Vermischtes zur Revolte in Griechenland – 6

1. Regelmässigig aktualisierte Infos zu den Kämpfen in Griechenland gibt es u.a. auf Indymedia BRD, Indymedia Athen, LibCom, On the Greek Riots, tears and anger greece, Αλεξανδρε Ζεις!, Alexis Grigoropoulos † 06.12.2008 sowie LabourNet.de; Artikel auf dieser Webseite zum Thema unter https://entdinglichung.wordpress.com/category/griechenland/.

* Ein Transparent an der Akropolis, gefunden auf On the Greek Riots:

2. Die Zentrale des Gewerkschaftsdachverbandes GSEE wurde besetzt, nachfolgend die Erklärung der BesetzterInnen, mehr zu der Aktion ansonsten auf Indymedia:

Since 8 o’clock in the morning the building of GSEE (Patision and Alexandras) is occupied.

We declare the building a Liberated Workers‘ Zone.

Open Workers‘ Assembly at 18.00

The Building is open to all workers all day long.

–DECLARATION–

We will either determine our history ourselves
or let it be determined without us

We, manual workers, employees, jobless, temporary workers, local or migrants, are not passive tv-viewers. Since the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday night we participate in the demonstrations, the clashes with the police, the occupations of the centre or the neighborhoods. Time and again we had to leave work and our daily obligations to take the streets with the students, the university students and the other proletarians in struggle.

WE DECIDED TO OCCUPY THE BUILDING OF GSEE

-To turn it into a space of free expression and a meeting point of workers.

-To disperse the media-touted myth that the workers were and are absent from the clashes, and that the rage of these days was an affair of some 500 „mask-bearers“, „hooligans“ or some other fairy tale, while on the tv-screens the workers were presented as victims of the clash, while the capitalist crisis in Greece and Worldwide leads to countless layoffs that the media and their managers deal as a „natural phenomenon“.

-To flay and uncover the role of the trade union bureaucracy in the undermining of the insurrection -and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade union mechanism that supports it for decades and decades, undermine the struggles, bargain our labor power for crumblings, perpetuate the system of exploitation and wage slavery. The stance of GSEE last Wednesday is quite telling: GSEE cancelled the programmed strikers‘ demonstration, stopping short at the organization of a brief gathering in Syntagma Sq., making simultaneously sure that the people will be dispersed in a hurry from the Square, fearing that they might get infected by the virus of insurrection.

-To open up this space for the first time -as a continuation of the social opening created by the insurrection itself-, a space that has been built by our contributions, a space from which we were excluded. For all these years we trusted our fate on saviours of every kind, and we end up losing our dignity. As workers we have to start assuming our responsibilities, and to stop assigning our hopes to wise leaders or „able“ representatives. We have to acquire a voice of our own, to meet up, to talk, to decide, and to act. Against the generalized attack we endure. The creation of collective „grassroot“ resistances is the only way.

-To propagate the idea of self-organization and solidarity in working places, struggle committees and collective grassroot procedures, abolishing the bureaucrat trade unionists.

All these years we gulp the misery, the pandering, the violence in work. We became accustomed to counting the crippled and our dead – the so-called „labor accidents“. We became accustomed to ingore the migrants -our class brothers- getting killed. We are tired living with the anxiety of securing a wage, revenue stamps, and a pension that now feels like a distant dream.

As we struggle not to abandon our life in the hands of the bosses and the trade union representatives, likewise we will not abandon no arrested insurgent in the hands of the state and the juridical mechanism.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE DETAINED
NO CHARGE TO THE ARRESTED
SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKERS
GENERAL STRIKE

WORKERS‘ ASSEMBLY IN THE „LIBERATED“ BUILDING OF GSEE
Wendesday, 17 December 2008, 18:00

General Assembly of Insurgent Workers

3. Rustbelt Radical dokumentiert eine weitere Stellungnahme von Savas Michael-Matsas von der EEK zur aktuellen Lage:

„This morning started with a very unpleasant surprise for the riot police, the special force against popular mobilizations, which is busy all these days of popular revolt in Greece to attack and brutalize13-14 years old kids: their central headquarters/caserne in the Kaisariani area, in Athens, was put under siege for hours by a multitude of young people throwing to them stones and Molotov cocktails.

During all day, the main roads of the Greek capital, particularly in points near schools, were blocked by the schoolchildren for hours stooping the chaotic traffic for hours.

In general, its has to be pointed out that all the schools and all the Universities of the country have stopped functioning and their students are in the streets fighting, protesting, singing, shouting slogans, clashing with police, putting under siege or occupying public buildings( town halls, cultural centers etc.)“

4. Ein Interview mit Giorgos Maniatis vom Netzwerk für politische und soziale Rechte auf Antifaunited:

„In einer Art Kettenreaktion haben die Ereignisse eine große Zahl junger Menschen mobilisiert, die sich zu Wort melden. Viele von ihnen sind vielleicht zum ersten Mal auf die Straße gegangen, haben zum ersten Mal der Polizei gegenübergestanden. Jetzt sieht es so aus, als würden sie bleiben, weitermachen, als würde die Bewegung genau von diesen 16- bis 18jährigen getragen.“

5. Ein Update der Ereignisse der letzten Tage auf Indymedia

6. Eine Reihe von Bildern auf Infoshop News:

7. Mehr von den kleineren in der SYRIZA vertretenen linksradikalen Organisationen, ein weiteres Kommunique der KOE sowie ein Artikel von einem Mitglied der DEA, ansonsten weist ein Statement von Sissy Vovou vom Sozialforum Griechenland auf folgendes hin:

„In Thessaloniki young people stole baby jesus from the cot of the huge crib that was placed in the central square with figures of natural size and put a television in the place of Jesus.“

Ein Brief Athener ArbeiterInnen an die kämpfenden Studierenden und SchülerInnen

Quelle: LibCom

A letter to students

Our age difference and the general estrangement make it difficult for us to discuss with you in the streets; this is why we send you this letter.

Most of us have not (yet) been bald or big-bellied. We are part of the 1990-91 movement. You must have heard of it. Back then, and while we had occupied our schools for 30-35 days, fascists killed a teacher because he had gone beyond his natural role (that of being our guard) and crossed the line to the opposite side; he had come with us, into our struggle. Then, even the toughest of us got to the streets and riot. However, we didn’t even think of doing what you easily do today: attack police stations (although we sang “burn police stations…”).

So, you’re gone beyond us, as always happens in history. Conditions are different of course. During ‘90s they passed us off the prospect of personal success and some of us swallowed it. Now people cannot believe this fairy tale. Your older brothers showed us this during the 2006-07 students’ movement; you now spit their fairy tale to their faces.

So far so good.

Now the good and difficult matters begin.

We’ll tell you what we’ve learned from our struggles and our defeats (because as long as world is not ours we’ll always be the defeated ones) and you can use what we’ve learned as you wish:

Don’t stay alone. Call us; call as many people as possible. We don’t know how you can do that, you will find the way. You’ve already occupied your schools and you tell us that the most important reason is that you don’t like your schools. Nice. Since you’ve already occupied them change their role. Share your occupations with other people. Let your schools become the first buildings to house our new relations. Their most powerful weapon is dividing us. Just like you are not afraid of attacking their police stations because you are together, don’t be afraid to call us to change our life all together.

Don’t listen to any political organization (either anarchists or anyone). Do what you need to. Trust people, not abstract schemes and ideas. Trust your direct relations with people. Trust your friends; make as many people as possible in your struggle your people. Don’t listen to them when they’re saying that your struggle doesn’t have a political content and must seemingly obtain. Your struggle is the content. You only have your struggle and it’s in your hands to preserve its advance. It’s only your struggle that can change your life, namely you and the real relations with your fellowmen.

Don’t be afraid to proceed when confronting new things. Each one of us, as we’re getting older, has things planted in their brains. You too, although you are young. Don’t forget the importance of this fact. Back in 1991, we confronted the smell of the new world and, trust us, we found it difficult. We learned that there must always be limits. Don’t be scared by the destruction of commodities. Don’t be scared by people looting stores. We make all these, they are ours. You (just like we in the past) are raised to get up every morning in order to make things that they will later not be yours. Let’s get them back all together and share them. Just like we share our friends and the love among us.

We apologize for writing this letter quickly, but we do it swinging the lead from our work, secretly from our boss. We are imprisoned in work, just like you are imprisoned in school.

We’ll now lie to our boss and leave work: we’ll come to meet you in Syntagma sq with stones in our hands.

Proletarians

Arbeiternews Nr. 34 (Dezember 2008)

Die neue Arbeiternews (Oktober 2008, pdf-Datie) des Komitee der Solidarität mit den iranischen ArbeiterInnen – Hamburg: