertzos that it is a luxury to support the Ε.Σ.Υ. , leave no room for doubt.
