The Answer Is In Our Hands.

 

       An odd place to go to find a somewhat favourable article on what some anarchists are up to in Greece, The New York Times!! Though some typical establishment phrases slip in, it in no way condemns the anarchists in the usual way that the babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, do as a matter of form. A lot is going on in Greece and the anarchists involved are a varied and multifaceted array of people, their actions are diverse, but with the same aim, the destruction of the state and its bed partner capitalism, and the creation of a society that offers individual freedom with co-operation, free association, mutual aid, and which sees to the needs of all our people, in a sustainable environment. If that is the sort of society you want, why not join the anarchists in that struggle. 

From The New York Times:

ATHENS — It may seem paradoxical, but Greece’s anarchists are organizing like never before.

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.

Tasos Sagris, a 45-year-old member of the Greek anarchist group Void Network and of the “self-organized” Embros theater group, has been at the forefront of a resurgence of social activism that is effectively filling a void in governance.

“People trust us because we don’t use the people as customers or voters,” Mr. Sagris said. “Every failure of the system proves the idea of the anarchists to be true.”

      These days that idea is not only about chaos and tearing down the institutions of the state and society — the country’s long, grinding economic crisis has taken care of much of that — but also about unfiltered self-help and citizen action.

      Yet the movement remains disparate, with some parts emphasizing the need for social activism and others prioritizing a struggle against authority with acts of vandalism and street battles with the police. Some are seeking to combine both.

      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.

      The burst of citizen action is just the latest chapter in a long history for the anarchist movement in Greece.

       Anarchists played an active role in the student uprisings that helped bring down Greece’s dictatorship in the mid-1970s, including a rebellion at the Athens Polytechnic in November 1973, which authorities crushed with police officers and tanks, resulting in several deaths.

       Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, anarchists have joined leftist groups in occupying portions of Greek universities to promote their thinking and lifestyle; many of those occupied spaces exist today, and some are used as bases by anarchists to fashion the crude firebombs hurled at the police during street protests.

       Over the years, anarchists have also backed a spectrum of causes, such as opposing “neoliberal” education reform or campaigning against the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

Continue reading:

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

GIVING VENT TO THE DREAMS.

       It was a few years ago, but it did get to the people's imagination and sowed a few seeds, who knows what grows from that and who knows the spark that starts the fire. Let's keep throwing seeds, the more the merrier.

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BARBARA DOWLING'S TRIAL.

A call for solidarity for a very brave and principled woman. 

Barbara Dowling's census trial re-scheduled for 25 September

     Barbara Dowling will be on trial in Glasgow on Tuesday for allegedly refusing to aid and abet torture by cooperating with Scotland's census.

10am Tuesday 25 September at Glasgow Sheriff Court.
Map http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/locations/index.asp?crt=glw&val=map
     

      Please come along to support Barbara in court. If other commitments prevent you from staying for the duration of the trial, please come along *before* 10am to show your support outside the court - even if it's only for a few minutes.
         "As everyone knows, soldiers and civilian contractors at the Abu Ghraib prison committed criminal offenses," says New York Times editor, Andrew Rosenthal. So why have no Abu Ghraib contractors faced prosecution? And why is a Glasgow woman facing criminal charges for objecting to the involvement of Abu Ghraib contractor CACI in Scotland’s census?
        Barbara Dowling will be tried in Glasgow Sheriff Court on Tuesday 25 September, accused of committing a criminal offence under the Census Act 1920. She allegedly refused to fully complete her census form last year in protest at the involvement in Scotland’s census of a British subsidiary of US defence contractor CACI International.

Read the full article
http://news.ethicalcensus.org.uk/2012/is-objecting-to-torture-a-crime/#more-319

More info: contact@ethicalcensus.org.uk
mailto:contact@ethicalcensus.org.uk

or phone 07936432519 or 07786630764

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GLASGOW POP-UP-SOCIAL CENTRE.

PoP-Up Social Centre

Glasgow Social Centre

30 March at 18:30 until 1 April at 17:00

Pearce Institute. 840 Govan Road. Glasgow, G51 3UU

The Glasgow Social Centre PoP's Up in Govan.

This Weekend the GSC is holding a PoP-UP Event at the Pearce Institute in Govan.

Friday: Film Showing: Wasteland 6.30pm

      "Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker (DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, BLINDSIGHT and COUNTDOWN TO ZERO) and co-directors João Jardim and Karen Harley have great access to the entire process and, in the end, offer stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit."

Empire:

        “Beautifully captured, this portrait of a very proud and resourceful underclass rightly tugged the heartstrings of everyone who saw it.”

New York Times:

         “We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials,” Tião, an impoverished Brazilian catadore, or trash picker, declares to a talk-show host in Lucy Walker’s inspiring documentary “Waste Land."

Saturday: Govan Together,

        You are warmly invited to the final event of the Govan Together partnership. Events throughout the day to include:

-Seed Planting

-Film Screening

-Workshops

-Community Visioning

-Torchlight Procession

The evening will climax with a reconvening of the Parliament on Doomster Hill at Water Row.

Sunday:

         Banner Making, Sunday Lunch & "This Space Is Your Space" Discussion.

-Banner Making: 11am

        Have a cause, a group or campaign you'd like to tell the world about? Get involved in our banner making workshop. Lets all pitch in together! (Paints & Some Materials Available)

-Lunch: 2pm-3pm

"This Space Is Your Space": 3pm-5pm

          We're aiming to plan a series of PoP-Up Social Centres throughout 2012, and we'd like to know what you want, bring suggestions for workshops, talks, film screenings, or anything else you're passionate about.

This Space Is Your Space!

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OCCUPY AIPAC.

An open letter from Chris Hedges: 

I invite you to join me at the Occupy AIPAC Summit in Washington this weekend.

       I spent seven years in the Middle East. I lived for two of those seven years in Jerusalem. I was the Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times. AIPAC does not speak for Jews or for Israel. It speaks for right-wing ideologues who believe that because they have capacity to wage war, they have a right to wage war.
And just as these elites were too blind and too enamored of their own rhetoric to see what invading Iraq would trigger, so too are they unable to comprehend the regional conflagration that would be unleashed by attacking Iran.
      The uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt to Greece to Occupy Wall Street to our gathering outside AIPAC's doors in Washington are all the same primal struggle for justice. The battle for justice in Middle East is our battle. It is part of the vast, global battle against the 1 percent. It is a battle against the fossil fuel industry, the weapons manufacturers, the security and surveillance state, the misuse of public funds that wastes $ 4 trillion on wars that never had to be fought, the trillions more in looted taxpayer money to prop up insolvent banks and swell bloated military budgets, the battle to protect working men and women who are left struggling in the name of "austerity" to save their homes and find work.
       Join us at Occupy AIPAC this weekend. Help us make the voices of the 99 percent—the voices of mothers, fathers and children in the squalid refugee camps in Gaza, in the suburbs of Tehran and in the bleak industrial wastelands in Ohio—heard. Yours,
Chris Hedges.

Read 10 Reasons Why the Israel Lobby is So Dangerous

Sign the petition

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