I’ve been meaning to write you this letter for a while, from the moment I heard about Alex’s murder… but there had been no time for love letters so far. There was no time to think, no time to write. Since it all happened you had been on fire. How can you hand a letter to a flaming city? I just tried to come back to you as fast as I could.

I knew this time would be no ordinary one as soon as I arrived. The talking heads on the TV screens were howling as usual yet there was something even more vicious and desperate in their tone, it had become something closer to the whining of a wounded and frightened dog. I gave up watching them pretty quick. For all my delight there was little use in listening to the sobbing for the crumbling of their order, there was little other than sheer joy to extract from that gaze, the gaze of the dog whose master has disappeared leaving it with nothing to defend but a hollow, burnt land. I knew I had to hit your streets. To get to you, I had to be out there. That I knew. What I didn’t know was what to expect.

I stepped out of the front door.

Walking on your streets on the night of Alex’s funeral felt like an odd dream. Like one of those dreams of mine where I see nothing, where I can only sense that I am falling. It’s a free fall, dark all around and I feel this mixture of fear, exhilaration and perplexity. I can only think, “what next?”. Street after street, corner after corner. Cops all around yet it was not them who worried me. What I was dying to find out was the situation at the Polytechnic. Where any more of your children still out there? To be alone, on a night like this, would only bring back that horrible vertigo feeling. To express the rage I felt, I needed many on my side. We all did.

I was approaching the Polytechnic.

A banging sound getting louder. A slow roar coming from the distance. I could begin to sense what was happening. A couple of nights ago they had taken away one of your children. Tonight, like in the two previous nights, the rest of your wild, loyal children were at play. We wouldn’t let you alone, we wouldn’t let anyone alone anymore. I walked out on Patision Avenue to an unforgetable sight. I knew you were proud on that moment, I could feel it. Thousands and thousands of your children were there. This was no called-for demonstration, no official gathering, nothing to even come to resemble some negotiation with normality, with their murky order. This was a fool’s feast, a delirious mass, a popular lighting up of the streets. I saw migrants from all over, I saw punks from Eksarhia, I saw your faithful crazies I usually find rambling your streets. The passers-by always see through them, they walk next, past, over them. Not on that night. That night there were no passers-by, that night we were all on the streets for Alex, we were there for us, we were there for you. That night we turned Patision Avenue into your flaming heart.

(…)

The morning after never came. What came was a morning no more; the evenings that followed were evenings no longer. Nights and days all blended into one moment: our long, long moment of revolt. Do you remember that moment? What am I saying, how could you forget. At first, that odd feeling that people had abandoned you, that they had been scared, that the talking heads had finally won. Long assemblies in the universities, one demonstration after the other, two, three and four in the same day. We didn’t want to leave you for a moment, we didn’t want to leave your streets. If we went home, normality would win and so, living on your streets was our only protection against it. And from inside their homes more of your children would walk out. They would come out hesitantly yet confident that something was happening. They had all seen the gaze in the talking heads’ eyes, they knew something was wrong. But what? The only way to find out was on the streets. We were more. And more. Days turned into weeks. We were getting tired. Was that normality’s plan all along? To let the children exhaust themselves in play? Couldn’t it see (you could, I am sure) that this was no game any of us was playing, that it was changing us once and for all? Suddenly, as suddenly as it all started, it all began to reachi an end. The dreadful moment was coming, we feared: we were going home. I was on Patision Avenue watching one of the talking heads breathing a sigh of relief. For a moment, I believed it. I started walking up the road past the still occupied general confederation of workers’ building.

I stood still.

I tried to absorb the image in front of my eyes. The building was wrapped in banners and a huge red and black flag hanged proudly from its top. The speakers across the entire street were under the occupiers’ control. They were blasting out:

Landlords and power whores
On my people they took turns
Dispute the suits I ignite
And then watch ‘em burn
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn

They were playing our song, they were playing your song, the song of the thousands of Alexis’ that nestle on your streets. And on that moment, I knew it. I knew that we were not over, not by a long shot, that what we have lived so far was only a glimpse of the future. I salute you, I salute us and what is to come._

–deviant kid

(From the forthcoming Occupied London #4, illustration by Max Andersson)