Ah, But He's One Of Their Own.

      The powers that be will always look after their own. In 2008 in the district of Exarcheia, in Athens a young 15 year old boy  was sitting having a coffee with his friend, two cops approached and a few words were exchange, then one of the cops drew his gun and shot dead 15 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos. This event lead to a massive uprising across Greece with support protests across the world. You might think that with time to reflect on his brutal cold blooded action the cop Epaminondas Korkoneas would show some signs of remorse, but no, at his appeal in 2016 he stated "I will not apologise to any 15-year-old". Despite his obvious lack of remorse, he has now been released early, free from any parole or other restrictions, you see, he is one of their own. 

The following from Freedom News:

 

Breaking: murderer of Alexis Grigoropoulos released from prison

World, Jul 30th

Epaminondas Korkoneas, a Greek cop and murderer of Alexis Grigoropoulos, was released from prison today. His release follows the verdict of an appeals court in Lamia, central Greece, delivered yesterday. The court upheld the conviction of Korkoneas for the deadly of shooting Grigoropoulos , but reduced his sentence from life to 13 years. He was released after serving the most of the reduced sentence. He is not a subject to a parole or any other restriction.
Korkoneas, then a police special guard, shot and killed 15-year old Alexis in Athens district of Exarcheia on 6th December 2008, following a verbal interaction. The shocking killing triggered a widespread uprising across Greece, with solidarity actions held worldwide, including in London.
During the first hearing of the appeal in December 2016, Korkoneas told the court in his opening statement that he was innocent, adding, “I will not apologize to any 15-year-old”.
Vasilis Saraliotis, the second police special guard officer involved in the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos, was released on bail in 2012.

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Alexis Grigoropoulos, 10 Years On.

  

      Today, December 6th. marks the tenth anniversary of the murder, by a police officer, in Exachia, Athens, of 15 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos, a brutal sadistic action that lit the fires of some of the fiercest riots in Greece in recent years. I was in Athens at that time and remember the feeling of outrage and fierce red hot anger that ran through the streets for many weeks after the brutal pointless murder of a youth out on a Saturday evening, having a coffee with friends. It still hasn't subsided, ten years on and the feelings still run high, people find it difficult to forget the murder by a state minion, of an innocent youth, and so they should. His murder is still commemorated, in different ways by different groups.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

           On the evening of 4th December, we made our attack upon the police border control of Exarchia on Voulgaroktonou street. We came with sticks and flaming bottles, and when they saw us they immediately started to panic and run shouting for help. We struck fear into their hearts and sticks onto their heads, fire engulfed at least two policeman and at least one patrol car was burned. We hunted them and made sure it was a night to remember. We also stole some of their equipment (clubs, shields, helmets). When we left, the street had changed its character, transformed from a quiet suburban street with a police checkpoint to a battleground, a site of victory. They also bleed, and we can make them.

         The same night, the state and its mouths reported that there had been a mild and usual attack with no injuries and damages. They hid the action instead of publicizing it for repression propaganda because our action was a success and an example. When we beat them and we win, they have to try their best to hide this as an impossibility, that they are composed of people, that they have weaknesses. They also hide our action because of the anniversary of the assassination of Alexis, as a way of dampening our momentum and isolating our action. If they can’t change the reality of our victory they attempt to change what is spoken. They may believe that they can avoid the fall of their world by silence, but this is an expression of their collapse. We are here to engrave their tombstone.

        The government also accused us of being mafia. This is part of SYRIZA’s program of continuously criminalizing insurrection as an attempt to isolate and mystify our direct response to state and economic warfare. This is also seen inside the movement, by those who collaborate with the state, put rioting on the outside, and call us self-indulgent hooligans.

       The snitches of the movement who attempt to make our passions, desires, and revolutionary strategy alien to us open the back-door to repression. Ten years after the assassination of our comrade and the ensuing revolt, we continue to fight in vengeance and in love, because our struggle creates while it destroys. 2008, our action yesterday, and everything in between was not enough. We gain in these moments of rupture the ecstasy of our collective power, the power to alter our streets, our lives, and our world. Our only regret is that we didn’t do enough. Its these moments that change the world: the planning when our ideas were fluid and fantasy, to the moments just before of anxiety, excitement and boredom, to the calm and beauty of the present of the action, to the reflection and projection afterwards where we felt that our next step would have to be the everything. We must continue until we reach anarchy.

          We are everywhere there is a fight against authority, we are the seed in the burning forest. In our hearts are the insurrections that followed the revolt of Alexis which spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East. These revolts were subdued by dictatorships, theocracy, and the military power of capital, but we still feel their pulse every time we take revolt into our hands. In our hearts are those who fight in the USA, revolting inside and outside of the mass prison system. In our hearts are those who combat the rise of fascism globally (US, Europe, Brazil, etc.). In our hearts are the migrants and solidarians who destroy these recent national lines which attempt to divide our struggle in Greece and everywhere. In our hearts are the anarchists fighting the state in Russia like Mikhail Zhlobitsky who bombed the FSB office in Archangelsk on 31 Octomber. In our hearts are those building and defending the free spaces in France. In our hearts is the Algerian woman murdered in Paris by gas grenade. In our hearts are the indigenous struggles and assassinated comrades in Latin America. Alexis lives in all these struggles, as long as we fight he will never die. We humbly add one more attack to the list.

Death to the bosses, death to the police, death to capital.

Anarchy lives.

-From some of those who participated in the attack.

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Greece, December 2008, A Prelude.

 

 

Athens December 2008.

 

          I was in Athens that December 2008, on the streets around Syntagma Square, the atmosphere was electric, awe-inspiring, walking and chatting among those thousands of people from all walks of life, it was easy and wonderful to get drunk on this new elixir, an elixir that is there for us all. I had never felt a feeling like it before in my life, and I have never felt anything like it since. Deep inside you felt that something wonderful was about to happen, something new and empowering was about to be born. Sadly it didn't happen that month, or the next. The process is still going on, still forming, still waiting to burst forth and create that new world we all hold in our hearts.

There Will Come a Time

There will come a time when the hordes remember,

who bound our grand-parents to the yoke of oppression,

who sentenced our parents to deprivation,

who bid poverty sink its teeth into our heart,

who teach our children, greed is a noble art.

Who sent our sons through the gates of hell

to a litany of cambist brawls,

crammed coffers with blood-stained gold

while laughing in Ares’ halls.

“Who does these terrible things to us?” they will ask,

and when they remember,

they’ll bring an energy that is endless

to drive a fist that is fearless.

Then this merciless market-driven world will crumble

under an insurrection of integrity,

the poor will emerge from the dark husk of capitalism

to live in the light of social justice.

There will come a time when the hordes remember.

Athens December 2008.

The following from Contra Info:

 

        I hate the individual who bends his body under the weight of an unknown power, of some X, of a god. 

        I hate, I say, all those who, surrendering to others, out of fear, out of resignation, a part of their power as a man, are not only crushed themselves but crush me, and those I love, under the weight of their frightful cooperation or their idiotic inertia. 

      I hate, yes, I hate them, for I sense it, I do not bow before the officer’s braid, the mayor’s sash, the capitalist’s gold, moralities or religions; for a long time I have known that all of this is just baubles that can be broken like glass.
— Joseph Albert (Libertad)

       There are times in history when the randomness of some events can cause dynamic variables, able to almost entirely paralyse the social space-time.
      It was Saturday night, on 06/12/2008, when the culmination of a conflict between two worlds took place in just a few moments. On one hand, the youthful, enthusiastic, spontaneous and impetuous insurrectionary violence; on the other hand, the official state institutional organ that, legitimately, claims the monopoly on violence through repression.
       No, it was not about an innocent kid and a paranoid cop found in the wrong place at the wrong time, but a rebellious young comrade who attacked a patrol car, in an area where clashes with the forces of repression were common, and a cop who patrolled the same area and, out of a personal perception about the honour and reputation of the police, decided to confront the troublemakers on his own. It was a conflict between two opposing forces: on one Insurgency, on the other Power, with the main protagonists of this conflict each representing their own sides.
     The murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the cop Epameinondas Korkoneas, and the large-scale riots that ensued, caused a powerful, high-tension social electroshock, because the image of “social peace” was shattered and the existence of these two opposing worlds was made visible, in the most manifest way, triggering situations from which there was no easy return, at least not without a creation and manifestation of events whose momentum nobody could any longer pretend they did not notice, they did not see, they did not hear, they did not take into account.
     The 2008 rebellion rocked a society that, in its majority, still enjoyed their consumerist bliss and the culture of western lifestyle, and ignored the unbearable consequences of the coming economic crisis. It caused embarrassment, numbness and perceptive paralysis, since the majority of the social body was unable to comprehend whence sprang so many thousands of rioters, who were creating disturbances of such a tension.
      In the aftermath of the rebellion, a number of intellectuals, political analysts, professors, sociologists, psychologists, criminologists, and even artists, each taking advantage of their own professional prestige and renown, joined the public debate, not only in order to interpret December ’08, but also to de-signify it by slandering its occurrence and condemning violence altogether, from wherever it may come, making it clear what their real social role is.
      There is much more to be said about December ’08 and its insurrectionary heritage, as manifested through the dozens of direct action groups which proliferated explosively across the country, creating a front of internal threat. A period when anarchist direct action undermined the social normalcy almost on a daily basis. But what we want above all is to remember…
      To remember what December ’08 was and how anarchy, having a leading role, contributed to the manifestation of dynamic situations, which gained resonance in the international anarchist movement.
      To remember the time when anarchy overcame the fear of arrest, captivity and violent repression, and therefore acquired a tremendous self-confidence, moving on to actions and gestures that, until then, seemed impossible; a self-confidence which was manifested in the whole range of anarchist polymorphous action, from simple public interventions to all kinds of occupations, and from spontaneous confrontational practices to more organised offensive actions.
       We want to remember our young comrade who was guilty of his spontaneity, which he paid with his life. Under other circumstances it might have been us in his place, as the same insurrectionary enthusiasm pervades us since then, and besides, EVERYONE should remember their origins instead of exorcising them.
      We want to remember the beauty of paralysing the social space-time through smaller or larger social short circuits.
     We want to remember how dangerous anarchy may become, when anarchy wants to…
      We want to relive the days when “death shall have no dominion, and dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon, and they shall break in the sun till the sun breaks down”
(paraphrased verses from a poem by Dylan Thomas).

Read the rest of the article HERE:

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