Responsibility claim for the burnt ballot box in Exarcheia
June 18, 2012
Responsibility claim for the burnt ballot box in Exarcheia, Athens on the night of the election of June 17th, 2012.
Everything around us seems to unwind in coercive binaries: memorandum/anti-memorandum, drachma/euro, fascism/anti-fascism. Perhaps even among our ranks it is necessary to take a position, to take a stance in this liminal conjuncture. Yet we don’t for a moment forget the only real binary: Revolution or consistency with the existent.
We refuse consensus, their dilemmas, social peace. Security concerns the profits of local and international capital; freedom concerns everyone else. The state and capital, the fascist and the banks are no invisible forces. They have names and addresses. They’d better begin to count down their days of plenty.
We look behind, in the past few years, at tough struggles. How can the barricades and the fires of February 12th fit in ballot boxes? How can the voices shouting “Enough!” fit in these boxes, voices raised by the few, the dignified proletarians at the times of wage fear and subordination? How can the struggles fit in those boxes, the struggles fought city after city, neighbourhood after neighbourhood, with the scum of GD? How can our brothers and sisters fit, those who are missing from our side, yet they are always next to us, even when in the cells of the regime?
At these liminal times, which have no space for reservations we attempt the unthinkable and we make the above ‘fit’. The 1000ml of petrol that we placed in the ballot box of the 18th polling station in Exarcheia at the June 17th elections are our 1000 votes, they are our 1000 challenges in an unpacifiable war.
The revolution first and always
P.S. A raised fist for the comrade Olga Oikonomidou*
Claim for expropriation and arson of polling boxes
Our ears are ringing with the desperate calls from parties and other political actors to participate in the democratic electoral process. A small group of comrades were moved by the pathetic vote beggars and armed with determination, the will for direct action and our sledgehammers we participated in the democratic fiasco. We broke with the above the delegation regime that prevails as normality and formed our own terms of attack and sabotage in their celebration .
We therefore take responsibility for the invasion of the 33rd Athens polling station a few minutes before the end of the process, where we expropriated a ballot box. On our entry we frantically searched the police guarding the polling station, but as we found out while they were there they chose to play hide and seek (successfully, it is true). At the moment of our departure we left a gift of a (stolen by cops) tear gas canister to the deadbeat party clerks and the willing democratic garbage of the election committees. A few seconds later we consigned the inside of the ballot box to the only fate it deserves: fire.
This action is a warm welcome from our side to Kyriakos Mitsotakis and New Democracy, who have promised to finish us off. We are waiting for you…
SABOTAGE OF THE ELECTORAL PROCESS
FIRE IN THE BALLOTS
Ballot arsonists
DN Note
*Olga Economidou was arrested on 14/03/2011, in Volos, along with another 4 CCF’s members, after a night raid by police’s special forces and Anti-terrorist squads at the house they where living. In December of 2014, she was sentened to 25 years in prison in the Fire Conspiracy Cells case.
She was previously tried for participating in street fights during the Polytehnio memorial demonstration, on 17/11/1998. She was prosecuted for “Volos case” (alleged bank robbery, while being dressed up like cops), for her involvement with explosives and guns, which were found on other people prosecuted for the same case (arrests in Pireus and Kallithea), for the 14 parcel bombs case, for the case concerning 250 attacks by CCF between 2008 and 2011, for the text in solidarity with Anarchist Squat Nadir (second eviction in October 2011) and for instigation concerning “Phoenix” project. She was also under investigation concerning “Ardire” case, which was launched on June 2012 by the Italian prosecuting authorities, which claim to have found and confiscated letters from her, in the houses of Italian comrades prosecuted for the case.
In 2016 she was sentenced to 115 years of prison together with 10 other members of CCF in the trial connected with the escape plan. Now released.