martedì 21 febbraio 2012

Tides of Flame: Seattle to Greece


For those of you who haven’t heard, the people of Greece rose up for one night in a display of rage and anger against the global capitalist system and the misery it brings to their lives. They provided us here in Seattle with a glimpse of what our future is probably going to look like.

It had recently been announced that on the weekend of February 10-12th the parliament would vote on a new series of austerity measures that would reduce the minimum wage by 20% and cut 15,000 public jobs in the most debt-ridden country in the European Union. The International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank (known together in Greece as the “Troika”) are currently forcing the government to make harsh structural adjustments in order for the state to receive further bail-out money.


The total economic collapse of Greece or its exit from the Euro standard would destabilize an already weakened European Union. Beyond this, it would symbolize or signify the death of capitalism and democracy to the entire world. To avoid this, the Troika and the unelected coalition government headed by ex-Central Banker Lucas Papaedmos are ruining lives. The recent uptick in suicides is only an extreme example of the pain and desperation now rippling through Greek society.

In response to these new austerity measures, the trade unions called a General Strike for the 10th and the 11th of February. On February 9th, in preparation for the demonstration, some Athenian anarchists occupied the Athens Law School and issued a statement that begins as follows: “In order to liberate ourselves from debt we must destroy the economy. The political and financial spectacle has now lost its confidence. Its acts are entirely convulsive.” The occupied school would act as a base from which to organize their attack on the economy.

On the morning of the 10th, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labor were occupied, along with several other town halls in various cities across the nation. The wildcat strike of Greek Steelworks employees continued their 102nd day of occupying their Athens factory and ceasing production. The demonstration was “small” with only around 10,000 people participating. At 2:30, people began to attack the police with rocks and firebombs in the streets surrounding Parliament’s Syntagma (“Constitution”) Square. These clashes went on into the afternoon, and by the end of the first day of the General Strike several people were seriously injured by the police and required hospitalization.

The demonstration in Athens on the morning of the 11th was smaller, numbering only around 5,000. The General Strike continued, with various trades abstaining from work (aside from select train services to the sites of demonstrations). The anarchist pirate radio in the occupied Law School transmitted to the whole city, encouraging a massive showing for the major demonstration to take place on the 12th. All across the country that day, people were demonstrating, smashing banks, and handing out literature. In the city of Heraklion on the island of Crete, anarchists occupied a TV station and broadcast a message encouraging the population to get on the streets in the morning. In the port city of Patras, a group of anarchists looted a supermarket and distributed the food to people on the street who gladly took everything. Later, a demonstration of 1,000 proceeded to attack banks and fight with the police. By nightfall, Patras was just one of many cities readying itself for a battle. A banner hung at a soccer stadium sums up the attitudes of that day perfectly: “TOMORROW YOU’LL BE CAUGHT BY SURPRISE.”

And as it happened, the Greek government and the Troika were caught off guard. On the Sunday before the austerity measures would be voted on in the Parliament, 500,000 people flooded the streets of Athens. In Heraklion, the town hit the hardest by the recent waves of suicides caused by the implementation of the austerity measures 30,000 people showed up for the demonstration. Every big city, from Rhodes to Volos to Sparta, saw some manifestation of anger and rage. In Volos, a crowd of 4,500 people burnt down a Euro Bank and destroyed everything inside a tax office. While certain people had occupied the city hall and were having an assembly to plan further actions, others entered the basement and started fires. Some say these people were police agents, while others may say that they were anarchists who would rather burn the city hall and have the assembly somewhere else.

The 500,000-strong demo in Athens took time to form. Thousands of people gathered in separate locations according to their local neighborhood assemblies. Over the entire course of the day, people made their way to Parliament and Syntagma square, moving in large packs, bands, and groups. The police constantly encircled and attacked the occupied Law School all afternoon, trying to prevent people from reaching Syntagma. By five in the evening, 50,000 people had arrived and by five-thirty the first battles had started. The police started to fire teargas and attempted to clear everyone from the front of Parliament. People started to build bonfires to neutralize the teargas and thousands of people threw stones and fire bombs at the riot police.

Around six-thirty, people amassed once again in front of Parliament and roving bands of anarchists and random people chased scattered groups of police away from the demonstration. Groups of people kept trying to leave the Law School but were forced to keep repelling a continuous police assault. They later made a call for Red Cross medics to come treat the heavily injured people inside the school. For decades after the fascist dictatorship, the police were forbidden from entering any school. Since the implementation of the new austerity measures, the police are now free to enter and heavily beat or kill the people inside. That the occupation was maintained and defended all night against a now un-restrained police force is impressive and inspiring.

By 8pm there were dozens of fights taking place throughout the city, with the amount of injured police and demonstrators rising. The police were roundly on the defensive for the entire course of the evening and the gap left open between their control and the chaos around them grew wider. Soon that gap was filled with flames. The State’s Accounts Office, several banks and corporate coffee shops started to burn around nine in the evening. This was to be start of the attack on the economy itself. There would be no other objective than that of robbing the capitalists of the tool they use to extract wealth from the country.

Banks were burnt all night. The police were knocked off their motorcycles with ropes strung across the roads, the city hall of Athens was occupied by anarchists, smoke rose high into the air, and hundreds of thousands of people continued to flood the streets and battle the police. A group was able to enter the upper class neighborhood of Kolonaki and attack the police guarding the house of a former Prime Minister. A famous cinema was burnt to the ground, along with the Starbucks depicted on the cover of this magazine. Another group stormed the Acropolis police station, injured several police and burnt their vehicles in front of the station. The police station in the subcultural neighborhood of Exarchia was attacked by another group at midnight while hundreds of thousands were still outside, fighting, burning, and trying to push their way up to Parliament to finally burn it to the ground. But this did not happen, and the Parliament voted to approve the new austerity measures, assuring an even more desperate existence for the people of Greece.

Shortly before this news was announced, the occupied Law School issued the following statement: “It was decided by the assembly of the occupied law school for the occupation to continue. We call all the people to take to the streets, to keep on fighting! Nothing has ended, everything begins now. The law school is a centre of struggle and will continue to be so!”

By the end of the night, 45 buildings had been burned in Athens and another 70 had been completely destroyed or looted. This damage extended to other cities across the nation, as we have detailed above. The damage to the actual economy was large. Most journalists described Athens as having been hit with some sort of bomb. Forty tons of broken marble had to be removed from the streets after having been thrown at the police. The older generations who had lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece publicly expressed that they were now being invaded by Germany again. After being attacked, the Bank of Greece building had been defaced to instead be the Bank of Germany.

As we write these words, two people are standing atop of the building where they work in Athens, threatening to jump to their deaths. High school students are fighting the police and occupying their school in Heraklion. The Greek government is begging the European Commission for more money, desperately trying to rationalize and justify their own existence to the public, knowing full well that outside Parliament there are more and more people each day who would hang all of them and move on. This battle is just one of many and the future will bring this spirit to every city and every town. We find it wise to view these events in Greece as connected with the recent disturbances in Seattle and Oakland.

On February 15th, a group in Athens released the following statement. “72 hours later...we feel proud they call us destroyers, yes, we destroyed the symbols of capitalism, we feel proud they call us vandals, yes, we vandalized their rotten system, we feel proud they call us propagators yes, we propagate the revolution and nothing else.” This is the sentiment that is creeping across the planet. We at Tides of Flame think it is safe to say that you have seen this sentiment at work here in Seattle

This is the war against capitalism.

Join in.

http://tidesofflame.wordpress.com/

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