Skip to content

Dark Nights

For Mutual Aid & Solidarity

  • Contact
  • Distro
  • Direct Action
  • PGP Key
  • Financial Solidarity

Tag: Alternative Tourism

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on a police patrol at Strefi Hill on 15/6

Posted on 2023/06/27 by darknights

We are at a juncture where, in the space of just a few months, we have counted two mass state capitalist murders, in Tempe and Pylos, which demonstrate in the most deafening way the very essence of capitalism. We are under no illusions and we know very well that in the face of the deadlock and bankruptcy of the state-capitalist system, the only answer that the state and capital have to propose is, on the one hand, to create new hotbeds of imperialist conflict and intervention in the capitalist regions, thus creating new hundreds of dead, both on the battlefields and in the debris left behind by war and the overexploitation of resources, and on the heavily guarded border lines, which have resulted in the Mediterranean becoming a vast graveyard of refugees.

On the other hand, in the capitalist centres of the West, capital and the state are looking for new areas of profitability through further class devaluation, impoverishment and death politics, which in turn create modern metropolitan guarded sweatshops in which we are forced to survive in conditions of misery with meagre wages as a result of the overvaluation of our labour power, with one worker murder after another, with the coverage of our basic material needs becoming more and more difficult, and the deterioration of the structures that cover basic social needs of transportation, health, education, etc. and with a state that is further entrenching itself by militarising its metropolises and increasing military budgets.

So at the same time as the state is generously spreading death, oppression, exploitation and destruction, it is inviting us to participate in the carnival of elections to choose which party will “save” us and which party will provide the best opposition. It invites us to entrust the management of our lives to saviours great and small, and once we have chosen we can proudly return to normality, where people are murdered at the borders, in police stations, on the streets, in the workers’ sweatshops. We can return to the normalcy of “passports” and starvation wages, of snitch journalists and exhausted and unpaid overtime, of evictions and home foreclosures. The normalcy we legitimize by voting consent and submission. In the face of their normalcy there is disobedience, resistance and rebellion. Against the vote of delegation there is collectivity, self-organization, faith in our strengths and in the potential of all the oppressed and exploited. The belief that this world will be changed by us, through collective struggles we will stand on our feet and attack the state, capital and their praetorian guard. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on a police patrol at Strefi Hill on 15/6” →

Posted in Direct ActionTagged Alternative Tourism, Anarchists, Athens, Cop Attack, DELTA, Exarcheia, Exarcheia Square, Gentrification, Greece, Molotov Attack, Molotov Cocktail, Pylos Migrant Boat Sinking 2023, Repression, Social War, Strefi Hill, Tempi Train Crash 2023, Tourism

Athens, Greece: For the attack and the damage to Pharaoh in Solomou, Exarchia by Comrades, Anarchists

Posted on 2023/06/27 by darknights

As the struggle between the classes becomes wilder and the ideologies of development pave the way for the plundering of human and natural resources, turning the seas, the trees, the air we breathe into fields of profit at any cost, the upper classes become stronger and increase their wealth. As long as the lives of those from below are nothing but numbers to be managed and percentages of losses, such as the hundreds of dead displaced off Pylos, the passengers and workers on the trains of Tempi and the murdered workers in the sweatshops of the big bosses, capital is contentedly entrenching itself and preparing for new rounds of accumulation, deepening the terms of the devaluation of our lives.

The proclamation of the centre of Athens and especially of Exarchia, as a new field of profitability to which small and big businessmen are turning, is well known. Tourism and consumption have turned every hole into an opportunity. Numerous apartments are being converted into Airbnb, pushing up the remaining rents even higher, displacing poorer residents. Every public and open space, from the Strefi and Exarchia Square, to the May Day Square and the Museum, has been fenced off and included in plans to redevelop it and turn it into a supervised space for tourists and consumers. The police terrorism, the evacuation of squats and political spaces, the bullying and harassment of passers-by and residents by the ELAS men, the sealing of the Polytechnic, the increasing placement of cameras, are central repressive moves and reveal the political sign of this aggressive epicism.

In other words, for the business of white and black capital to flourish in our regions, the resistance that has taken root over the years must be silenced. The blockades of those from above that have been happening over time in the region, with the intolerable presence of politicians, exploiters and bigwigs of all kinds, must stop. To stop the precepts of solidarity among the oppressed, self-organization and opposition to the skinners of our lives and dreams.

But what they all forget is that these neighborhoods are still ours. That their well-polished storefronts can come crashing down on their heads with a bang, no matter how well they are guarded by their all manner of cops. Our small contribution to this reminder was our recent trip to Pharaoh’s on Solomou. On Friday 9 June, in broad daylight and under the nose of the anchored forces of repression at arm’s length, we interfered with the restaurant, damaging its interior and destroying their cellar of very expensive wines.

This shop, borrowing its concept from various other examples in western metropolises, jumped on the chariot of gentrification, selling alternativeism in an expensive wrapper. Pharaoh’s four entrepreneurs, Maidan columnists, TV chefs, troubadour foodies and others, gave rise to the arrival of socialites of all kinds in the area. Amidst the homeless and pissed-up sidewalks, with their expensive cars often guarded by their inflatable escorts, mob bosses, businessmen, and half the government’s cabinet have dined at this establishment. We should note here, of course, that Mitsotakis’ recent visit to this place was not as carefree as he expected, thanks to some angry residents. The clientele of this shop, therefore, validates by their presence the predestined targeting of the rotten world they represent. The opening of the field of profitability of local and foreign capital around the axis of Patision and the repression of anyone who resists it.

The war they have declared against us is sharpening and so must our struggles. Through dynamic responses and persistence, we can impose significant costs on all these would-be entrepreneurs, raising mounds to the touristization of everything and the conversion of our neighborhoods into commodities.

So that ministers, prime ministers, mayors and greasy mafiosi have no illusions that they will dine undisturbed in our parts.

To put smaller and larger cracks in their well-polished windows.

To move from questioning to conflict.

POVERTY, EXPLOITATION AND EXCLUSION
THAT’S WHAT GENTRIFICATION MEANS

SOLIDARITY WITH REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS

Comrades, Anarchists

Source: athens.indymedia

Posted in Direct ActionTagged Alternative Tourism, Athens, Athens Polytechnic, Exarcheia, Exarcheia Square, Gentrification, Greece, Pharaoh, Pylos Migrant Boat Sinking 2023, Repression, Strefi Hill, Tempi Train Crash 2023, Tourism, Window Smashing

Exarcheia, Athens, Greece: 25 June – Day of national and international support for the Exarcheia – Demonstration in Exarcheia Square 20:00

Posted on 2022/06/25 by darknights

Continue reading “Exarcheia, Athens, Greece: 25 June – Day of national and international support for the Exarcheia – Demonstration in Exarcheia Square 20:00” →

Posted in Direct ActionTagged airbnb, Alexis Grigoropoulos, Alternative Tourism, Athens, Athens Polytechnic, Coordination of Action for the defence of Exarchia, Day X, Demo, Exarcheia, Exarcheia Square, Gentrification, Greece, Metro, MO Metro in Exarcheia Square, New Democracy, Strefi Hill, Tourism

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on the OBA store

Posted on 2022/06/24 - 2022/06/24 by darknights

On the night of May Day we chose to attack the new store in the area of Exarcheia, at 45 Themistokleous Street, called OBA. We smashed its window and left the political message of our action with stickers saying that since the opening of this shop the homeless person who lived in front of its window was displaced.

This action was our response to the displacement of the homeless man who had resided for years in the arcade in front of that store and who, after the store opened, was forced to seek shelter in another corner of the neighborhood.

How those who are left over are displaced to make way for urban and middle-class shoppers is also shown by the fact that on the opposite side from the store we raided there was a housing squat, which the state evacuated some years ago, sealing the building to prevent its reoccupation.

The tactics of capital’s domination of the public space of the city were also shown by the well-known story of the Janus bookstore that had its entrance blocked to prevent homeless people from sleeping there. The store that we attacked behind the mask of being LGBTQ-friendly consumers is participating in the transformation of the neighborhood into a hipster consumption zone, the touristization of Exarcheia and the displacement of those who are left over.

Any store that puts its stake in the gentrification of the Exarcheia will get a rock in its window.

Get the hipsters out of Exarcheia.

We want immigrants in every neighborhood, not tourists on vacation.

Get the cops out of our lives.

Anarchists

Source: athens.indymedia

Posted in Direct ActionTagged Alternative Tourism, Athens, Gentrification, Greece, Hipsters, OBA, Tourism, Window Smashing

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attack on luxury altenative tourist appartments ‘Graffiti Boutique’ in Exarcheia

Posted on 2022/02/27 by darknights

A new condition is shaping everyday life in the neighbourhoods of the city centre. The pre-election “promises” of Mayor Bakoyannis* for the complete transformation of the centre of the Athenian metropolis into a tourist zone are being put into practice with the fencing of the last squares and their conversion into metro stations.

The displacement of oppressed populations from the neighbourhood of Exarchia, the foundations of which have been laid under the Syriza government, through the evacuation of migrant squats, continues in terms of class warfare through the appropriation of the neighbourhood.

The unaffordable rents, the posh shops with expensive goods and services, the cameras on every corner and face controls at the entrance of shops make it impossible for the social base to stay.

Housing becomes a commodity and capital is called upon to exploit it to the fullest. Houses and former squats are being converted into airbnb and luxury housing, which local and international capital is throwing into the real estate market at the expense of the needs and burdening the lives of those below. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attack on luxury altenative tourist appartments ‘Graffiti Boutique’ in Exarcheia” →

Posted in Direct ActionTagged airbnb, Alternative Tourism, Anarchists, Athens, Commodification, counterculture, Exarcheia, Graffiti Boutique, Greece, Kostas Bakoyannis, Luxury Apartments, Surveillance, Window Smashing
Honour to the combative memory of Snizana Paraskevaidou
Video: Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – Phoenix Project – An account of the FAI/IRF Project ‘Phoenix’ (Black International) 2015

Counter Information

  • A2Day (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia)
  • Act for freedom now! (Greece, World)
  • Anarchist Federation (World)
  • Asranarshism (Middle East)
  • Athens IMC (Greece)
  • Attaque (France, World)
  • Avtonom (Russia)
  • Bandilang Itim (Phillipines)
  • Barrikade (Switzerland, World)
  • Blessed is the Flame (Greece, World)
  • Chronik (Germany)
  • Contra Info (Latin America, World)
  • Contra Toda Nocividad (Spain)
  • Corrispondenze Anarchiche (World)
  • Czarna Teoria (Poland)
  • Deutschland IMC (Germany)
  • Earth First! (UK)
  • Finimondo (Italy, World)
  • Il Rovescio (Italy, World)
  • Informativo Anarquista (Chile)
  • Insendier (Indonesia, World)
  • It's Going Down (USA, Canada)
  • June 11th (USA, World)
  • Kontrapolis (Germany)
  • La Nemesi (Italy, World)
  • Legiun (Indonesia, World)
  • MTL Contre-Info (Canada)
  • North Shore Counter-Info (Canada)
  • Philly Anti-Cap (USA)
  • Resistenze al nanomondo (Italy, World)
  • Rote Hilfe CH (Switzerland)
  • Rote Hilfe DE (Germany)
  • Sans Nom (France)
  • Secours Rouge (Switzerland, World)
  • Squat.net (World)
  • Switch Off (Europe)
  • Takku (Finland)
  • Unoffensive Animal (World)
  • Urban Guerilla - Archive (1960s-1980s)

Security

  • Tails USB
  • TOR Project
  • Ears and Eyes
  • No Trace

Anarchism

  • Edzioni Anarchismo
  • Elephant Editions
  • Anarchist Libraries
  • Anarchist FAQ
  • AK Press UK
  • Active Distribution
  • Anarchist Black Cross Federation USA - Guide
  • Solidarity International
  • Prisoner Solidarity
  • ABC Brighton - Guide

Anti-State Radio Broadcasts

  • 1431AM (Thessaloniki, Greece)
  • A-Radio (Vienna, Austria)
  • A-Radio Berlin (Germany)
  • Radio Kurruf (Chile)
  • Radio Libertaire (France)
  • B(A)D News Radio (Worldwide)
  • Channel Zero (USA)
  • Frequenz A (Leipzig, Germany)
  • It's Going Down (USA)
  • Anarchy Radio/John Zerzan (USA)
  • The Final Straw (USA)
  • Radio Blackout (Italy)
  • Radio Onda d'Urto (Italy)
  • Radio Bandito (Italy)
  • Radio Ondarossa (Italy)
  • Black Hole (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: micro, developed by DevriX.