On Saturday 27 November we attacked the Acropolis police station with Molotov cocktails. At the time of the attack the guard cop and 4 under cover cops sitting in front of the police station, at the sound of the cry “murderers” scampered and hid in the building while we set fire to the guard post and the entrance of the police station.
We haven’t said the last word yet, these are Alexi’s days.
It is not remembrance, or melancholy nostalgia. It is the very idea of rebellion against our oppressors and exploiters. It is the fiery flame of yesterday that drives the gestures of resistance of today.
It is not a desire for repetition, but the very reality of exploitation, death politics, totalitarian control, segregation and total state management of the pandemic.
It is the intensity of oppression, of the suffocating present that arms us with the will, the desire, the strength to attack the state apparatus. It is the December 2008 uprising that fills us with the faith that the situation can and must change and that those from below can come back to the forefront by claiming their own lives.
The murder of comrade Alexandros Grigoropoulos on December 6, 2008 by the cops Korkoneas and Saraliotis sparked an uprising in the whole of Greece. Large sections of society appropriated the slogans, the proclamations and the practices of the anarchist space and took to the streets against everything that oppresses and exploits us.
The occupied public buildings, barricades, debates, clashes with the repressive forces, attacks on state and capitalist targets, assemblies in schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods, events, concerts, individual refusals, the building of communities of struggle, the streets vibrating with collective footsteps and slogans, proved that the end of history that the rulers and their lackeys preach is just a dream. The exploited and the oppressed came to the fore again and confronted power. In those days of Alexis there were not only denials and conflicts, but the hope was born that this world cannot stay the same. That state and capitalist barbarism can be overthrown. It is precisely this idea, this hope, this belief in evolution and dialectics that in today’s world is pushing us not to give up and, with the December 2008 uprising as a compass, organize and fight.
Today, when the management of the pandemic is causing hundreds of deaths and is an opportunity for the state to intensify its exploitation, oppression and control.
Today, when the cops and police cars are proliferating while doctors and health structures are constantly being reduced.
Today when university asylum is being abolished, cops are preparing to deploy in universities and demonstrations are banned.
Today, when workers’ gains are being abolished, workers’ mobilisations are being made illegal and attacked.
Today, when the bosses’ profits are imposing price increases and direct or indirect wage cuts.
Today when workers’ murders are a daily occurrence and the cops’ bullets rain down on the bodies of the oppressed.
Today when migrants are murdered at the borders, are piled up in concentration camps or are serfs in all kinds of strawberry fields.
Today when the cannons of the states are preparing to ravage the bodies of proletarians, the NATO bases are expanding and growing and the war preparations are intensifying.
Today when the plunder of nature is burning forests, polluting waters and flattening mountains.
Today when patriarchy tortures, rapes and murders.
Today when fascists promote the Middle Ages, darkness and the internecine destruction of the poor.
Today as yesterday the state and capital are generously dealing out death.
With the memory of yesterday, looking to tomorrow with confidence in the people of our our class, it is imperative that we stand up and fight.
The state is attempting to impose a regime of total control through squat evictions, bans on demonstrations, surveillance, repressive attacks with bullets and tear gas, arrests and torture, and the upgrading of its legal arsenal, while through the doctrine of “law and order” it wants to deaden all social resistance. But the reality of the demonstrations for 17 November 2020 and 2021, the May Day events, the declarations for 6 December 2020, the large student walkouts, the huge demonstrations during Dimitris Koufontina’s hunger strike, the violent events in Nea Smrni, the attacks and sabotages against state and capitalist targets even in the midst of a curfew, the victorious strikes of the courier workers (e-food) and the port workers (COSCO) show us that the only lost struggle is the one that does not take place.
They demonstrate that the grassroots can confront the state and capital in winning terms.
They demonstrate that we have no reason to trust power and wait for it.
Let us take to the streets and fight back.
A few days after the passing of the new penal code that reclassifies Molotov cocktails as a serious crime, the system got a militant response, manifesting our intentions to continue the anti-state struggle.
If they thought that the detentions, the extension of the period of imprisonment, the delay in granting leave would stop the momentum of the violent social and class struggle, they were wrong.
We know, as do thousands of proletarians around the world, that only through radical action will we regain ground. Without it we only regress and slip into reformist illusions.
The only chance to get out of the mire is the preparation of social revolt and the unity of the oppressed. Our action, on the other hand, despite its importance, especially at the present time, does not aim to separate itself from a set of practices and struggles, but to work together and in unison with the other resistance initiatives.
The channeling of fear into the opposing camp, even for a few seconds or minutes, opens liberating passages for a total rupture with the capitalist structure and its police, employer, military, patriarchal power.
It is a necessity in the coming period that the antagonist movement, of which we are a part, must take small and large steps of collective transgression of the limits of bourgeois legitimacy and “escape” from the limitation ( ever shrinking ) of the forms and means of struggle that the rulers “allow” to “fight” them. Because in order to prove that the system is not invulnerable we must actively confront the doctrine of “law and order” but also the ideologies of the end of history and the narrative of the omnipotence of the system.
We must prove in practice that with the social values of solidarity and dignity, with the collective intelligence and organisation that our times demand, we can achieve more than what is dictated by fear.
Work accidents and gunshot – we live the war every day here.
