Exarchia, Saturday night, around 20:30, 26 June 2022. People are starting to gather in Exarchia Square for the march against gentrification, evictions, political denaturalization and state repression in Exarchia. In front of the astonished eyes of the assembled people 5-6 motorbikes of the police group DRASI are defiantly passing by Exarchia Square. Apart from voices denouncing this provocative move by the police and warning of the response they will get the next time they provoke, there is no aggressive move against the police.
What are the police officers going and doing on their part? They leave and come back with more reinforcements to provoke incidents, about 15-20 motorcycles. The result of this is what is recorded in the video.
During their panicked retreat and after once again suffocating the area with asphyxiating gas, they even left behind radios, according to witnesses.
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.
Our anarchist comrade Nikos Romanos releases a text denouncing the parastate and fascist actions of the Greek cops inflicted upon him, his family, friends and comrades. The comrade has been under surveillance on and off since his release three years ago by the fascist scum of the Anti-Terrorist Unit, which has now hit a new level since the beginning of the hunger strike by his friend and anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis, who has been subject to further imprisonment despite serving the required amount of time that would trigger his release.
The repression our comrade is facing should be considered and analysed within the international context of repressive tactics by states against those who dare to fight back without fear. With the current international environment, such as the war in Ukraine, the impending economical crisis threatening on the horizon, technological developments, the repressive apparatus of all states is entering a new stage to counter the struggles that are coming.
Nothing is over, the conflict continues…
Without further hesitance, we let our comrade’s words speak for themself:
The events that I am about to recount took place on Monday 20/6 in the afternoon outside my friend’s house in the centre of Athens. They concern yet another incident where police surveillance by the anti-terrorist police crosses the boundaries and red lines that exist and defines the peculiar relationship between a secret service and its potential target victims.
So let’s get to the facts. The hunger strike of our friend and comrade Giannis Michailidis, who is fighting against the arbitrariness and methods of the bourgeois justice system by putting his body in a barricade, has been going on for the last period of time. He is in a regime of preventive detention because while he has served the sentence imposed on him, the judicial councils, acting as thought police, reject his requests for release, foreseeing his future behaviour as other Pythias*. In essence, they are punishing him not for what he has done and for which, according to their laws, he has served his sentence, but for what they think he will do, based on interpretations that have nothing to do with reality.
During this period, the surveillance of the anti-terrorist police against me has become a daily occurrence, while their presence outside my family’s house has become daily and provocative, with large groups of anti-terrorist police officers defiantly rushing around in their vehicles. This event was interrupted following an engagement with these police officers on Saturday 18/6, where it was emphatically stressed to them that their defiance must end and that their continued presence there would not be accepted. Which was accepted and they ceased their defiant presence, so there is no point in me expanding on evidence that exists and will not be published unless there is a substantial reason. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Anarchist comrade Nikos Romanos denounces deep parastate with far-right tendencies”→
On 8/4 and 19/5 we chose to attack two branches of the multinational company Lidl. These targets were not chosen at random. A few months before, in an attempt by an elderly woman to squeeze, without paying the price of products for her living, she was bullied by security guards – protectors of the bosses’ profits. In a period of constant impoverishment of the lower classes of the population, and over-inflation of the bosses’ profits, the class gap seems to be constantly blurring. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. The steady decline in wages and the simultaneous increase in the cost of living (food, electricity, rent, fuel) leave us with no other answer than to attack the devaluation of our lives. Within the framework of the counter-attack we include both the frontal confrontation with the bosses and the act of expropriation. An act politically coloured, embedded in a context of taking back what belongs to us. Precisely because we understand it as a political choice we cannot separate it from a context of solidarity supportive of the individuals who choose or are pushed down this path. At the same time we are outraged by the care of a legal framework that leaves its own people (Noor1 shipowners, Floros Energa) in the clear but at the same time it is also unacceptable in its severity to the persons that it pushed into these choices. In the frontal assault on the people of our class, we do not choose to bow our heads, but rather we advocate direct action, solidarity and resistance by any means to the oppressors of our lives.
EVERYTHING IS OURS BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS STOLEN
“DOO* TO THE SUPERMARKETS
REFUSALS OF PAYMENT WAR ON THE WAR OF THE BOSSES
SOLIDARITY WITH HUNGER STRIKER C. MIKHAILIDIS FROM 23/5
*DN Note: A phrase that is not translatable into English, that is shouted by anarchists when an attack normally with molotovs is begun during a riot or an attack on cops.
Since 23.5, comrade Giannis Michailidis chose to put his body on the line, starting a hunger strike demanding his immediate release. The comrade has served 3/5 of his sentence and meets all the formal conditions for his release. However, the judicial council vindictively rejected the comrade’s request, using as an excuse that Giannis does not meet the substantive conditions for release as the same council considers him to be a risk of committing new offences.
Class power wants to impose on us a world where ‘danger’ is identified with the vision of a world of equality and solidarity. Where any form of self-determination, self-institution and self-organisation, any attempt to overcome state mediation is considered a crime. The same system that creates and reproduces exploitation, oppression and the culture of power uses itself as regulator and judge. Thus it imposes laws that protect sovereignty, punishments that unfold at the grassroots level. And when the latter realises that if it does not fight it cannot survive and chooses self-defence, the omnipresent regulator puts on its most bloodthirsty face, because at this moment not only is sovereignty threatened but its own role is called into question. This is how his political courts are built. On moments of practical questioning of a devastated world, moments of questioning those who guard it.
Incarceration is nothing but the consolidation of the proletarian condition in contemporary capitalism. Democracy is imposed not only by tactical victories, but also through the constant effort to subjugate those who challenge its rule and fight for their survival through its overthrow. It attempts to bring the resisting parts of society to their knees by burying them in mass repositories of souls, condemning them to a fate of permanent captivity, deprivation and torture. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Incendiary attack against a National Bank branch in solidarity with Giannis Michailidis”→
In view of the court of appeal of D. Chatzivasiliadis and V. Stathopoulos, on 14 May, a march in solidarity with our anarchist comrades was planned, starting from Monastiraki Area . During the march, on Stadiou street at the height of Benaki street, riot police attacked it and managed to break it by throwing chemicals. The riot squads that immediately took over immediately made 14 detentions, of which 5 were arrested with 4 of them being misdemeanor arrests and one felony. The felony charge was the possession/use of a molotov, which only resulted from the testimony of a cop without any evidence. This move is their only way to cover up the unabated use of force during the march.
Thus, on Sunday 21/05 a group of people chose to attack the riot police parked in front of the PASOK offices (political party) in Ch. Trikoupis street with the use of coctail molotovs in response to the repressive forces.
SOLIDARITY TO THOSE DETAINED IN THE 14 MAY SOLIDARITY MARCH
FREEDOM TO THE ANARCHISTS DIMITRIS CHATZIVASILIADIS AND VAGGELIS STATHOPOULOS
Comrade Giannis Michailidis, after 11 years of suffering arrest warrants and fabricated files due to solidarity relations, multiple detentions, torture, convictions for “individual terrorism”, arbitrary deprivation of regular and educational leave, has been in preventive detention for 5 months. Against this latest method, the comrade started a hunger strike on 23/5, raising a barricade against the practice of preventive imprisonment, starting a struggle that, apart from his release, is directly aimed against the regime of exemption of combative prisoners, highlighting the necessity of the overall struggle against power.
In the midst of the presented supremacy of the state and the attack that it has unleashed against the neighborhood of Exarchia, we decided to send a signal of minimal solidarity to comrade Giannis Michailidis, by attacking the riot squad in Ch.Trikoupis street.
The attack took place in the midst of incessant and provocative patrols of the DELTA gang (special cops on bikes) in the neighborhood, who on this particular day had the audacity to harass with their presence the commemoration events for the anarchist Alexis Grigoropoulos taking place in the pedestrian street of Mesolonggiou, showing that the neighborhood remains a base, a ground of resistance and self-organization of our counter-attack against domination.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS UNTIL THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LAST CAGE
On Wednesday, June 8th, an event/presentation of Adonis Georgiadis’ new book, entitled “Simple rhetoric lessons” will take place at Hellenic Cosmos. Also participating in the event are Makis Voridis, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Grigoris Psarianos, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos and Aris Portosalte.
We decided to intervene and disrupt the smooth conduct of this presentation both in the light of solidarity and support for our comrade and hunger striker since 23/5 Giannis Michailidis, who remains imprisoned indefinitely, despite meeting the formal conditions of his release for all his sentences after 8. 5 years of detention, but also to show that this mob is only specialised in one kind of rhetoric and that is hate speech.
These people, for various reasons, are for us despicable subjects of the political scene. Two ministers in key ministries such as Development and Investment (A. Georgiades) and Interior (M. Voridis) who are important cogs in the far-right wing of the ruling party with roots in neo-Nazism. Especially Voridis who was an active “activist” of the far right in the 1980s, either at the Athens College from which he was expelled for anti-Semitic attacks, or as the chosen one of the dictator Papadopoulos in the ΕΠΕΝ (Junta cops) during the years he studied at the Law School. A wing that has been upgraded over the last 10 years, effectively giving line to key issues in the public sphere. These particular ones, with their rhetoric and practice, are pushing for the implementation of increasingly conservative and obscurantist legislation. They are pushing for a more dynamic application of the ‘law and order’ doctrine. For more sweeping operations in the centre of Athens. For more freedom for uniformed killers to turn the bodies of the oppressed into shooting targets. It is no coincidence, moreover, that the New Democracy, through the mouth of Adonis Georgiades, took political responsibility for the execution of Nikos Sampanis in Perama. Along with the conservative positions they express on issues of repression, on economic issues they are supporters of the harsh neoliberal model as imagined by the technocrats of the Chicago Group. They are pushing for more privatisations, for fully flexible labour relations, for a cut in the rights of the economically weakest, for the dismantling of public health and education, in order to enrich big business with which they have friendly and behind-the-scenes relations. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Gathering outside Hellenic Cosmos at the book presentation of Adonis Georgiades”→
A few days ago and while the anarchist comrade G. Michailidis had already been on hunger strike for a week, we decided to play a little bit with the limits of this world’s respectability. So we printed 25 posters with the aesthetics of normality. We knew – and our frequent walks through the places where they were hung confirmed this – that with this aesthetic our posters would stay a little longer hanging inside the courts because they carried on them the misery of wage slavery, the sad emptiness of careerism and the boredom of uniformity.
So we put on our best and got caught between the hypocritical smiles and the pluralities of politeness to become one with the paperhangers, the yuppies and the printers. This enabled us to move comfortably through familiar buildings and hateful court floors. We stuck our boring posters, on walls and bulletin boards, outside the offices of investigators and prosecutors and behind the backs of cops who complacently let us pass even in the “tightly controlled areas” for the sake of some vague confidence in the Normal.
Now that the last of the posters that stained the walls of the bourgeois justice system have been taken down, we can take responsibility for this small gesture of solidarity with G. Michaelides.
WE ARE NEITHER REDEEMED NOR REPENT
WE WILL ALWAYS COMMIT NEW CRIMES.
Immediate release of the anarchist striker from 23/5 G. Michailidis
