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:

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Sometimes,Self Help Needs Help.

       A call for support and solidarity from a local Glasgow group, "LoveMilton", as usual bureaucracy stands in their way. Sometimes self-help needs a little help.

 

Hi

    For the last 5 years LoveMilton have been working hard to achieve their dream of building a new community centre in Milton in the North of Glasgow as a community self-build project. Using the building process to actually train, upskill and qualify local residence in sustainable building techniques giving them the skills, confidence and access to better employability. We have already trained over 135 people through smaller building projects in the area and have everything lined up for our first big community build. The land we have identified for the build is derelict and owned by the people of Glasgow, however, transfer of the land is proving impossible and without this transfer LoveMilton looks set to close at the end of this financial year. Please show your support for our project by signing this petition. Thank you.

http://www.change.org/p/gordon-matheson-lovemilton-community-land-transfer?recruiter=79588568&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

Thanks!
Hannah 

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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

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Cheap Subservient Labour.

     It is obvious that the Greek state is determined to crush any attempt by the people of Greece at self organisation. What is going on in Greece is not just a smashing of the social fabric of that society, not just a plundering of the public purse and all public assets, but a consorted effort to break the will of the people. There is nothing in the Greek state's agenda that says that the people of Greece will return to a reasonable standard of living, on the contrary, there is an attempt to force them, by means of repression, to accept their new place in third world, sweatshop conditions. The Western corporate world, Europe in particular, is determined to compete with the Eastern corporate world, to do that, it requires a low wage, sweatshop economy. Greece is the first step in that grand plan, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal are not far behind, the rest of Europe will follow suit in time. The Financial Mafia's methodology in pushing this corporate dream, will be "austerity".

      If the Greek state has the welfare of the Greek people in mind, why would it crush any attempt at self-help by the people trying to alleviate some of their suffering. Over the past year the Greek state has attempted to smash and close down any established squats and self-help centres in the cities and towns, hardly a method of helping the people through tough times. Sweatshop Europe is on the cards, unless we the people of Europe start now to organise self-help and solidarity across the continent. After all the financial Mafia and their partners, the corporate greed machine are well organised across the entire continent, and that is what we are up against. They have a grand plan, the workers have to know their place, a pool of unemployed to draw from, cheap subservient labour fearful for their jobs, as deprivation is the alternative. Is this the world we wish to leave to our children and grandchildren? If not, what are we going to do about it?

This from Contra Info:

March 25, 2012: Mass detentions and police raid of the autonomous hangout Baruti in the city of Veria (northern Greece)
April 20, 2012: Cops raid on the squatted social centre VOX and Valtetsiou 60 living squat, both spaces in the neighbourhood of Exarchia, Athens
April 29, 2012: Eviction of Panteion housing squat in Athens
July 2, 2012: Mass detentions and double police raid of the anarchist hangout Nadir and Orfanotrofio squat in Thessaloniki
July 10, 2012: Fascist arson attack against Apertus squat in the city of Agrinio
July 13, 2012: Fascist arson attack causes extensive damage to Draka squat on the island of Corfu
August 18, 2012: Eviction of the occupied municipal market of Kypseli in downtown Athens (seized and operated by the municipal authorities by now)
September 12, 2012: Cops arrest comrades and evict Delta squat in Thessaloniki; among various projects housed there, the anarchist Radio Revolt looses yet another roof; one of the arrested anarchists is held at a detention camp for immigrants and then extradited to Colombia; some of the former squatters are now faced with further prosecutions
September 13, 2012: Fascist arson on the self-managed hangout in the university of Rethymnon on the island of Crete (following an attempted parastatal incendiary attack against the same space on September 6)
October 1, 2012: Eviction of the squatted social centre Afroditis 8 in the city of Veria
October 30, 2012: Eviction of the Spyridonos Trikoupi living squat in Exarchia, Athens
December 20, 2012: Cops evict Villa Amalias squat in Athens
December 22, 2012: Fascist arson attack against the squatted social space Xanadu in the city of Xanthi (northern Greece)
December 28, 2012: Police arrest and beat migrant street vendors, and raid on the self-managed hangout in the ASOEE faculty in Athens; cops also confiscate equipment of the 98FM pirate radio from the same space
January 9, 2013: Eviction of Skaramaga squat in Athens, following a reoccupation attempt of Villa Amalias squat that failed and resulted in mass detentions
January 15, 2013: Police raid on Lelas Karagianni 37 squat in Athens
February 2, 2013: Nazi scum and cops team up to attack the social centre Mperntes and the Villa Zografou squat in the district of Zografou, Athens
February 7, 2013: Fascist arson attack against the anarchist space Thersitis in the district of Ilion, Athens
On February 15, a reoccupation attempt of Skaramaga squat failed, resulting in a police crackdown in the wider area of Exarchia, Athens.

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LIVING OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM.

      The only news we get about Greece from that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, is about the bailout, will they get it, won't they get it, have they done enough to get it. Have they sorted out their lazy workers and cut their wages and pensions enough to merit the European financial Mafia giving the Greek banks more cash, with which to pay back the European financial Mafia?? Very little or nothing appears about how this game of shuffling imaginary money around affects the ordinary people of Greece. Poverty, deprivation, massive unemployment, especially among the young, increase alcoholism, drug addiction, suicides, mental health problems, homelessness and broken families.      

     However, as always the ingenuity and imagination of the ordinary people in the face of adversity, comes up with solutions. Let's hope that they will continue this imaginative alternative and organise it to its rightful conclusion and bring about the collapse of the stinking system responsible for all their ills.

This from Red Pepper:

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    Greeks queue to buy cheap sacks of potatoes sold directly by farmers at cost price in the northern town of Thessaloniki. Farmers in northern Greece have joined forces with local residents to provide cheap produce for the people. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis

    The first problem is that in Greece now we have 25 per cent unemployment, with youth unemployment reaching 58 per cent and unemployment in areas that used to be highly industrialised sometimes reaching 70-80 per cent. Many industries either close because we have very low consumption or, as in the case of the big multinationals like Coca-Cola, they are leaving.
     Around 170,000 small companies have closed in the past three years. It is almost impossible to set up a new company today in Greece because you can’t get the finance. The banks are taking 80 per cent of the money that Greece is getting from the EU and IMF. But they are not lending a euro to the people.
     Unemployment benefit only lasts for one year, and then you get nothing to survive on – only help from friends and family, from social networks and working for very little in the black economy. The problem up to now hasn’t been as severe as it could have been because of very strong family and friendship networks – if someone had difficulty in paying bills, for example, others would support them. But it isn’t possible to sustain this kind of support indefinitely.

Read the full article HERE:

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