On July 1 at dawn in the area of Gyzi on Chaldari Street, we carried out an arson attack on the Ford dealership. As a result, at least two vehicles and the front of the company were burnt to the ground.
The choice of this particular target was not accidental. This is an American giant with branches throughout the world that has played a dominant role in the global capitalist scene. In particular, its founder Henry Ford in 1913 introduced a model of work organisation in which workers perform a set of identified movements, repeated over many hours. The work of the one cut off and alienated, as a stone of the production set, influences the work of the other in chains, raising the intensity and rhythm of production and work. Moreover, the possibility of refusals and resistances during work is reduced, since all the workers’ movements are dependent and form a chain. This has been a historical form of repression and surveillance of workers.
Fourth, Ford’s relationship with the US cops is widely known. It is one of the companies that has reinforced the repression carried out by the US state by providing equipment and vehicles. Even in Greece, in Laconia, Ford Motor Hellas has provided a vehicle worth 48,000 euros for the needs of the cops of the OPKE for the second time. The Mayor of Sparta has excellent relations with this company while the deputy mayor Thanasis Karlaitis former cop, he stressed: “hopefully other agencies will follow Ford’s example for the benefit of the citizens”.
A year before the lines of this text, George Floyd was abused to death and murdered by US cops. Savage conflicts break out across much of the USA with the main expression being the oppression of the African-American community and beyond. Protests break out internationally from country to country. In Greece diverse actions are taking place. For our part, one year later we keep the flame and the memory alive for the dead and the oppressed of our class. Wanting to bring back the energies of then with today.
In the Ford factories and in the sweatshops of America of the past centuries, blood was shed for workers’ demands ( like the 8-hour day). Claims that, as obvious as they may seem , seemed all the more vulnerable in the clutches of the most apocalyptic neo-fascist government of the post-communist Southwest. The Hatzidakis bill is a despicable abomination that comes to destroy every trace of dignity in the world of the grassroots. Individual contracts, conversion of overtime into days off and its increase, reduction in the value of overtime, electronic filing, targeting and mapping of strikers, more intensification through the extension of teleworking, the abolition of Sunday holidays, ease of dismissals, etc.
It is obvious that in the unprecedented condition we are living in with the pandemic and the intensity of the crisis, the bosses want a social desert where the individual is controlled , working, controlled while working and increasingly isolated. At the same time, the commercial war of the pharmaceutical cartels is becoming ruthless, states are being militarised and societies are being turned into vast prisons. In the same context, capitalism is mutating into a more voracious attitude towards the environment and wildlife.
The more capitalism and terror gallop the more the puzzle becomes clearer for us: We are fire and life. We destroy this world of rot through attack. We call upon all the people who keep their eyes and wild senses alive to be alert. By the simplest means or complex to give the perspective of response and break the habit and alienation. The battle is in our hands.
PS: A year ago our comrade Vassilis Magos was murdered by the cops. This action is a reminder that he is by our side in our hottest moments. It is the least we can mention in the face of what happened. May memory crush oblivion and our hatred reverberate in the streets.
