From the Greek Streets

The poster below is distributed on the streets of the Northern suburbs of Athens. Making a play of words with a popular saying (the original saying is “the wild animals have come to banish the tamed”) the poster reads:

Tomorrow has come to banish today

The crisis has come to confirm that today, same as yesterday, capitalism destroys our lives and lootes nature. The moments are crucial, the consciousness-raising among all of us is vital, action is imperative. Let’s meet up, let’s organise, take to the streets… Let’s revolt!

Tomorrow has come: base trade unions, assemblies of workers and unemployed, popular assemblies, self-organisation of health, libertarian schools, housing occupations, mutual aid networks, solidarity funds, mass indefinite strikes, dislocation of capitalist production and consumption, sabotage of the electoral process, isolation of racist and sexist views, full consciensious objection.

To banish today: Sold-out bureaucratic syndicalism, labour exploitation, dependence of society from party pimps and middle-men, isolation, allienation, individualism, commercialised relationships, desires and everyday conditions. Systemic violence and repression.

Everyone to the streets, to claim back our lost dignity!

Comrades from the North of Athens

Greek original here.

HANDS OFF THE LELAS KARAGIANNI 37 SQUAT

In a period of intensification of social and class antagonism due to the generalised attack of state and capital on even the most elementary interests and rights of the workers the unemployed and the youth, and during the attempt to raise social and political defences, repression is intensified by targeting, threatening and attacking people in struggle and spaces of struggle.

On the night of July 8th at 2 a.m., only a few hours before the general strike demonstration some heavy police units surrounded without any obvious pretext the occupied building of 37, Lelas Karagianni Street in the Athens neighbourhood of Kipseli – and blocked off the surrounding streets. The Occupation was put under a condition of siege, threatened for many hours with a police raid, while an order had been issued for the arrest of anyone who would attempt to exit or enter the occupied building. Police checked and even detained many passers-by, neighbours or others who just happened to be in the streets around the occupation.

Finally the tight sige ended with the withdrawal of the police forces at 5 a.m., as suddenly as it had started.

Regardless of the undeclared targets and planning of this police operation, the fact is that yet another space of struggle and yet another group of people in struggle was targeted by state repression and terrorism. An occupation which during its entire 22 years always stood steadily within the ranks of the wider anarchist/anti-authoritarian struggle and always on the side of all the social-class struggles of the exploited and repressed people.

For this reason the night-time repressive operation of July 8th against this particular occupation had some wider targets and comprises part of the wider state repression aiming at terrorising and attacking anti-authoritarian struggle and more widely, the social struggles of our time.

And even if this particular repressive operation folded it nevertheless showed the aggressive tendencies and the terrorising methods employed by the state against the self-organised nuclei of struggle, such as occupations, which during this period are particularly important and useful in their support and contribution tothe development of collective resistances, both on a more central level as much as in the neighbourhoods of the city.

It is for this reason that despite the very late time [at which the attack against the occupation was launched] there was an enormous struggle interest and tens of comrades were mobilised, expressing their solidarity availability to the besieged occupation on the night of July 8th.

TERRORISM SHALL NOT PASS – HANDS OFF THE OCCUPATIONS

AGAINST STATE AND CAPITALIST BARBARITY, LET’S PREMISE SELF-ORGANISATION, SOLIDARITY AND OUR COLLECTIVE RESISTANCES

Occupation of Lelas Karagianni 37

Friday July 9th, 2010

The “Open Innitiative for Action Against the Cover-up of the State Assassination of Alexandros Grigoropoulos” has issued a callout for a demonstration in the small town of Amfissa on Wednesday, July 7th. It seems like this date will be the first of the defense of the two murderers, after which a verdict should be expected soon.