The famous rebel and solidarity district of Athens is completely surrounded by huge police forces: many riot police buses (MAT), anti-Terrorism Police (OPKE), motor bike policemen (Dias), members of the secret police as well as a helicopter and several drones.

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, Exarchia has been in major focus of the right government since its election on July 7th. The new right Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis had made it a personal matter, especially since he had been mocked in early August for not having achieved his goal of “cleaning Exarchia in a month” as he had announced in great pumps.

This morning, 4 squats have been evacuated: Spirou Trikoupi 17, Transito, Rosa de fuego 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 symbol 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.

In total, there are 23 squats in Exarchia 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 Nosotros, free shop Skoros, etc) as well as dozens of private housing groups of activists, often near the terraces to allow access over the streets.

Of the squats that is officially inside Exarchia, 12 are accommodation squats for refugees and migrant and the other 11 are squats of political anarchist, autonomous groups anarchists. Most refugee squats are also of course very political as they are organized through horizontal assemblies where the refugees can take their lives to their own hands and organize their every day decisions equally and in solidarity of each other and every one of them. Nottara 26, 5th High School of Exarchia and Spirou Trikoupi 17 have a lot of links with the rest of the social movement and international solidarity support.

In the squats of Spirou Trikoupi 17 and Transito, that the jacks of power now attack and destroy, more than a dozen children have been ripped away from a peaceful and happy existence to be suddenly sent to camps. The sinister and overcrowded camps, where the migrants they are poorly fed and suffer from temperature variations. New Prime Minister of Greece Kiriakos Mitsotakis requires that all refugees will be well closed in concentration camps and completely cut off from the rest of the society.

The face of Europe keeps getting hard like what is also happening elsewhere. This ever more authoritarian evolution of capitalism leads to questions about what the current era announces: attacks against the pockets of utopia combined with the confinement of the emissaries reminds of the dark hours of history.

The whole world becomes fascist and Greece is, once again, one of the laboratories.

But nothing is over.

August ends. 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!

text: Yannis Youlountas

translated in English by Pia Klemp – edited by Void Network / athens

PS: PLEASE republish this article. We are counting on your own reports and photos as these news to go international. Please protest infront of the places representing the Greek state in your country in defense of Exarchia. Solidarity is our weapon.

The response of the movement was immediate with a demo organised spontaneously in the neighborhood. Talks and assemblies are taking place organizing the next steps of resistance. Also 3 days of self-organized concerts in defense of the neighborhood will take place in Exarchia square from 29/8 to 1/9- more info: https://www.facebook.com/events/728132344308674/

The post EXARCHIA area under police attack by the new right government in Greece appeared first on Void Network.

Text: Ελληνικά / English.

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.”

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.

The movement continues to be largely tolerated by the public at large, reflecting a deep distrust of authority among Greeks that has been stoked in recent years by the austerity measures imposed on the debt-racked country by international creditors.

In Athens, the anarchists’ epicenter remains the bohemian neighborhood of Exarchia, where the killing of a teenager by a police officer in 2008 set off two weeks of rioting, helped reinvigorate the movement and produced several guerrilla groups that led to a revival of domestic terrorism in Greece.

The police and the authorities tread lightly in the area.

The police have recently raided some buildings illegally occupied by anarchists, called squats, in Athens, in the northern city of Thessaloniki and on the island of Lesbos, a gateway for hundreds of thousands of migrants over the past two years. But the authorities have stopped short of a blanket crackdown, which would be difficult for the leftist Syriza party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to condone.

In an interview, Public Order Minister Nikos Toskas said that the police sweeps were “systematic,” and that the raids were being carried out “where they are needed.”

The mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, condemned the squats, saying they have compromised “the quality of life of the refugees.”

“No one knows who they are controlled by and what conditions people being put up in occupied buildings live in,” he said in a response to a reporter’s questions.

The anarchists say their squats are a humane alternative to the state-run camps now filled with more than 60,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Human rights groups have broadly condemned the camps as squalid and unsafe.

 

In Exarchia, one of the squats includes a former state secondary school that was abandoned because of structural problems. Established last spring with the help of anarchists, the squat is now home to some 250 refugees, mostly from Syria, who have set up a chicken coop on the roof. Many more refugees are on a “waiting list” for other occupied buildings.

The squats function as self-organized communities, independent from the state and nongovernmental organizations, said Lauren Lapidge, 28, a British social activist who came to Greece in 2015 at the peak of the refugee crisis and is actively involved with several occupied buildings.

“They are living organisms: Kids go to school, some were born in the squat, we’ve had weddings inside,” she said.

Another initiative in Exarchia involves anarchists and local residents who have moved a cargo container into the neighborhood’s central square, calling it a political kiosk, from which they distribute food and medicine and sell anarchist literature.

Vassiliki Spathara, 49, a painter and anarchist living in Exarchia, said the initiative was necessary because the local authorities would not intervene “even to replace light bulbs” in the square, known as a haunt for drug dealers, though activity has abated recently.

“The authorities want to downgrade the area because it’s the only place in Athens that has an organized, anti-establishment identity,” Ms. Spathara said.

Mayor Kaminis said the local authorities were cooperating with residents “to rejuvenate the area,” and insisted that Exarchia residents had the same rights as all Athenians.

Yet in Greece’s crumbling political landscape, anarchists appear to be styling themselves as a political alternative to the government.

“We want people to fight back, in all ways, from taking care of refugees to burning banks and Parliament,” said Mr. Sagris, the member of Void Network and the Embros theater group, which raises money to fund squats housing refugees. “Anarchists use all tactics, violent and nonviolent.”

He noted, however, that anarchists had a “moral obligation” to make sure that tragedies — like the deaths of three people in May 2010 when an Athens bank was firebombed during an anti-austerity rally — did not happen again. Though anarchists were blamed, none were convicted in a trial that ended with three bank executives convicted of manslaughter through neglect resulting from safety oversights. (They were released on bail, pending an appeal.)

Another anarchist group, Rouvikonas, is looking beyond violence, though its members have made a cause of raiding and vandalizing state offices and businesses.

Last week, members of the group, armed with large wooden sticks festooned with black anarchist flags, conducted a night patrol of a large park in central Athens, saying the police had not intervened to stop the drug trade and prostitution involving young migrants.

Mr. Toskas, who oversees the Greek police force, said the authorities had made a major dent in the drug trade in Exarchia. “Some anarchist groups want to say that they got rid of drugs in the area so that they can control it,” he said.

Rouvikonas members recently applied to a local court to found a “cultural society”— to help organize fund-raising events — and on Saturday the group presented its “political identity” at a squat in Exarchia. (Anarchists insist they are not forming a political party.)

“Anarchists obviously cannot form a political party,” said Spiros Dapergolas, 45, a graphic designer who belongs to Rouvikonas. “But we have our own means to enter the political center,” he said. “We want to get bigger.”

The group’s long-term aim is “militant unionism,” Mr. Dapergolas said. But, he conceded, it is not easy for people to organize themselves. In the meantime, he said, “what Rouvikonas is doing can be done by anyone.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 2017, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Anarchists Fill Services Void Left By Faltering Greek Governance.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/world/europe/greece-athens-anarchy-austerity.html?_r=1

The post Anarchists Fill Services Void Left by Faltering Greek Governance- article in New York Times by NIKI KITSANTONIS Αφιέρωμα των New York Times στους αναρχικούς της Ελλάδας! appeared first on Void Network.

Ο χειμώνας έχει έρθει και είναι καιρός να συλλέξουμε τους καρπούς από τις ελιές που μεγαλώνουν στο κατειλημμένο parking – πάρκο Ναυαρίνου, μέσα στην καρδιά της πόλης, στη γειτονιά των Εξαρχείων, ήδη από την εξέγερση του Δεκέμβρη του 2008. Αντιμετωπίζοντας την κρίση και τις αντιφάσεις της, μεταφέρουμε τις αγροτικές δραστηριότητες στον αστικό χώρο, μαζεύουμε συλλογικά τους σπόρους και τους καρπούς της φροντίδας μας και αναδεικνύουμε τις αξίες της αυτοοργάνωσης, της συνεργασίας και της αλληλεγγύης μέσα από τη συλλογική δράση.

Όπως συνηθίζεται ακόμα στις αγροτικές περιοχές της Ελλάδας,η συγκομιδή της ελιάς είναι παραδοσιακά ένα γεγονός που απαιτεί και συγκεντρώνει την υποστήριξη της κοινότητας καθημερινά. Έτσι, και η συγκεκριμένη εκδήλωση στο πάρκο εντάσσεται σε μία προσπάθεια να ενισχυθούν οι υπάρχουσες κοινότητες της πόλης και να δημιουργηθούν νέες, μέσα από το κάλεσμα σε άτομα και συλλογικότητες για να συμμετάσχουν σε αυτή τη συνεργατική δράση.

Ετοιμάσαμε τα χτένια και τα λιόπανα και σας περιμένουμε!

Η εκδήλωση είναι η πρώτη μιας σειράς αντίστοιχων δράσεων που οργανώνονται σε διαφορετικές γειτονιές της Αθήνας κατά τη διάρκεια όλου του χρόνου από τις ομάδες σποροφύλαξης στην Αττική, ένα δίκτυο συλλογικοτήτων που μας ενώνει η αγάπη και η φροντίδα μας για το σπόρο ως πηγή ζωής, ως κοινό αγαθό και όχι ως πατενταρισμένο προϊόν προς εμπορική εκμετάλλευση.  Το δίκτυο δίνει έμφαση στη διατήρηση των παραδοσιακών ποικιλιών σπόρων και φυτών, στη διατροφική αυτάρκεια, τις αστικές καλλιέργειες, τη δημιουργική αλληλεπίδραση με τον αστικό χώρο.
Στο δίκτυο σποροφύλαξης συμμετέχουν οι ομάδες: Αιγίλοπας/Βοτανόκηπος – Ανταλλακτήριο Σπόρων Βύρωνα “Τα Σπόρια” – Αστικός Αγρός Χαλανδρίου – Αυτοδιαχειριζόμενος Αγρός στο Ελληνικό –  Αυτοδιαχειριζόμενο Πάρκο Ναυαρίνου – Βοτανικός Κήπος Πετρούπολης – Δια.Σπο.Ρα – Δρυάδες – Νέα Γουινέα – Ομάδα Μετάβασης Ακαδημίας Πλάτωνα – Πελίτι Αθήνας – Το Περιβόλι της Νίκαιας – Σπόροι Ζωής
Τις εκδηλώσεις που διοργανώνονται από τις διαφορετικές ομάδες που συμμετέχουν στο δίκτυο θα τις βρίσκετε εδώ:  ΣΠΟΡΟΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΠΟΛΗ  https://sporoistinpoli.wordpress.com

The post Μαζεύουμε τις ελιές στο Αυτοδιαχειριζόμενο Πάρκο Ναυαρίνου στα Εξάρχεια / we collect the olives from the trees of the Occupied Park of Exarchia in 16/1/2016 appeared first on Void Network.

VOID NETWORK
[Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephmeral Arts]

KENO ΔΙΚΤΥΟ
[Θεωρία, Ουτοπία, 
Συναίσθηση, Εφήμερες Τέχνες]
http://voidinternational@gmail.com

BLACK PANTHER Party
Το Κοινωνικό Πρόγραμμα των
Μαύρων Πανθήρων για την ανατροπή της Κυριαρχίας
 
BLACK PANTHER PARTY 
The social Programme of the 
Black Panthers against domination
a lecture and open talk by
GEORGE KATSIAFICAS 

ΠΑΡΑΣΚΕΥΗ 17 ΑΠΡΙΛΙΟΥ 2015
ΩΡΑ ΕΝΑΡΞΗΣ 20.00
friday 17/4/2015 starts at 20.00
the talk will be in English with Greek translation

ΔΙΑΛΕΞΗ/ANOIXTH ΣΥΖΗΤΗΣΗ:
GEORGE KATSIAFICAS (U.S.A.)
Καθ. Κοινωνιολογίας, μαθητής του Χερμπερτ Μαρκούζε, συγγραφέας-ερευνητής κοινωνικών κινημάτων αντιεξουσιαστής ακτιβιστής από την δεκαετία του ‘60 έως σήμερα.
 Έργα του: «Η Φαντασία της Νέας Αριστεράς» (Παγκόσμιος Μάης ‘68), «Η Ανατροπή της Πολιτικής» (κινήματα αυτονομίας στην Ιταλία και την Γερμανία το ’70), «Απελευθέρωση, Φαντασία και το Κόμμα των Μαύρων Πανθήρων», «Οι Άγνωστες Ασιατικές Εξεγέρσεις»

* George Katsiaficas, a student of Herbert Marcuse, and long-time activist, he is the author of The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968. His book, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Among his edited volumes are Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party (with Kathleen Cleaver) and Vietnam Documents: American and Vietnamese Views of the War. George Katsiaficas is currently living in Gwangju, South Korea. A visiting professor of sociology at Chonnam National University, he is finishing research on East Asian uprisings in the 1980s and 1990s.
 
ΤΙ ΕΧΟΥΜΕ ΝΑ ΔΙΔΑΧΘΟΥΜΕ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΤΙΚΗ
ΑΥΤΟΟΡΓΑΝΩΣΗ ΤΩΝ ΜΑΥΡΩΝ ΠΑΝΘΗΡΩΝ?
ΠΟΙΑ ΤΑ ΟΡΙΑ ΕΝΟΣ ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΤΙΚΟΥ ΚΟΜΜΑΤΟΣ
ΚΑΙ ΜΕ ΠΟΙΟ ΤΡΟΠΟ ΤΑ ΚΙΝΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΠΟΡΟΥΝ ΝΑ ΥΠΕΡΒΟΥΝ ΤΟΥΣ ΚΟΜΜΑΤΙΚΟΥΣ ΜΗΧΑΝΙΣΜΟΥΣ? ΥΠΑΡΧΕΙ ΤΡΟΠΟΣ
ΝΑ ΖΗΣΟΥΜΕ ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΙ
ΜΕΣΑ ΣΕ ΕΝΑ ΚΟΣΜΟ- ΦΥΛΑΚΗ? 

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE SELF-ORGANISED REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY? WHICH ARE THE LIMITS OF A REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL PARTY AND WHAT IS THE WAY FOR THE MOVEMENTS TO OVERPASS THE LIMITATIONS CREATED BY THE STRUCTURE OF A POLITICAL PARTY ?
IS THERE A WAY TO LIVE FREE IN A PRISON-WORLD? 

Ελεύθερο
Αυτοδιαχειριζόμενο
Θέατρο ΕΜΠΡΟΣ
Ρήγα Παλαμήδη 2 Ψυρρής

Occupied Self-Organised 
Free Theatre Embros
Riga Palamida 2 / Psiris area 
Athens Greece

Μετά τις 23.30 ακολουθεί ΠΑΡΤΥ ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΙΚΗΣ ΕΝΙΣΧΥΣΗΣ του 1ου LGBTQI+ Pride Κρήτης
(Φεστιβάλ Ορατότητας και Διεκδικήσεων για την Απελευθέρωση Φύλου, Σώματος και Σεξουαλικότητας)
περισσότερες πληροφορίες:
https://www.facebook.com/events/671228829689756/

Intro by Yiannis Raouzaios from Void Network “Communities of Struggle”

The movement of the Black Panthers, the successes and the failures, the limitations of the centralism and the radical contribution of the everyday life people in struggle was some of the understandings offered to us by the talk of George Katsiafikas in Athens. 
The video of the talk will be uploaded here soon. 
We publish here photos from the event and the following queer party of the same night as also a text of comparison between the Black Panther Party Platform and Programme of 1966 and the far more radical announcements of the Revolutionary Peoples’ Constitutional Convention in 1970 proving that when people liberate themselves from the limitations of a political party and self-organize the resistance can bring much more radical and beneficial results than their own political party. 

Solidarity Party in Occupied Theatre Embros for the preparations of the first self-organised LGBTQI Festival in Crete-Greece

The post BLACK PANTHER Party: Το Κοινωνικό Πρόγραμμα των Μαύρων Πανθήρων για την ανατροπή της Κυριαρχίας OMIΛΙΑ: GEORGE KATSIAFICAS ΠΑΡ.17/4 ΕΜΠΡΟΣ The social Programme of the Black Panthers against domination at Occupied Theatre Embros in Athens Greece appeared first on Void Network.

During 5/6/7 March, in Exarchia area will take place the celebrations for the One Year Birthday of the Occupied Self-Organized Park of Exarchia. Also during all March collectives, creative groups and people will organize many different cultural, political and social events and gatherings on the square Exarchia in an effort to give life to the square and prepare the people for a wonderfull Spring, Summer and Autumn in the public space

The post One Year Birthday celebrations of the Occupied Self-Organized Park of Exarchia appeared first on Void Network.