Exarcheia – Page 4 – Dark Nights

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim by Anarchists for action in solidarity with Giannis Michailidis

Posted on 2022/06/13 by darknights

Responsibility claim by Anarchists

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

Source: athens.indymedia

Via & Translated by Act for freedom now!

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attack on ‘airbnb StrefiHomm’ in Exarcheia

Posted on 2022/05/14 - 2022/05/14 by darknights

Last week we chose to disrupt for a while the now dystopian normality of the neighbourhood of the Exarcheia. The tourist industry is stepping on our bodies, displacing the local population, the poorer classes, the immigrant(s), grabbing more space from the hands of the antagonistic movement. A very important example of the ruthless march of capital into the neighborhood is the real estate firm, Homm.

This Greek company manages, buys, sells, rents apartments, villas and all kinds of properties in Athens, Mykonos, Evia and other areas. By browsing their site, one can see the luxury apartments they manage in “run-down” areas such as Patissia, but also in classic neighborhoods where gentrification has been completed such as Koukaki. Exarcheia seems to be their preferred neighborhood as they operate many properties such as luxury apartments and airbnb. Many of these are being targeted in protests in Exarchia. In fact, one can distinguish them by the paint people throw on their facades and the slogans they write.

The company has 135 properties on booking.gr and its offices are located at 83 Poseidonos Street in Glyfada. It is neither the first nor the last company that camps and does business in Exarcheia, but it is a main agent of gentrification that, despite the hostile climate it receives, insists on expanding more and more, opening more properties. We will not tolerate another one of them making fun of us right in our faces, investing at our expense, selling alternativeism, head-butting the struggles and the history of the movements in the region. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attack on ‘airbnb StrefiHomm’ in Exarcheia” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on the MAT (riot squad) at Ch.Trikoupis

Posted on 2022/05/05 - 2022/05/05 by darknights

RESPONSIBILITY CLAIM FOR THE ATTACK ON THE MAT SQUAD IN CH.TRIKOPI

On Saturday 2/4 we chose to attack the MAT squad in front of the PASOK offices in Charilaou Trikoupis. The attack turned out exactly as we had planned where, with great ease and comfort, we arrived in front of the frightened eyes of the cops who started with quick steps backwards throwing tear gas from a distance, not having the possibility to do more.

The plan had two stages, with the first being to attack the cops at the PASOK offices with 30 Molotov cocktails and the second being to create fires in the surrounding streets simply as a demonstration and reminder of how easily we can be next to you.

While the second part of the plan was being implemented the DELTA/DRASI group made their appearance. Of course from our side there was no concern from their presence as their appearance was part of our planning and those comrades who had the role of attacking them attacked them. The reaction of DELTA/DRASI was to be expected, they stayed pinned to their motorbikes, sent from afar what they could send and did not take a single step to approach us. The mere sight of a few Molotov cocktails and the ready crowd, terrified them and awakened memories of old times. As a consequence of this fear, we were given the comfort of entering the Exarchia neighbourhood with the crowd of people without any problem. We then remained for some time in the surrounding alleys observing their movements for future attacks.

The choice of the Exarcheia neighborhood to carry out the attack was not accidental. The rebellious Exarcheia is a reference point for the antagonistic movement, a neighbourhood of politicisation, fermentation and insurgency. From the anti-dictatorial struggles and clashes of the Polytechnic uprising of ’73, the murder of comrade Michalis Kaltezas* and the Chemistry revolt of ’85**, the murder of the student Alexandros Grigoropoulos and the December 2008 uprising to the defence of our neighbourhood by groups of fascists and parastatals in the ridiculous Macedonia rallies of 18-19, Exarcheia has always been a place of freedom, comradeship and struggle for those who fight to overthrow the rotten reality of the state. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on the MAT (riot squad) at Ch.Trikoupis” →

Athens, Greece: 4-11 June Week of Reconstruction of the Alexandros Grigoropoulos Monument

Posted on 2022/05/05 by darknights

Revolutionary memory is not an empty letter. It is not a museum affair. It is not a dry ritual that is exhausted in anniversary recurrences. Revolutionary memory is the thread that binds the past to the present and that lays the foundations for a future that will do justice to those who sacrificed for a different world. A world where no one will see the sky through barbed wire, where no one will have their bodies broken in the sweatshops of class exploitation, where no one will be murdered on land and sea borders, in police stations, in the urban ghettos of metropolises. Revolutionary memory brings together those who are missing from our side, making them complicit in our subversive projects and dreams. Revolutionary memory, if we give it the value it deserves, becomes a subversive project, a springboard for struggle, a source of inspiration and disposition in the beautiful cause of freedom. For the words that will form a conceptual framework different from the one spoken today by politicians, economists, military analysts, industrialists, the golden boys of the stock exchange, journalists. Or they will be words armed ready to become an impulsive energy. Or they will be nothing.

The metropolises are the modern steam engines, they are the universal factories of capitalism. The transparent sweatshops where capital’s domination, control and repression of the explosive contradictions it produces are absolutely institutionalized.

The crimes of the state and capitalism within the metropolises become isolated incidents. They are recorded in fragmentary narratives by the bourgeois ideology that imposes its hegemony. Our own memory, which should highlight them and transform them into social consciousness, into a perception of our role and position, is constantly absent. When it is not, it is blurred, colourless, non-existent, empty of content. Fascist censorship here has for the moment been replaced by a new form of active censorship. The production of incessant distorted knowledge, the methodical reversal of facts, their insidious substitution. It is revisionism that attacks consciences, memories, the very history of the struggles. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: 4-11 June Week of Reconstruction of the Alexandros Grigoropoulos Monument” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the incendiary attack on the political office of Development Minister Adonis Georgiades by Proletarian Cell Dimitris Christoulas

Posted on 2022/04/14 - 2022/04/19 by darknights

“The occupying government of Tsolakoglu literally annihilated my possibility of survival, which was based on a decent pension which for 35 years I alone (without state support) had been paying for it. Because I am of an age that does not give me the individual possibility to react (not excluding of course if a Greek would take the kalashnikov the second would be me) I find no other solution than a decent end before I start to look in the trash for my alimony. I believe that the young people with no future will one day take up arms and hang the national traitors upside down in Syntagma Square, as the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945 (Loreto Square in Milan)” Dimitris Christoulas*

We take responsibility for the incendiary attack on the political office of Adonis Georgiades, the representative of capital, politician responsible for the poverty and misery suffered by the people through poverty.

From the economic crisis of 2009 from which the country never came out, to the socialization of the losses of capital from the pandemic Covid 19, the latest increases in the price of electricity, fuel and almost all essentials are added to the already unbearable cost of survival of the working class and the people, to the pre-existing queues of the ΟΑΕΔ (Employment Insurance) , to the pension cuts, to the crumbs of the basic wage. The “development” invoked and evangelised by the domestic bourgeoisie is reflected physically and materially in people who die trying to keep warm, who look in the garbage for food, who commit suicide for economic reasons. It is reflected in workplaces that are graveyards for people of our class, where dozens of workers do not return home because a few extra euros were not “wasted” for the safety of the workers. Their growth translates into slow death in the corridors of hospitals. To the nearly 27,000 deaths from Covid 19, to the blockade of care in public hospitals amidst the increasing privatisation of the ΕΣΥ (National Health Service). Their deployment amounts to a daily battle for the survival of the next day for the majority of society at the same time as a handful of industrialists, shipowners and contractors continually speculate on our backs, reap the rewards of the toil and slavery we produce, extract surplus value from our starvation wages, continually devaluing the value of our labour power. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the incendiary attack on the political office of Development Minister Adonis Georgiades by Proletarian Cell Dimitris Christoulas” →

Athens, Greece: Update from the march in solidarity with Anarchist G. Michailidis, in Exarcheia area on 9 April 2022

Posted on 2022/04/14 - 2022/04/14 by darknights

On Saturday 9 April, 2022 following the call of the assembly of solidarity with the imprisoned, persecuted and fugitive militants, more than 200 comrades gathered at Exarcheia Square in solidarity with the anarchist prisoner Giannis Michailidis.

During the meeting, which lasted about an hour and a half, the text of the assembly was read, texts were distributed and fliers thrown. Then a march followed through the streets of the dependencies, without the presence of the police or any other problems.

The response to the meeting and the march was another message to the State that the anarchist comrade Giannis is not alone. He has with him the movement of solidarity with the political prisoners that will always give all its strength to break the regime of exclusion that the State and capital have in store for them. The “indefinite” detention regime imposed on the comrade is another example of this brutal repression of the enemy within.

Source: athens.indymedia

Via & Translated by Act for freedom now!

Athens, Greece: Freedom to anarchist Giannis Michailidis – Gathering – Solidarity March Saturday 9 April 20:00 PM Εxarcheia Square

Posted on 2022/04/02 by darknights

GATHERING-SOLIDARITY MARCH
SATURDAY 9 APRIL 8PM ΕXΑRCHIA SQUARE
FREEDOM TO ANARCHIST GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS
STRUGGLE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

Anarchist prisoner Giannis Michailidis has been imprisoned for more than 8 and a half years in the cells of democracy and 3 years in fugitive status in two different periods. His consistent commitment to the anarchist struggle, his unrepentant stance in front of the executioners of bourgeois justice, his practical questioning of the world of power and bourgeois legitimacy has put him in the crosshairs of the repressive and judicial mechanisms for years.

Giannis was prosecuted on the basis of a trumped-up charge of the mass revolt of the prisoners of Korydallos prison against the violent seizure of the then hunger-striking anarchist prisoner Dinos Giagtzoglou.

A persecution that targeted, without any evidence beyond solidarity texts, all the political prisoners of that period in order to put them in a new regime of hostage-taking, discontinued leaves, transfer from rural prisons, etc. Faced with the risk of prolonging his imprisonment and being transferred from the rural prisons where he was being held Giannis chose freedom, making an escape that allowed him to walk the paths of freedom for which he has fought consistently and at great cost throughout his life. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Freedom to anarchist Giannis Michailidis – Gathering – Solidarity March Saturday 9 April 20:00 PM Εxarcheia Square” →

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” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the arson attack on a company vehicle of UNISON Facilities Management in Exarcheia

Posted on 2022/02/25 - 2022/02/25 by darknights

Regenaration, development, gentrification. Concepts that have become embedded as spikes in the discourse and action of the antagonist movement, must be seen as another aspect of the attack of the ruling classes against the oppressed class. Capital aims at subordinating the whole of life to its exploitation and reproduction, and therefore organizes more and more aspects of human activity in this logic.

The process of enclosing community/public spaces for the purpose of capital’s reproduction is a process as old as capitalism. In recent decades we have experienced the long deconstruction of social democratic management, with the mediation of the state receding, giving more room for the defensive subordination of activities of social life to capital. In this sense, a concerted attack has been launched in recent years on public spaces, squares, parks in the metropolises, transferring their management from the state to private individuals, with the aim of creating new fields of profitability for capital.

This is exactly the condition of the sale of a series of public green spaces by the Municipality of Athens to the company UNISON Facilities Services, such as the hills (Strefi, Filopappou, Lycabettus, Turkovounia), squares (Protomaya, Victoria, Kypseli, Attiki, Ameriki, Drakopoulos, Agios Panteleimon), parks (Platonos Academia, Kyrpo, Patision, Goudi) and pedestrian streets (Agia Zoni, Fokionos Negri). UNISON (formerly ISS), belongs to a category of a new type of company that, through contractor privatisations, is simultaneously financed by state-taxed, collectively produced surplus value, and at the same time intensifies the exploitation of its workers through miserable wages, flexible working hours and violation of workers’ rights. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the arson attack on a company vehicle of UNISON Facilities Management in Exarcheia” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the burning of the Exarcheia Police Station on 4.2.22

Posted on 2022/02/12 - 2022/02/12 by darknights

We take responsibility for the burning of the Exarcheia Police Station on 4.2.22. The attack was carried out by a group of comrades who, armed with the weapons of comradeship and organization, defied police state and succeeded in destroying the myth of omnipotence that the police systematically cultivates in this area. We attacked with more than 10 Molotov cocktails at the outpost and the entrance of the police station, driving the cops outside into disorderly flight.

A few words about the incident

The tragic management of the pandemic, the sweeping changes it has brought about and the developments of the period are revealing of what it has brought about to the social base. Inflation, poverty, energy poverty, the daily deaths from COVID-19 which reach 24,000 are the results of capitalist management in order to recover the profitability of capital.

At the same time, the indirect reduction of wages against the government narrative, the ever greater devaluation of the Ε.Σ.Υ. (National Health Service) are increasingly impoverishing the social base. On the other hand, the cynicism of the rulers is reflected in their statements showing how indifferent they are to the lives of the impoverished.

The recent statements of Mitsotakis: “we may have had 16,000 dead but we saved tourism”, the admission of Plevris: “we have no communism and everything that is commanded is paid for” and the reference of Skertzos that it is a luxury to support the Ε.Σ.Υ. , leave no room for doubt.

At the same time, Development Minister Adonis Georgiades announced the end of the pandemic, at the same time that patients continue to die in beds and the medical and nursing staff, being understaffed, is collapsing from the workload. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the burning of the Exarcheia Police Station on 4.2.22” →