Tourism

Berlin, Germany: Arson attack on a vehicle of the Greek Embassy

Posted on 2022/09/07 - 2022/09/10 by darknights

Attentively we have followed how the Greek state crushes demonstrations in the streets of Athens. The government of Nea Dimokratia and its judiciary have proven that in the hunger strikes of D. Koufontinas and G. Michailidis, they are ready to let prisoners die rather than give in one step. We know the videos of the lynching with the participation of police officers of Zak Kostopoulos. As well as the execution of N. Sampanis in Perama by DIAS is an expression of a ruthless regime, as is the murder of Vassilis Maggos in Volos. Blood drips from the hands of the Greek authorities.

The new junta thinks it is smart to take advantage of the August vacation period to begin construction of the metro station in Exarcheia. Their goal is to destroy every social base and occupy every place of resistance with troops. The evictions of squats in Thessaloniki and the police invasion of the university there have not escaped us either.

Everywhere the Greek state encounters resistance from parts of society. We want to support this resistance in order to bring down the project of ND. The system of ND, its judiciary and its cops, is the state of rapists. The release of rapists and the simultaneous attack on a feminist demonstration in July in Athens, symbolizes the values of Mitsotakis’ government.

At the same time, the killings at Greece’s borders continue. In league with FRONTEX and mercenaries, Greek authorities are responsible for the daily deaths at the gates of the European fortress. Continue reading “Berlin, Germany: Arson attack on a vehicle of the Greek Embassy” →

Exarcheia, Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on luxury hotels of Israeli interests

Posted on 2022/07/24 - 2022/07/24 by darknights

On Thursday 23/6/22, a group of comrades attacked and destroyed with hammers and sledgehammers the facades of three luxury hotels of Israeli interests located on Kleisovis Street in Exarcheia. In one of the hotels, paint was also thrown inside the hotel, where the dining room and wine-bar are located. Leaflets were thrown at the spot which read:

“TOURISTS GO HOME! This is class-war Zone” “Cops and big investors out of Exarcheia”

These hotels, with a cost of 100+ euros per day, like so many others that spring up every day in the area, are part of capital’s strategic planning to “gentrify” Exarchia and turn it into an investment philanthropy, where the human geography of the population will be shaped for the needs of capital.

The struggle for Exarcheia to remain a militant, multicultural neighbourhood, a symbol of resistance and rebellion, is going to be a tough one. It is a class struggle and it is about our survival both as workers and residents in the neighbourhood and the preservation of the revolutionary memory and the insurrectionary flame.

We support the struggles against the privatization of the Strefi Hill, against the construction of the metro in Exarcheia Square. We fight together with thousands for the Exarcheia of Social Self-Organization and Class Solidarity against the state repression, the violence of capital, the museumization of the Polytechnic, the drug mafias and the thugs who are an arm of capital and the state.

Comrades.

PS: We express our unconditional solidarity with the anarchist political prisoner G. Michailidis who is on 60 days of hunger strike demanding his freedom. Freedom or Death

Source: athens. indymedia

Exarcheia, Athens, Greece: Intervention at an airbnb

Posted on 2022/07/24 - 2022/07/24 by darknights

The analyses about the gentrification of the Exarcheia neighbourhood are now well known and part of the discourse and practice of the anti-authoritarian space. Evictions of houses, cop culture, frugal tourists that frolic undisturbed in their new playground. Squatter evictions, mega real estate companies, and so much more that we see in our neighborhood every day.

Gentrification is our violent exchange with first class citizens and visitors. For what purpose? For political deadening, for counter-insurgency, for profit. But the actions of our diverse movements will sweep them away once again.

As a minimal act of support for the struggle of Exarchia, we intervened in the airbnb on Tsamadou by throwing buckets of stinking paint into its courtyard and breaking the electric bells at the entrance. This building has been targeted many times with spray paint and so on, as it was the site of the Omokentro squat a few years ago. Also the homeless man who had been living across the street from the airbnb for a long time, suddenly disappeared from his place by magic… With a little talk with the neighborhood one understands that this man did not leave there by accident, but most likely he was evicted by the owners so as not to ‘spoil’ their image.

The targets are many and they are everywhere. Right down to the destruction of the last airbnb.

REDEVELOPMENT MEANS POOR DISPLACED PEOPLE

NO TO THE SUBWAY, REDEVELOPMENT OF THE HILLSIDE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF LUXURY HOUSING

COPS – INVESTORS OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD

angry neighbours

Source: athens.indymedia

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” →

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

Thessaloniki, Greece: Communique for an arson attack upon mayor Dimitris Demourtzidis’ car by ‘Nightriders of the Flame’

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

Life in the metropolises is suffocating. In recent years, we have seen the urban beast growing larger and sucking life into its path. Cops and snitches lurk around every corner, poverty and deprivation are reflected in every aspect of daily life, oppression (labour, sexual, racial) is a brutal reality, while the circle of ‘freedoms’ and ‘breaths of life’ are getting narrower and narrower. In this suffocating grip, capitalism comes to remind us that we are expendable materials for its machines, which produce endlessly and thirst for profit.

The gentrification projects are the blunt admission by the state that we exist simply to produce for them. Squares, parks, neighborhoods that were once appropriable by their inhabitants are being gentrified by labor and handed over to tourists and urban bourgeois. Expensive cafes, airbnb, surveillance cameras, increasing tourist population, overall increase in the cost of living are some of the consequences of redevelopment. Consequences that result in the displacement of people who once lived in these neighborhoods as they can no longer cope with the new existing situation. So the so-called ‘gentrification’ thus creates ‘fortress’ (urban) areas with increased social control and repression while other urban areas are ghettoised and impoverished. The segregation of neighbourhoods within cities and their so pronounced differentiations, clearly facilitates the work of the cops in terms of mapping and surveillance.

We see such a project unfolding before us in the Pavlos Mela military camp. A huge space within the confined metropolitan prison, freely appropriable by all and sundry, has been included in the redevelopment plans of Mayor Dimitris Demourtzidis. Continue reading “Thessaloniki, Greece: Communique for an arson attack upon mayor Dimitris Demourtzidis’ car by ‘Nightriders of the Flame’” →

Athens, Greece: A brief review of the events of the last days in Exarcheia

Posted on 2022/01/19 - 2022/01/19 by darknights

We raise this update as we have noticed that in the mainstream media and the wider media, the events of the last few days, as well as the solidarity march for the Biologio steki, completely silence the fact that Exarcheia was, is and will be a neighbourhood that fights against gentrification and repression. We want to make it clear that these events are mass actions spontaneously flanked by people and prove that no matter how much Mitsotakis and his whole family want to, Exarcheia will not submit to their vices.

Wednesday 12/01/22

Since this morning, bulldozers and contractor crews arrive in Messolonghiou and proceed to excavate the pavement in order to electrify the new building where a luxury apartment block is being erected. After the work is temporarily halted due to complaints from residents, police forces arrive at the site. In the evening of the same day, a banner is displayed against the gentrification of Exarchia and people cover the holes that the bulldozers have made in the pedestrian street with earth. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: A brief review of the events of the last days in Exarcheia” →