Solidarity with Exarchia!
The state can’t cope with, and won’t abide genuine autonomous zones. This is true across the world. That’s why they helicopter-bombed MOVE in Philadelphia killing six adults and five children in 1985. That’s why they had to attack the convoy of new age travelers, peace protestors, green activists and festival-goers at the Battle of the Beanfield with a quasi-military police force of over 1,300 officers drawn from six counties and the MoD (also 1985). That’s why Pollok Free State couldn’t be allowed. That is why the ZAD protest community had to be destroyed. & that’s why the central Athens neighbourhood of Exarcheia is under attack today, as we write. The mass police occupation and raid of anarchist neighborhood Εξάρχεια has seen over 100 arrests, helicopters hovering overhead, unmarked police cars everywhere and only mainstream reporters allowed to film.
Here’s a (translated) report from Yannis Youlountas:
“Alert! What we’ve been giving you for a month and a half just started this morning, shortly before Dawn:
Exarcheia is under police occupation.
The Famous Rebel and solidarity district of Athens is completely surrounded by huge police forces: many crs buses (Mat), anti-Terrorism Police (Opke), outfielders (Dias), members of the secret police (Asfalitès), as well as a helicopter and several drones.
This is a unique place in Europe for its high concentration of squats and other self-managed spaces, but also for its resistance against repression and solidarity with the precarious and migrants, exarcheia has been in the collimator of the right government since its election on July 7th …. The New Prime Minister Mitsotakis had made it a personal matter, especially since he had been mocked in early August for not having achieved his goal of “cleaning exarcheia in a month” as he had announced in great pumps.
This morning, 4 squats have been evacuated: Spirou Trikoupi 17, transito, Rosa de fon and gare. The offensive is for now the northwest part of the neighborhood, with the remarkable exception of the squat nottara 26, known to be best kept and very important symbolic for the neighborhood as the first historic squat of the “refugee crisis” in the center City of Athens.
We are currently counting about a hundred arrest, as well as brutal attacks against people trying to film. Only mass media in the service of power has the permission to cover the event.
In Total, there are 23 squats in exarcheia plus 26 others around the neighborhood, which is a total of 49 focused on a small area. 49 squats to which you need to add other types of self-managed places, some of them for rent (free social space, free store skoros, etc ) as well as dozens of special housing including groups of activist groups. ES, often close to the terraces to allow access above the streets.
Of the squats that are located precisely inside exarcheia, 12 are accommodation squats for refugees. ES and migrant. ES and the other 11 are squats of political groups anarchists and Bohemian (even though most refugee squats. Es are also of course very political, starting with the nottara 26 and spirou trikoupi 17 with direct meetings and a lot of links with the rest of the social movement).
In the squats of spirou trikoupi 17 and transito (which the jacks of power are now murer), more than a dozen children have been ripped away from a peaceful and happy existence to be suddenly sent to camps. These sinister camps are unsanitary and overcrowded, the migrant. They’re not fed up. ES and suffer from temperature variations, suffer humiliation and sometimes torture, and mitsotakis also requires that they all be well closed and, in the future, completely cut off from the rest of the territory.
The face of Europe keeps getting hard like what is also happening on the other continents. This ever more authoritarian evolution of capitalism leads to questions about what the current era announces: the offensive against the pockets of utopia combined with the confinement of the emissaries reminds of the dark hours of history.
The whole world becomes a fascists and Greece is, once again, one of the laboratories.
But nothing is over. September is coming soon. The seasonal jobs are ending. The social movement is gathering and organizing again. Places like the nottara 26 and the k * VOX ARE UNDER HIGH Surveillance. Responses are getting ready, as well as several major mobilizing events. Autumn will be hot in Athens.
Resistance!”
*
The Interregnum group have organised a protest this Wednesday:
“Today (Monday 26th August) the repressive Greek state apparatus launched a full-scale offensive against the autonomous squats of Exarchia. These squats range from social centers providing a variety of activities for the community, to refugee housing squats where thousands of refugees and their families live and struggle in dignity. So far, there have been more than 100 arrests in the space of a few hours.
This is part of a State ‘law and order’ offensive which aims to eradicate all spaces of freedom in Greece and destroy years of movement activity and institutions. Comrades in Greece have issued a call for solidarity, and this small demonstration is the least we can do to spread the word.”
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