These are our strange times – the times when even the cold certainty of death is veiled under the abstract, the partially informed, the vague. Five migrants have died on the curb of some road leading to a remote beach somewhere on the Western Greek mainland and that is all we will ever know.

march31.net

During an international meeting in December 2011 in Frankfurt am Main, several left wing organisations and grassroots unions from Greece, Spain, Poland, Austria and Germany decided to launch a joint effort against capitalist reforms under the current crisis. On march 31st, there will be a “European Day of Action against Capitalism”, with simultaneous demonstrations in those countries, labeled “M31″. Groups from other countries are likely to join in, as networking continues. Protests will be directed against neoliberal and undemocratic impositions by the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The anticapitalist organisations involved want to send a clear signal against further austerity measures, mainly propelled by Germany, and on the backs of workers, the unemployed, students and migrants.

We protest against nationalist propaganda targeting wageworkers in Southern European countries, and against the EU’s military bulkheading on its borders. Alternatively, organisers of M31 call for transnational solidarity and self-organisation of those affected by further cuts, privatization and capitalist exploitation.

Up to now, there is no effective transnational solidarity between workers, unions, the unemployed and migrants. If we want this to change, we’ll have to do it ourselves.

The international day of action in spring preludes a forthcoming European initiative of left wing organisations and grassroots unions, preparing further protests throughout 2012. We invite other emancipatory unions and organisations to join M31. Please take note of our Call for Action on www.march31.net. We’ll be happy to answer any request or proposal.

Let’s get started!

On Saturday, January 21 we placed an inflammatory device in a pawn shop on Ragavi Street, in Gizi (Athens). It was a symbolic response to the spread of these contemporary black-marketeers in the neighbourhoods of Athens, who, taking advantage of the condition of generalised poverty attempt to loot our fellow humans who are struggling to survive.

The appearance of the black-marketeers is an outcome of the attack enforcing popular impoverishment; it is yet another aspect of the charging-ahead of the state and capital as part of the even more intense sucking of social wealth. Against the gangs of loan sharks and the violent attempts of our impoverishment, we must raise social solidarity and social class violence.

When you grow up outside dramatic History, you become addicted to a way of thought that makes you think that the plot will continue like that until the end of your life. What is equally, if not more shocking than a world that collapses, is the entirely unexpected element of its collapse. Previous generations knew that anything can turn upside down at any moment, that everything is hanging by a thread. To us, everything looked firmly grounded in unchallengeable bases and away from fear. There was always, of course, the fear of your personal collapse, but any collective collapse at peacetime seemed inconceivable.

Yet the most basic addiction is another one: you become addicted to the conviction that History before the crisis was unfolding in your absence, and likewise it unfolds in your absence within the crisis; you become addicted to the conviction that you are too small and too unimportant to intervene and to attempt to affect it. It is much more consistent according to the up to this point inactive role of yours and it is much easier, psychologically, for you to play the role of the carcass. You prefer to be slaughtered rather than risking for you to slaughter. Such a risk scandalises and untunes you more than anything. And so, even if you realise by this point that much more than what has already been lost is about to be lost,  the defense you’ve been playing is less of some extreme hope for the off-chance to savor the game, and more of a defense of a freeze in the face of the fear of taking your fate into your own hands and to turn yourself from a dominated into someone with a free will. For all these years – and how could you stop now?- you’ve been a small child allowing the grown-ups to take care of the grown-ups’ affairs. You would play with your private games and you would leave the fate of the public life to the grown-ups. Your tiny hands would feel safe when held by the palm of the responsible politicians and the media forces of this land.