Organised Anarchists.

       It should be obvious to any observer of the present economic system that rules this world, that it can't be reformed. Capitalism can't be converted into a caring compassionate, system that sees to the needs of all our people. Its basis is self gain based on the exploitation of others, others are there to be profited from, not cared for. So running to a ballot box putting down your mark, against a chosen party disciple, will not bring about the compassionate capitalism you hope for, nor will petitioning the political ballerinas that hold the reins of power because of that ballot paper. 

      The creation of that better world for all, must take place outside the rules of capitalism, and outside the legislation of the capitalist minders, the state. The change has to happen among the people, by the people, in their communities and workplaces, in spite of, and in opposition to, the structures created by this enslaving economic system. We have no rules, we create structures and strategies as we develop, our needs will determine the shape of our new society, after we have built a bonfire of all the rules and legislations that bind us as units of profit, and as subservient units of the state.

       This from:  The Foundation for Economic Education

In the New York Times, Niki Kitsantonis writes, “It may seem paradoxical, but Greece’s anarchists are organizing like never before.”

No. Anarchists – the sensible ones, at least – are not against organization. They are against rule – against ruling and against being ruled. Merriam-Webster explains the derivation of the word: “Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek, from anarchos having no ruler, from an- + archos ruler.”

True, as the dictionary editors note, “anarchy” and “anarchism” are sometimes used to mean something like “absence or denial of any authority or established order” or simply “absence of order.” But rational political theorists and even activists don’t advocate pure disorder; they advocate the absence of rule, which they define as the absence of government.

So what is it that these Greek anarchists are organizing for? Well, in fact, the focus of the article is on how anarchists are supplying the services that the Greek state is not providing:

Seven years of austerity policies and a more recent refugee crisis have left the government with fewer and fewer resources, offering citizens less and less. Many have lost faith. Some who never had faith in the first place are taking matters into their own hands, to the chagrin of the authorities….

Whatever the means, since 2008 scores of “self-managing social centers” have mushroomed across Greece, financed by private donations and the proceeds from regularly scheduled concerts, exhibitions and on-site bars, most of which are open to the public. There are now around 250 nationwide.

Some activists have focused on food and medicine handouts as poverty has deepened and public services have collapsed.

In recent months, anarchists and leftist groups have trained special energy on housing refugees who flooded into Greece in 2015 and who have been bottled up in the country since the European Union and Balkan nations tightened their borders. Some 3,000 of these refugees now live in 15 abandoned buildings that have been taken over by anarchists in the capital.

One part of Athens seems to have been a self-governing, but not state-governed, territory for some time. Some sources say Exarchia has existed since as early as 1870. The name presumably comes from “ex-,” out of, away from, and of course “archos,” ruler.

In Athens, the anarchists’ epicenter remains the bohemian neighborhood of Exarchia, where the killing of a teenager by a police officer in 2008 set off two weeks of rioting, helped reinvigorate the movement and produced several guerrilla groups that led to a revival of domestic terrorism in Greece.

The police and the authorities tread lightly in the area.

The police have recently raided some buildings illegally occupied by anarchists, called squats, in Athens, in the northern city of Thessaloniki and on the island of Lesbos, a gateway for hundreds of thousands of migrants over the past two years….

The anarchists say their squats are a humane alternative to the state-run camps now filled with more than 60,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Human rights groups have broadly condemned the camps as squalid and unsafe.

In Exarchia, one of the squats includes a former state secondary school that was abandoned because of structural problems. Established last spring with the help of anarchists, the squat is now home to some 250 refugees, mostly from Syria, who have set up a chicken coop on the roof. Many more refugees are on a “waiting list” for other occupied buildings.

The squats function as self-organized communities, independent from the state and nongovernmental organizations, said Lauren Lapidge, 28, a British social activist who came to Greece in 2015 at the peak of the refugee crisis and is actively involved with several occupied buildings.

“They are living organisms: Kids go to school, some were born in the squat, we’ve had weddings inside,” she said.

There’s really nothing paradoxical about anarchists setting up institutions and communities outside the state to provide needed goods and services. The Greek anarchists probably don’t see businesses as part of that non-state society, though libertarian anarchists and anarcho-capitalists do.

What is paradoxical, as I wrote five years ago, is Greek “anarchists” who object to the state reducing its size, scope, and power by cutting back on taxes and transfer payments. Anarchists who organize voluntarily to achieve common purposes are just living their philosophy.

This piece originally published at Cato@liberty

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Expropriation.

         Wouldn't it be nice if supermarkets were places where you picked up the necessities of life, instead of places where you are obliged to spend the crap wages you get from your lousy job, all so that you are a unit of profit for this insane, unjust, unequal, crap economic system. 

This from Act For Freedom Now:
      Expropriation of OK super market, in Exarhia – Athens

        Few days ago we decided to join the operations that are taking place around the area of Exarchia contributing as we want and we can to liberate our neighborhood from the presence of the capitalist super markets…. But at the same time we understand and we like all the attacks by our comrades. Against the suppression that we feel every day on our skin or in a psychological way..from the mercenaries of the state, so called police. Against the gentrification of the area by luxury and expensive cafeterias etc..
       We perceive Exarchia as a revolutionary field of resistance and we think that is unacceptable and a big contradiction to compromise with this situation.We are hostile to every form that is feeding capitalism. The gentrification is here..is an indirect attack to corrupt,infiltrate and poison the characteristics of this area.. It happened many times, in many places in the past.. An example is Plaza de Sol in Madrid.. A square that from instructional environment turned into a lifestyle meeting point.
       So stop the invasion of our squats, of our neighborhood and open your fucking capitalist spots somewhere else, or we will be every time more active in the resistance.

FREEDOM FOR PANAGIOTIS Z.
FREEDOM FOR OUR COMRADES IN PRISON
GET THE FUCK OUT FROM EXARCHIA
Source

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Potentiality Of Storming Heaven.

        Because of the manipulation of information by that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, many people failed to grasp the extent of the uprising in Greece in December 2008. The sudden explosion of anger at a system that had fed the population on illusions, attempting to paste over the cracks that exposed growing poverty, unemployment, injustice, corruption and alienation. As I have said on many an occasion, nobody knows the spark that will ignite the fire. On the 6th of December, 2008, the spark that ignited the fire in Greece was the spark from a psychopathic cop’s gun, that killed a 15 year old youth, hanging out with his mates an a Saturday night in Exarchia. That spark set alight the tinder of years of pent up anger and frustration, that simmers under the surface in all our cities and towns, I’m sure you have felt that same anger and frustration.

 

This video was first Published on Dec 3, 2015

          6 December 2008, few minutes after 9 pm - Time Zero of the December Revolt. Two policemen shoot against a group of youngsters hanging out on a Saturday night, at the heart of the Exarcheia district of central Athens, an area with a long history of insurrection against authority and riots for socio economic and political grounds, inhabited mainly by anarchists, anti-authoritarians and liberals. The police bullet finds in the heart and kills 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
         As soon as the news of Alexis' murder spreads mainly through the internet, hundreds of people from the rest of Athens gather at Exarchia, which is circled by hundreds of riot policemen and that in turns infuriated people and the neighborhood quickly goes "on fire" with flaming barricades and stone attacks against the police, that lasted all throughout the night.
        Almost from the same night, the Exarcheia riot spreads all over Greece, with attacks against police stations, even in greek villages. Protests and demonstrations, which escalate to widespread rioting rock Greece every day and night for the weeks to come, while public buildings are being taken over and occupied by protesters in dozens of cities and towns around the country.
        Outside Greece, solidarity demonstrations, riots and clashes with local police also take place in more than 70 cities around the world, including London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Dublin, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, the Hague, Copenhagen, Bordeaux, Cologne, Seville, Sao Paulo, as well as Nicosia in Cyprus, and Paphos proving for the first time before the "Arab Spring" that people could spread the news and react through protests for the same matter around the globe, from San Francisco to Wellington and Buenos Aires to Siberia.
      While the unrest was triggered by the Alexis Grigoropoulos murder by police, the reactions lasted for so long simply because they were rooted in deeper causes, like the coming economic crisis a year later, which was already being felt by poorer classes and younger generations through rising unemployment rate and a feeling of general inefficiency and corruption of the authorities, institutions and right wing politicians of the Greek state (mainly New Democracy and PASOK political parties).

December 2008 | The Potentiality of Storming Heaven 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Do We Ask The Corrupt To Clean Up The Corruption?

      How do you deal with corruption in high places when the judiciary are part of that corruption? Not a rhetorical question, as it is commonplace among most, if not all, modern capitalist countries. Do you appeal to those in high places, who are part and parcel of that corruption, to come clean and behave themselves, or what? Let's face it, whoever enters politics, no matter where they start from, and are elected to the dark corridors of power, leave their job much, much richer than when they entered. While in almost all other jobs, that doesn't happen. Makes you think!!

This from To Bhma, (To Vima)

         The militant Conspiracy of Fire Cells (SPF) group has assumed responsibility for the bomb attack in Exarchia on Wednesday evening. In a statement uploaded on the Athens Indymedia site, the group explains that it targeted the prosecutor Georgia Tsatani.
        According to the statement the bomb attack was carried out for two main reasons. The first reason cited by the group is the prosecutor’s involvement in a para-judicial network that protected business and political interests. The group claims that Mrs. Tsatani saw to is so that Andreas Vgenopoulos avoided a certain conviction by filing away the relevant case-file.
       Mrs. Tsatani was also accused by the group of ‘forgetting’ to forward to Parliament the case-file regarding Evangelos Meimarakis’ involvement in bribery scandal during his tenure as Minister of National Defense, in exchange for the appointment of Mrs. Tsatani’s daughter and husband as New Democracy candidates.
        The second reason for the attack, the group argues, was the prosecutor’s participating in the ‘judicial campaign’ and ‘unethical blackmail’ against imprisoned members of the group. The statement concludes with the group promising to issue a more detailed manifesto on its ‘Nemesis’ operation.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Direct Action.

       Exarchia is a district in Athens that has for a long time, been an area where anarchists/libertarian socialists/communists have lived gathered and claimed as their own. Recently the drug lords have moved in, while the police look the other way trying to catch litter loots. No doubt with a hope that the drug dealers will eventually destroy that libertarian ethos of the area. However, Greek anarchists have an admirable habit of confronting their enemy with forceful direct action. 

This from Act For Freedom Now:

The struggle against the State, Drug mafias and Social Cannibalism
continues…

       Against the plans of transforming Exarhia square into a field of control, consumerism and drug dealing, Anarchists and Communists we moved organized and collectively, factually opposing the activity of dealing drugs. An activity which continued in Exarhia square even today despite the declarations of the minister of public order. In a world that promotes profit and control as “values”, there is no room for delusions.
       Only our struggles, struggles against misery and subjugation, can really liberate spaces, so social self-organization and class solidarity can blossom. These struggles are the obstacle against state enforcement, capitalist brutality and drug mafias who are sub products. Today, September 9th we raided Exarhia square unannounced and with a target, located drug dealers and gave them the message they deserve.

Comrades against the mafias.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Squat The World.

          Squatting is one path to where we are going. A brief statement from a relatively new squat in Exarchia, Athens. Solidarity across borders could help it keep functioning.

         Since April 21st 2016, we have occupied an abandoned private house on 119, Zoodochou Pigis Street. It’s Cat’s spirit, where we want to have a base for anarchist people, especially new people arriving in Exarchia. The plan is to create an open space for both anarchists and refugee activists, but also for people in emergency housing need.
Squatting is always a political action. We are fighting against private property in a capitalist system that created it. We are trying to live in a different way: collective, dignified and self-organised.
         After having abandoned the building for years, on June 6th 2016 a woman presenting herself as one of its owners threatened to call the police if we didn’t pay a rent in the next days. The reality is that we’ve expropriated one empty and destroyed house, and we are trying to live in it. So, we refuse any kind of negotiation with the owners.
         We believe in solidarity with all self-organised places in Exarchia, in order to show to the system that we will continue to resist and fight for autonomy and freedom.
         Let’s all be ready to support self-organised spaces everywhere!
SQUAT THE WORLD! RESISTANCE!
Cat’s spirit

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Only The People Will Help The People.

       Groups of ordinary people are organising to take necessary supplies to Calais to help those fleeing the bloodshed in the Middle East. In Exarchia in Athens, anarchist have taken over an empty building and are turning it into a temporary residence for refugees. It seems that the only people making an effort to help the people fleeing the Western imperialist created cauldron in the Middle East, are the ordinary people. Governments across Europe prefer to sit in marble halls and talk, each accusing the other of not doing enough, or doing it all wrong, while those in need continue to suffer.

       States are very efficient at organising for war, but fail miserably when it comes to peace and solidarity. The final answer to the problems of the ordinary people will only come when, they themselves take control and shape society for the benefit of all. Solidarity, mutual aid, co-operation, seeing to the needs of all our people, can only be done by the people, freed from the profit motive.

From Anarchist News:

       A huge banner reading "Refugees Welcome Home" is draped across the front of a derelict building in Exarchia, Athens – a district that's generally regarded as the spiritual home to the city's anarchist movement. On Tuesday morning, members of the Anti-authoritarian Movement Athens (AK) occupied a former university dining hall, with the aim of transforming it into a temporary residence for refugees. They want to fix up the space and make it fit to accommodate refugee and migrant families arriving in Athens.
        Crossing a rubble-strewn courtyard, I entered the building to find members of AK making plans for an open meeting later that day. They offered to show me around and explained that before any refugees can be housed, they'll need to work together to clean, disinfect and make the place habitable. The truth is that it'll take a hell of a lot of time and effort because at the moment it's just a building site. The three floors are vast and empty. The ground level consists of a sort of living room, plus what's left of the old kitchen and bathrooms. The first and second floor will accommodate the families, while there are also plans to turn the basement into a storage area. Once complete, it's estimated that the building will accommodate up to 200 people.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
 

Self-Organised Health Structure.

      In the district of Exarchia, in Athens, they have been building the future, in spite of the daily state violence and repressions. If we are to build that better world, it can't be done by patching up the holes left by the state's indifference to our conditions. It has to done by replacing the state's strangle hold on our lives. We can create that better world by being imaginative, daring and working outside the state's tentacles. Asking the state to be our benefactor is only tightening its grip on and control over our lives. This is an excellent example of what is possible, and where we should be aiming.

This is from Contra Info:

Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure (ADYE) —psychologist, pathologist/radiologist, special tutor–child psychologist, gynecologist, speech therapist

    The Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure is an undertaking created through a general assembly of residents, social projects and collectives that live and act in the district of Exarchia.

It’s addressed to the local community of Exarchia, doctors, psychologists, nurses, pharmacists, but also to any other resident who would like to help.

     Basic activity of the Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure is to offer free primary healthcare, immediate help and psychological support as well as to promote the concept of health for all, without any discrimination for reasons of race, skin color, origin, sexual identity or religion.

     Main political conviction of its participants is being able to provide solidarity reciprocally, rather than egoistically or philanthropically, given the fact that we are all potential migrants, homeless, unemployed, precarious workers without access to healthcare services.

     We believe that self-organized health structures are not solely a response to problems in provision of medical care, filling the gap left by the State. Therefore, what we apply in practice is the way we would like to see health in the society we are envisioning, a society of true solidarity and humanity.

     We perceive the project of the Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure as a living cell of social resistance and emancipation against contemporary barbarity, thus we collaborate with people’s assemblies and base unions.

     During the operation hours of the pathology treatment room (Wednesdays and Thursdays, 18–20pm), you are welcome to bring medications that you no longer need.

56, Arachovis Street, VOX, Exarchia Square

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Greek Health Service.

      The Greek health service has collapsed, all the more reason to support this call for help for  a victim of police repression.

This from Contra Info:

        Inside the squatted social centre VOX, which is situated on the corner of Arachovis and Themistocleous streets at Exarchia Square, there is now a fund raising kit for the comrade who was shot by a cop with tear gas canister straight in his eye, during the evening march in response to the murder of Pavlos Fyssas in the district of Keratsini.
      The comrade needs to undergo another surgery, and the total amount to be raised is 5,000 euros.
Solidarity is our weapon. No one alone.
Squatted social centre VOX

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Many Paths Of Anarchism,

      The following is extract from a Reuters report on anarchist activity in Athens. Of course the anarchists in Greece, like anarchists the world over, are a many faceted bunch who cover the whole spectrum of direct action, with the same aim, to create a free, fair and just society, based on mutual aid, voluntary co-operation, justice and sustainability. It certainly will not come about by asking the authoritarians who oppress us and who try to govern us, "Please will you let us build our free new world?"

(Reuters) - Not far from the Athenian ruins where democracy was born more than 2,500 years ago, young anarchists intent on toppling Greece's political system run a cafe where the beer is cheap and the artwork features police cars set on fire.
     At first glance K*Vox, started a year ago by anarchists who occupied a shuttered building, looks like any other cafe in the bohemian Athens neighborhood of Exarchia. But inside posters show gun-toting guerrilla fighters and the symbol of anarchy - a circle with an A.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home.

The Rabid Dogs Of The State.

        The rabid dogs of the state have been unleashed in Greece, they are allowed to run wild through the streets, barking and biting at anything that moves. There will be no attempt the rein them in, as the state needs their savagery to intimidate and repress any organising by the people. The fallacy that the police are there to protect the public has long since been exploded, they are the state's first line of defence when the propaganda machine isn't working. According to the powers that be, the will of the people must be controlled, not the brutality of the police.

This From The Greek Streets:

         On Saturday July 20, 2013 “Delta” police thugs entered “Exarhia”, one of the most vibrant areas of Athens, while hundreds of people were attending two different solidarity events to anarchist Kostas Sakkas, who was on hunger strike for 38 days because he was imprisoned in the self-proclaimed “democracy” of Greece for 31 months without a trial.

        As depicted in the video, the “Delta” police thugs on bikes begun to intimidate and chase passers- by for no reason and when people begun to gather reacting to their terrorist tactics, the policemen threw against them flash-bang grenades, asphyxiating gas grenades, flares and even empty glass bottles!

        Hundreds of people gathered at the spot to chase them away and begun to circle them, while residents from their balconies above were throwing water towards the police thugs to force them to leave, following the havoc they caused.

      Confronted by so many people, the Delta police thugs, along with a riot police brigade that was called to assist them, were soon forced to retreat and leave the area.

ann arky's home.

EXARCHIA ATHENS.

From Anarchistnews.org

Exarchia — the Hell’s Kitchen of Athens

        Historical stronghold of anarchists in the heart of Athens, the square has become a thermometer of Greek society during the crisis. Among the artists’ squats and trendy youth dropping by to breathe the air of protest, trafficking and violence are growing.

      The Albanian is a legitimate businessman today, and the young girl from the wealthy neighborhood of Ekali has grown into a little troublemaker. The good old anarchist sending the pseudo-revolutionary neophytes back to their studies, the Cypriot hotelier who becomes the best friend of Japanese tourists, and the former prisoner now an organiser of cultural events can all be found around Exarchia Square, a rallying point for the capital’s youth come by to savour the myth of the square, which a PASOK [Greece’s socialist party] chief wants to turn into a parking lot.

       In the heart of Athens, by day the square, like a snake shedding its skin, turns into something else, a mix of races, of shops opening and closing (thanks to Molotov cocktails, of course), watching over its restaurants, the Rozalia tavern and the Floral, and even the Riviera cinema. Not to mention its two kiosks, the statue of the lovers and two or three other things. A visit late in the day can confirm that the crisis has left its marks, but it can also reveal what never changes about Exarchia, the most restive neighbourhood in Greece ever since the fall of the dictatorship and even warned of as such by the U.S. State Department.

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

THE FUTURE IN YOUR OWN HANDS.

From Occupied London: 

          An interview with M1 from Dead Prez and Bonnot who are part of AP2P – all power to the people. This interview was filmed in Exarchia, Athens – Greece. They talk about global movements as well as what is happening in Greece, and the need for revolutionary struggle. This film also explores the importance of neighbourhoods which serve as a bastian of resistance, like the anarcho bohemian neighbourhood of Exarchia in Athens.  

ann arky's home.

POLICE HELP POLITICAL PRISONERS!!!

          One reason I always stay optimistic about the future is the never failing ingenuity of the ordinary people. Repeatedly when faced with adversity, they cleverly turn it into an opportunity. No matter what the repressive authorities throw at them, given time they will always turn what looks like defeat, into victory. The rigid authoritarians can never defeat that fluid, clever ingenuity of the people. 

This from Contra-Info.

ATHENS: Police steel plates used to seal squat, sold by activists to help political prisoners.

      The Occupied Social Centre VOX, one of the two buildings that were evicted by police in Exarchia on April 20th, was re-occupied the next day by anarchists, neighbours and other people in solidarity, who tore down the steel plates sealing off its entrances.

        On April 26th a few of the comrades who had helped the squatters re-occupy VOX, reported that all of the steel plates used by the cops and their paid mercenaries to seal it off were kept and have now been sold in the market, and all profits (nearly 300 euros) will be given as financial aid to imprisoned fighters across Greece.        Congratulations, comrades!

ann arky's home.