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THE STATE MURDERS! communique by the Polytechnic School Occu
@ - 08.12.2008 19:49
communique by the Polytechnic School Occupation in Athens, Greece:
THE STATE MURDERS!
On Saturday December 6, 2008, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year old comrade, was murdered in cold blood, with a bullet in the chest by a cop in the area of Exarchia.
Contrary to the statements of politicians and journalists who are accomplices to the murder, this was not an “isolated incident”, but an explosion of the state repression which systematically and in an organised manner targets those who resist, those who revolt, the anarchists and antiauthoritarians.
It is the peak of state terrorism which is expressed with the upgrading of the role of repressive mechanisms, their continuous armament, the increasing levels of violence they use, with the doctrine of “zero tolerance”, with the slandering media propaganda that criminalises those who are fighting against authority.
It is these conditions that prepare the ground for the intensification of repression, attempting to extract social consent beforehand, and arming the weapons of state murderers in uniform!
Lethal violence against the people in the social and class struggle is aiming at everybody’s submission, serving as exemplary punishment, meant to spread fear.
It is part of the wider attack of the state and the bosses against the entire society, in order to impose more rigid conditions of exploitation and oppression, to consolidate control and repression. From school and universities to the dungeons of waged slavery with the hundreds of dead workers in the so-called “working accidents” and the poverty embracing large numbers of the population… From the minefields in the borders, the pogroms and the murders of immigrants and refugees to the numerous “suicides” in prisons and police stations… from the “accindental shootings” in police blockades to violent repression of local resistances, Democracy is showing its teeth!
From the first moment after the murder of Alexandros, spontaneous demonstrations and riots burst in the center of Athens, the Polytechnic, the Economic and the Law Schools are being occupied and attacks against state and capitalist targets take place in many different neighborhoods and in the city centre. Demonstrations, attacks and clashes erupt in Thessaloniki, Patras, Volos, Chania and Heraklion in Crete, in Giannena, Komotini and many more cities. In Athens, in Patission street –outside the Polytechnic and the Economic School- clashes last all night. Outside the Polytechnic the riot police make use of plastic bullets.
On Sunday the 7th December, thousands of people demonstrate towards the police headquarters in Athens, attacking the riot police. Clashes of unprecedented tension spread in the streets of the city centre, lasting until late at night. Many demonstrators are injured and a number of them are arrested.
We continue the occupation of the Polytechnic School which started on Saturday night, creating a space for all people who fighting to gather, and one more permanent focus of resistance in the city.
In the barricades, the university occupations, the demonstrations and the assemblies we keep alive the memory of Alexandros, but also the memory of Michalis Kaltezas and of all the comrades who were murdered by the state, strengthening the struggle for a world without masters and slaves, without police, armies, prisons and borders.
The bullets of the murderers in uniform, the arrests and beatings of demonstrators, the chemical gas war launched by the police forces, not only cannot manage to impose fear and silence, but they become for the people the reason to raise against state terrorism the cries of the struggle for freedom, to abandon fear and to meet –more and more every day- in the streets of revolt. To let the rage overflow and drown them!
STATE TERRORISM SHALL NOT PASS!
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF ALL THE ARRESTED IN THE EVENTS OF SATURDAY AND SUNDAY (7-8 DECEMBER).
We are sending our solidarity to everyone occupying universities, demonstrating and clashing with the state murderers all over the country.
The Occupation of the Polytechnic University in Athens
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| Lees meer over: europa | | aanvullingen | | ook de theaterschool roert zich | nn - 09.12.2008 12:30
15 years old boy is murdered
Alexandros was our friend, our brother, our son, our classmate and our comrade.The murder of the 15 years old Alexandros was the last straw for all the cases of young peoples' murders either for talking back to the cops, or for not stoppingin a roadblock, or even for being in the wrong place the wrong moment -as Alexandros did.
The murder of the 15 years old Alexandros was not an isolated incident, as the home Secretary stated with audacity. His statement completes practically the announcement of the former minister of Justice (Polydoras) that is a matter of time until a policeman will loose his temper and will shoot. But all the elements and all the witnesses indicate and forces us to think that a single verbal attack may be enough for a cop to loose his temper and shoot.
The murder of young serbian student Bulatovic in 1998 in thessaloniki by a cop, the murder of young Leontidis by a cop at Cassandrou street in 2003, the death of 24 years old Tony Onohua after being chased by civil cops at the area of Kalamaria the summer of 2007, the murder of 45 years old Maria in Lefkimi after the attack of police agaist the people who were struggling against the waste disposal facility, the murder of the pakistan migrant at Petrou Ralli street in Athens the last month, the every day humiliation and violence against each petty transgressors at police precincts all over Greece, shooting against the participants of university students' demonstrations the last year, the violent supreccion of demonstrations, the police's teared gas fueled war, the violence against anyone protesting [..] And, of course, the every day murders of economical and political immigrants by the border patrols. Even the deaths in the freezing agean waters, or the minefields in Evros: all these paint the picture of the greek police.
The murder of the 15yr old alexandros caused a wave of anger and despair from hundreds of thousands youth and citizens of any age. It's not just the disgust and the griefing at the death of a young man. It's the common consience that we all share as brothers, friends and parents, that there is a bullet with our or our beloved's name on it waiting for the ill-fated rendezvouz. We live in a social reality where that rewards the worthless crooks that manipulate us, politicians and involved clergy. Where we all try to survive in a tommorow without a future.
We handed the future and the managment of our society to people without morale nor rules, without respect for mankingd.
In such a reality the murder of the 15yr old alexandros was the last straw that that overfilled our rage.
But rage isn't just an emotion. It is a fight for social justice. A justice that is evident now that as long as it's absent from the social reality there will be no social peace, because with such submission and such social inequality only graveyards can claim social peace.
Just because we are young like alexandros, just because we want to dream with dignity where the state and the authorities seed submission and despair. Because we want to live and not just get by this winter, we are enraged and fight for all these.
So we may not forget Alexandros nor have another dead alexandros from a cops bullet.
So no peace with those that destroy the future of youths, no intervention, no crocodile tears for the hypocritical ministers. Love for life, hope for people. A daily social fight with our classmates, our friends, our families and our comrades for a societas civilorum without guardians for a society of solidarty.
We call every citizen, every student and worker to march with us against the goverment-backed assassins.
We call the schoolmates of alexandros in Thessaloniki to honor the memory of their peer and to abstain from the schools at Tuesday, the day of Alexandros' funeral.
Demonstration at Aristelous on Tuesday 10th of December, the day of the funeral.Thessaloniki 6/12/08
Assembly of the Occupied School of Theater.
PS: the schools are closed all over greece since 8/12. The prisoners of Diavata Prison in Thessaloniki who were on hunger strike a few weeks ago, send a message that they will stand on our side in the struggle. Today (9/12) is the funeral of Alexandros Andreas Grigoropoulos at 3pm in Athens. We wil march in the central streets of Thessaloniki at the same moment. All Greece will be on the streets.
| | Interruption TV | Awl - 21.12.2008 17:28
ABOUT THE INTERRUPTION BY PROTESTING CIVILIANS OF THE NEWSCAST AT THE GREEK NATIONAL BROADCAST STATION, 16 DEC, 2008, 3:10PM
Our action is a response to the accumulated pressures that ravage our lives, and not simply an emotional outburst in the wake of the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the Greek police.
We are yet another spontaneous collective that forms part of the social uprising in progress.
In a symbolic move to prevent the media from subduing us, citizens & civilians, we interrupt the newscast of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (NET). We believe that the media systematically cultivates a climate of fear, promoting misinformation as information, and portraying a multi-faceted uprising as an outburst of reckless violence.
The explosion of civil unrest is explained in criminal rather than political terms. Crucial events are selectively brushed under the carpet. The uprising is served up as entertainment, something to watch until the next soap opera comes on. The media are being used as a means of suppressing free and original thought on a daily basis.
Let us organise ourselves. No authority can provide solutions to our problems. We must rally together and turn our public spaces – streets, squares, parks, and schools – into areas of unhindered expression and communication. Let us come together, face to face, side by side, to formulate our cause and our course of action as one.
Let us overcome the fear, switch off our television sets, come out of our houses, continue to assert our rights, and take our lives into our own hands.
We condemn police violence and call for the immediate release of all protesters held in custody.
We stand for emancipation, human dignity, and freedom.
(Indymedia Athens)
| | General Assemblee in occupied townhall | awl - 21.12.2008 17:37
OPEN CALL TO JOIN THE POPULAR ASSEMBLY ORGANISED BY THE LIBERATED TOWN HALL OF AGIOS DIMITRIOS IN ATHENS.
( In the first week of the uprising, workers and locals of the suburb of Agios Dimitris occupied the town hall)
On the 6th of December 2008, a police man pulled a gun and shot dead a 15 year old child. Peoples’ rage is growing despite the attempts of both the media and the government to mislead public opinion.
It should be evident to all by now that this uprising is not merely an honorary response to the death of Alexandros. Ever since, there has been much talk about theft, burning and looting.
For media and politicians, violence is understood only in terms of what disturbs the public order.
For us, however:
Violence is working non stop for 40 years and wonder whether you will ever retire.
Violence is the stock market, stolen pensions and shares.
Violence is to be obliged to take on a mortgage which you end up repaying double
Violence is the managerial right of an employer to dismiss you of your duties any time he or she likes.
Violence is unemployment, precarity, 700 Euros salary.
Violence is “accidents” in the work place, because bosses reduce their costs against the security of their employees.
Violence is being on prozak and vitamins in order to cope with overtime.
Violence is to be an immigrant, to live in fear that you are likely to be deported any time and experience a constant insecurity.
Violence is to be a housewife, a wage labourer and a mother at the same time.
Violence is to be sexually harassed at work and being told: “Smile, we are not asking you for much are we”.
The uprising of school children, students, unemployed the workers on temporary contracts and the immigrants broke through the violence of normality. This uprising must not stop! Syndicalists, political parties, priests, journalists and businessmen are determined to maintain the type of violence in which we refer to above.
It is not just them; we are also responsible for the indefinite continuation of the situation described above. This uprising has opened a space for communication where we can finally express ourselves freely. We therefore decided to occupy the town hall of Agios Dimitrios and the call for a popular assembly, open to everyone
An open space for dialogue and communication, to break through the silence, to take over our lives!
December 13 2008
Source: www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/415260.html
| | Their Democracy murders | awl - 21.12.2008 17:45
THEIR DEMOCRACY MURDERS…
On Saturday December 6, 2008, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year old comrade, was murdered in cold blood, with a bullet in the chest by the cop Epaminondas Korkoneas of the special guards` police force in the area of Exarchia.
Contrary to the statements of politicians and journalists who are accomplices to the murder, this was not an “isolated incident”, but an explosion of the state repression which systematically and in an organised manner targets those who resist, those who revolt, the anarchists and antiauthoritarians.
It is the peak of state terrorism which is expressed with the upgrading of the role of repressive mechanisms, their continuous armament, the increasing levels of violence they use, with the doctrine of “zero tolerance”, with the slandering media propaganda that criminalises those who are fighting against authority.
It is these conditions that prepare the ground for the intensification of repression, attempting to extract social consent beforehand, and arming the weapons of state murderers in uniform that are targeting the people who fight, the youth, the damned who are revolting in the entire country.
Lethal violence against the people in the social and class struggle is aiming at everybody’s submission, serving as exemplary punishment, meant to spread fear.
It is the escalation of the generalized attack of the state and the bosses against the whole of society, in order to impose more rigid conditions of exploitation and oppression, to consolidate control and repression. An attack that is reflected everyday on poverty, social exclusion, the blackmail to adjust in the world of social and class divisions, the ideological war launched by the dominant mechanisms of manipulation (the mass media). An attack which is raging in every social space, demanding from the oppressed their division and silence. From the schools’ cells and the universities to the dungeons of waged slavery with the hundreds of dead workers in the so-called “working accidents” and the poverty embracing large numbers of the population… From the minefields in the borders, the pogroms and the murders of immigrants and refugees to the numerous “suicides” in prisons and police stations… from the “accidental shootings” in police blockades to violent repression of local resistances, Democracy is showing its teeth!
In these conditions of fierce exploitation and oppression, and against the daily looting and pillage that the state and the bosses are launching, taking as spoils the oppressed people’s labour force, their life, their dignity and freedom, the accumulated social suffocation is accompanying today the rage erupting in the streets and the barricades for the murder of Alexandros.
From the first moment after the murder of Alexandros, spontaneous demonstrations and riots appear in the centre of Athens, the Polytechnic, the Economic and the Law Schools are being occupied and attacks against state and capitalist targets take place in many different neighbourhoods and in the city centre. Demonstrations, attacks and clashes erupt in Thessaloniki, Patras, Volos, Chania and Heraklion in Crete, in Giannena, Komotini, Xanthi, Serres, Sparti, Alexandroupoli, Mytilini. In Athens, in Patission street -outside the Polytechnic and the Economic School- clashes last all night. Outside the Polytechnic the riot police make use of plastic bullets.
On Sunday the 7th December, thousands of people demonstrate towards the police headquarters in Athens, attacking the riot police. Clashes of unprecedented tension spread in the streets of the city centre, lasting until late at night. Many demonstrators are injured and a number of them are arrested.
From Monday morning until today the revolt spreads and becomes generalized. The last days are full of uncountable social events: militant high school students’ demonstrations ending up -in many cases- in attacks against police stations and clashes with the cops in the neighborhoods of Athens and in the rest of the country, massive demonstrations and conflicts between protestors and the police in the centre of Athens, during which there are assaults in banks, big department stores and ministries, siege of the Parliament in Syntagma square, occupations of public buildings, demonstrations ending in riots and attacks against state and capitalist targets in many different cities.
The attacks of the police against youth and generally against people who are fighting, the dozens of arrests and beatings of demonstrators, and in some cases the threatening of protestors by cops waving their guns, as well as their cooperation with the fascist thugs -like in the incidents of Patras, where cops together with fascists charged against the rebels of the city-, are the methods in which the state’s uniformed dogs are implementing the doctrine of “zero tolerance” under the commands of the political bosses in order to suppress the wave of revolt which was triggered last Saturday night.
The terrorism by the police occupation army is completed by the exemplary punishment of those who are arrested and now facing severe accusations leading to their imprisonment:
In the city of Larisa, 8 persons arrested are prosecuted with the “anti”terrorist law and were imprisoned facing charges for “criminal organization”. 25 immigrants who were arrested during the riots in Athens face the same charges as well. Also in Athens, 5 of the arrested on Monday were imprisoned, and 5 more who were arrested Wednesday night are in custody and will be taken in front of a prosecutor next Monday, facing felony charges.
At the same time, a deceitful propaganda war is launched against the people fighting, paving the way for repression, for the returning in the normality of social injustice and submission.
The explosive events right after the murder caused a wave of international mobilization in memory of Alexandros and in solidarity with the revolted who are fighting in the streets, inspiring a counter-attack to the totalitarianism of democracy. Concentrations, demonstrations, symbolic attacks in greek embassies and consulates and other solidarity actions have taken place in cities of Cyprus, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Holland, G. Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Turkey, USA, in Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Slovakia, Croatia, Russia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Belgium, N. Zealand, Argentina, Mexico, Chile and elsewhere.
We continue the occupation of the Polytechnic School which started on Saturday night, creating a space for all people who are fighting to gather, and one more permanent focus of resistance in the city.
In the barricades, the occupations, the demonstrations and the assemblies we keep alive the memory of Alexandros, but also the memory of Michalis Kaltezas, of Carlo Giuliani, Michalis Prekas, Christoforos Marinos and of all the comrades who were murdered by the state. We don’t forget the social-class war in which these comrades fell and we keep open the front of a total refusal to the aged world of Authority. Our actions, our attempts are the living cells of the insubordinate free world that we dream, without masters and slaves, without police, armies, prisons and borders.
The bullets of the murderers in uniform, the arrests and beatings of demonstrators, the chemical gas war launched by the police forces, the ideological attack of Democracy not only cannot manage to impose fear and silence, but they become for the people the reason to raise against state terrorism the cries of the struggle for freedom, to abandon fear and to meet –more and more every day, youth, high school and university students, immigrants, jobless, workers- in the streets of revolt. To let the rage overflow and drown them!
THE STATE, THE BOSSES, THEIR THUGS AND THEIR LACKEYS ARE MOCKING US, ROBBING US AND KILLING US!
LET’S ORGANISE, COUNTER-ATTACK AND SMASH THEM!
THESE NIGHTS BELONG TO ALEXIS!
CONCENTRATION FOR SOLIDARITY TO THE ARRESTED AT EVELPIDON COURTHOUSE: MONDAY, 15 DECEMBER 2008, 9am
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF ALL THE ARRESTED
We are sending our solidarity to everyone occupying universities, schools and state buildings, demonstrating and clashing with the state murderers all over the country.
We are sending our solidarity to all comrades abroad who are mobilizing, transferring our voice everywhere. In the great battle for global social liberation we stand together!
The Occupation of the Polytechnic University in Athens,
Friday, December 12, 2008
The assembly of the Occupation takes place everyday at 8pm in the Polytechnic.
blog:  http://katalipsipolytexneiou.blogspot.com/
email:  katalipsipolytexneiou@gmail.com
online radio: http://147.102.219.129:8000/live
| | These days are our days too | awl - 21.12.2008 17:49
These days are ours, too
(The following text was distributed at the student picket outside the police headquarters today, December 15th 2008, by people from Athens’ Haunt of Albanian Migrants. [...] It shows something very important: that ties of solidarity are being formed and strengthened across different sectors of the Greek society - a wonderful thing!)
Following the assassination of Alexis Grigoropoulos we have been living in an unprecedented condition of turmoil, an outflow of rage that doesn’t seem to end. Leading this uprising, it seems, are the students - who with an inexhaustible passion and hearty spontaneity have reversed the whole situation. You cannot stop something you don’t control, something that is organised spontaneously and under terms you do not comprehend. This is the beauty of the uprising. The high school students are making history and leave it to the others to write it up and to classify it ideologically. The streets, the incentive, the passion belongs to them.
In the framework of this wider mobilisation, with the student demonstrations being its steam-engine, there is a mass participation of the second generation of migrants and many refugees also. The refugees come to the streets in small numbers, with limited organisation, with the spontaneity and impetus describing their mobilisation. Right now, they are the most militant part of the foreigners living in Greece. Either way, they have very little to lose.
The children of migrants mobilise en mass and dynamically, primarily through high school and university actions as well as through the organisations of the left and the far left. They are the most integrated part of the migrant community, the most courageous. They are unlike their parents, who came with their head bowed, as if they were beging for a loaf of bread. They are a part of the Greek society, since they’ve lived in no other. They do not beg for something, they demand to be equal with their Greek classmates. Equal in rights, on the streets, in dreaming.
For us, the politically organised migrants, this is a second french November of 2005. We never had any illusions that when the peoples’ rage overflew we would be able to direct it in any way. Despite the struggles we have taken on during all these years we never managed to achieve such a mass response like this one. Now is time for the street to talk: The deafening scream heard is for the 18 years of violence, repression, exploitation and humiliation. These days are ours, too.
These days are for the hundreds of migrants and refugees who were murdered at the borders, in police stations, workplaces. They are for those murdered by cops or “concerned citizens.” They are for those murdered for daring to cross the border, working to death, for not bowing their head, or for nothing. They are for Gramos Palusi, Luan Bertelina, Edison Yahai, Tony Onuoha, Abdurahim Edriz, Modaser Mohamed Ashtraf and so many others that we haven’t forgotten.
These days are for the everyday police violence that remains unpunished and unanswered. They are for the humiliations at the border and at the migrant detention centres, which continue to date. They are for the crying injustice of the Greek courts, the migrants and refugees unjustly in prison, the justice we are denied. Even now, in the days and nights of the uprising, the migrants pay a heavy toil - what with the attacks of far-righters and cops, with deportations and imprisonment sentences that the courts hand out with Christian love to us infidels.
These days are for the exploitation continuing unabatedly for 18 years now. They are for the struggles that are not forgotten: in the downs of Volos, the olympic works, the town of Amaliada. They are for the toil and the blood of our parents, for informal labour, for the endless shifts. They are for the deposits and the adhesive stamps, the welfare contributions we paid and will never have recognised. It is for the papers we will be chasing for the rest of our lives like a lottery ticket.
These days are for the price we have to pay simply in order to exist, to breathe. They are for all those times when we grit our teeth, for the insults we took, the defeats we were charged with. They are for all the times when we didn’t react even when having all the reasons in the world to do so. They are for all the times when we did react and we were alone because our deaths and our rage did not fit pre-existing shapes, didn’t bring votes in, didn’t sell in the prime-time news.
These days belong to all the marginalised, the excluded, the people with the difficult names and the unknown stories. They belong to all those who die every day in the Aegean sea and Evros river, to all those murdered at the border or at a central Athens street; the belong to the Roma in Zefyri, to the drug addicts in Eksarhia. These days belong to the kids of Mesollogiou street, to the unintegrated, the uncontrollable students. Thanks to Alexis, these days belong to us all.
18 years of silent rage are too many.
To the streets, for solidarity and dignity!
We haven’t forgotten, we won’t forget - these days are yours too Luan, Tony, Mohamed, Alexis…
Haunt of Albanian Migrants
Source: http://www.steki-am.blogspot.com
compiled by libcom from www.urban75.net and www.occupiedLondon.org/blog
| | Occupation Greek Workers Union office | awl - 21.12.2008 17:58
WE WILL EITHER DETERMINE OUR HISTORY OURSELVES OR LET IT BE DETERMINED WITHOUT US
The historic central offices of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) in Athens have been occupied by militant workers. In the afternoon, a group of 50 bureaucrats came along to the building of the insurgent workers. They came together with some “heavies” but disappeared in the sight of anarchist reinforcements from the Economics university, chanting slogans of solidarity.
The action forms part of a strategy to counteract the designs of the union bureaucracy to distance its membership from the current revolt, and protest its management and mediation of workers' struggles in Greece. The occupants aim to create a space in which to facilitate a grassroots and self organised workers response to the crisis, and bring the wider working class into the events unfolding on the streets of Greece. Town halls in Athens and Thessaloniki have also been occupied in order to hold general assemblies.
The communique of the "General Assembly of Insurgent Workers" follows below:
DECLARATION
We will either determine our history ourselves or let it be determined without us.
We, manual workers, employees, jobless, temporary workers, local or migrants, are not passive tv-viewers. Since the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday night we participate in the demonstrations, the clashes with the police, the occupations of the centre or the neighborhoods. Time and again we had to leave work and our daily obliga-tions to take the streets with the students, the university students and the other prole-tarians in struggle.
WE DECIDED TO OCCUPY THE BUILDING OF GSEE
-To turn it into a space of free expression and a meeting point of workers.
-To disperse the media-touted myth that the workers were and are absent from the clashes, and that the rage of these days was an affair of some 500 "mask-bearers", "hooligans" or some other fairy tale, while on the tv-screens the workers were presented as victims of the clash, while the capitalist crisis in Greece and Worldwide leads to countless layoffs that the media and their managers deal as a "natural phenomenon".
-To flay and uncover the role of the trade union bureaucracy in the undermining of the insurrection -and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade union mechanism that sup-ports it for decades and decades, undermine the struggles, bargain our labor power for crumblings, perpetuate the system of exploitation and wage slavery. The stance of GSEE last Wednesday is quite telling: GSEE cancelled the programmed strikers' demonstra-tion, stopping short at the organization of a brief gathering in Syntagma Sq., making si-multaneously sure that the people will be dispersed in a hurry from the Square, fearing that they might get infected by the virus of insurrection.
-To open up this space for the first time -as a continuation of the social opening created by the insurrection itself-, a space that has been built by our contributions, a space from which we were excluded. For all these years we trusted our fate on saviours of every kind, and we end up losing our dignity. As workers we have to start assuming our responsibilities, and to stop assigning our hopes to wise leaders or "able" representatives. We have to acquire a voice of our own, to meet up, to talk, to decide, and to act. Against the generalized attack we endure. The creation of collective "grassroot" resistances is the only way.
-To propagate the idea of self-organization and solidarity in working places, struggle committees and collective grassroot procedures, abolishing the bureaucrat trade unionists.
All these years we gulp the misery, the pandering, the violence in work. We became accustomed to counting the crippled and our dead - the so-called "labor accidents". We became accustomed to ignore the migrants -our class brothers- getting killed. We are tired living with the anxiety of securing a wage, revenue stamps, and a pension that now feels like a distant dream.
As we struggle not to abandon our life in the hands of the bosses and the trade union representatives, likewise we will not abandon no arrested insurgent in the hands of the state and the juridical mechanism.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE DETAINED
NO CHARGE TO THE ARRESTED
SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKERS
GENERAL STRIKE
WORKERS' ASSEMBLY IN THE "LIBERATED" BUILDING OF GSEE
Wendesday, 17 December 2008, 18:00
Source: http://libcom.org/news/greek-workers-occupy-union-offices-17122008
________________________
ABOUT GSEE
(To dissipate some misunderstanding.)
GSEE and ADEDY (ADEDY is for civil servants) are nationwide confederations. There are no other nationwide confederations (KKE’s PAME structure is not a formal federation), so every union, be it trade union, factory/workplace union or whatelse is pretty much a de facto member of GSEE or ADEDY. In Greece there are no different unions like for example in France with GGT, CFDT, FO or others. There’s just GSEE.
It is a tertiary organization, comprised out of its local workers’ centers in every city, each of these centers is made out of the various local branches of the trade unions and the local unions -say a union in a factory- and so on.
Each party, from the right to the far left (trotskyists, maoists etc etc) takes part in the same trade union structures. they do elections, assemblies, voting etc all together.
MIlitant workers (non-aligned) can of course participate too.
Those who occupied the building are “members” of GSEE either they want it or not. I would support the action even if some 12 year olds occupied the building to shit on the floors. Unfortunately this is not the case, and the occupiers are workers.
In the words of the GSEE president (a statement from today)
“GSEE is the collective organizer and leader of the struggles of ALL workers”.
(emphasis in the original ! )
Hope this clarified things a bit.
many other stuff happened but no time.
Source: From the libcom.org thread ( http://libcom.org/forums/news/police-shoot-dead-16-year-old-demonstrator-athens-06122008) - 19 12 08
______________________________________
Communique #2 (17 December 2008)
An offhand answer to "Mr." Panagopoulos regarding his statements on NET channel (a state-run T.V. station in Greece).
"Mister" Panagopoulos stated on the channel, that "some youngsters occupied the building of G.S.E.E. [...] if they were manual workers, they'd be on building sites now [...]".
This unearthy subject, belonging to the managerial staff of National Bank of Greece, that "represents" the workers, where is he himself now, and what does he know about building sites?
He has been a technocrat for his entire life, a manager in State Companies (D.E.K.O.), a party wangler and a gravedigger of struggles. This spokesman of P.A.S.O.K. politics within the workers' movement lives in the northern suburbs, smokes cigars and gets a fat paycheck, from National Bank and G.S.E.E., while administering huge state and E.U. funds.
He got promoted by his boss, while it is forbidden for trade unionists to get a promotion during their service time -- and he accepted the promotion.
He organized a conference for the 90 years of G.S.E.E. in the amphitheater of National Bank, namely the amphitheater of his boss Mr. Arapoglou, with funds from the Foreign Office, thus showing his intentions and his class position.
Panagopoulos can go join his bosses, just as he does every day. Just as he signs the collective agreement with the employers, giving us some of the lowest wages in Europe.
How dare he reproach the insurgent workers, he who is the ringleader the repression of every labor demand?
Here in the occupied G.S.E.E., there is plaque that commemorates each of its leaders. Above the name of Panagopoulos, there are many other names of bureaucrats who got the reward of becoming PMs: Kanellopoulos, Protopapas, Polizogopoulos. On this plaque there are also the names of the appointed (not elected) professional unionists during Junta and the Occupation. That's where Panagopoulos' name deserves to be.
He can abandon us where we've been forever: at work, unemployed, in our class position, in our night shifts, on the streets, on the insurrection during daytime, on the street ...
If Panagopoulos worries about those who now are at work, let him stay calm. They will turn up for the evening assembly, that will open up the building he kept closed during all these years. They will not go to work tomorrow -- the day he refused to call for a strike -- to hit the streets and express their rage.
A rage Panagopoulos can't and does not want to comprehend, because that's what his fat paycheck and his repressive role dictate ...
Here we are ...
Signed:
Proletarian Initiative from (not that young) night workers of the liberated G.S.E.E. building
___________________________________
Communique #3 (17 December 2008)
An answer from the liberated building of G.S.E.E.:
Panagopoulos declared this morning that we are not workers, since workers are at work. This, among many other things, reveals what Panagopoulos' "job" really is. Panagopoulos' "job" is to make sure that workers are at work, to do everything within his reach to ensure that workers are at work.
But for the last ten days, workers are not only at work, they are out on the streets. And this is a fact that Panagopoulos and every other Panagopoulos can't hide, even if he succeeds in hiding the sun that brings light to our steps and rage onto the streets of this city.
We are working people, we are jobless (paying in layoffs our participation in strikes called by G.S.E.E., when they -- the trade unionists -- are rewarded with promotions), we are working under contract moving from job to job, we work insecurely either formally or informally in a "stage" progam or in subsidized jobs to lower the unemployment index. We are part of this world and we are here. Whoever wants to understand can understand.
We are insurgent workers, end of story.
Every single one of our revenue stamps is paid with blood, sweat, violence, broken waists, broken hands, knees, feet, heads.
The entire world is made by us, the workers.
PS. We heard on the radio that our act was an artistic happening. We accept this characterization, but only as far as the proletariat will abolish art and philosophy (along with state and capital)...
Signed:
Two enraged proletarians from the liberated GSEE
Sources:
Anarkismo, Athens Indymedia, Blog of the Liberated Building of the GSEE
| | We are in civil war | awl - 21.12.2008 18:18
Overigens zag ik graag de Nederlandse vertaling van deze prachtige tekst alhier verschijnen, die op de demo in Amsterdam zo luid werd uitgeschald en botste op de gevels en de overheersende onverschilligheid van het winkelende publiek. "We zijn in burgeroorlog..." Vooralsnog surreëel in dit ingepolderde landje.
_____________________
We are in Civil War:
With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media
wishing to see an obedient society
From the employees of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens.
[In a previous post we reported that the town hall was occupied by anarchists. Wrong: The town hall was occupied by the locals, whose statements so far easily overcome the “toughest” of anarchist speech. Here’s a rough translation of their statement:]
STATEMENT
On Saturday night, the Greek police assassinated a 15 year old student.
His assassination was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It was the continuation of a coordinated action, by state terrorism and the [fascist] Golden Dawn, which aimed at university and high school students (with the private universities first), at migrants that continue to be persecuted for being born with the wrong colour, at the employees that must work to death without compensation.
The government of cover-ups with its praetors, having burnt the forests last summer, is responsible for all major cities burning now, too. It protected financial criminals, all those involved in the mobile phone interceptions scandal, those looting the employees’ insurance funds, those kidnapping migrants, those who protected the banks and the monasteries that steal from the ordinary people.
We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society.
There are no excuses, yet they once again try to use conspiracy theories to calm spirits down.The rage that had accumulated had to be expressed and should not, by any means, end.
Throughout the world we are making headlines, it was about time that people uprise everywhere. The generation of the poor, the unemployed, the partially employed, the homeless, the migrants, the youth, is the generation that will smash every display window and will wake up the obedient citizens from their sleep of the ephemeral American dream.
Don’t watch the news, consciousness is born in the streets
When the youth is murdered, the old people should not sleep
Goodbye Alexandros, may your blood be the last of an innocent to run.
Source: http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2008/12/12/we-are-in-civil-war-with-the-fascists-the-bankers-the-state-the-media-wishing-to-see-an-obedient-society/
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