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 

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