Remember Remember!!

        Remember remember the 6th of December. 2008, December 6th, a Saturday evening in Athens, some youths sit in a café in the district of Exarchia, having a night out. There would have been coffee, chat, jokes, laughter, no thought of impending doom. Then in a brief moment young, fifteen year old Alexis Grigoropoulos falls to the street murdered by an on duty police officer. Young Alexis dies on the street in the arms of one of his young friends. That event unleashed years of pent up anger across Greece, in the form of riots for days on end. Every year since, protesters have taken to the streets across Greece, in memory of young Alexis, and to protest at police brutality, a brutality that is  administrated by the institutions of a supposed socialist  government, but is in fact just another authoritarian state machine.

        As I stamp this out on the keyboard there is fierce fighting between protesters and the police in the district of Exarchia, the scene of the murder of young Alexis. So far there has been 28 known arrests. The protests and marches marking the murder of young Alexis started this afternoon, in cities across Greece, and has turned into running battles with the police, continuing into the night. We should never forget how the state tries to monopolise violence as its legitimate tool, to be used as it sees fit on who it deems necessary, with no rebuke.

Exarchia this evening:

        Greece, like the rest of the states in Europe and else where, profess to be democracies, but the reality is very different from the illusion they try to weave. Today Athens was in lock-down, with Metro stations closed and transport disrupted. Thousands of police have been drafted into Athens. Two events today have the establishment on high alert, one is the marking of the police murder of 15 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos, the other, the visit of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who will arrive with hundreds of his own bodyguards. There are snipers placed at points along his route, this is how European democracy works. It can only carry out its pomp and symbolism under the protection of a ring of armed police and the barrel of the gun.