Thursday 31 March 2011

Cookin at the social


So, last night I went along to the migrants social centre (steki) to see if I could get involved in the peoples kitchen (poster above). Every Saturday afternoon a group of volunteers put on a meal for whoever wants to come - 3 Euros if you can pay - nothing if you can't.Me and Phil went along last Saturday and around 30 people came to eat barbequeue and loads of other yummy things. It was awesome (although not quite so awesome if you're veggie/vegan).

If any of you reading this are involved with the Sumac Centre (www.veggies.org.uk/sumac/), its just like Peoples Kitchen. Only (I gotta say it) better. Here's why...

Every Thursday night the volunteers come together to decide collectively what they're gonna cook that weekend. They decide how much of everything they need to buy and nominate people to pick up all the ingredients and stuff. They pay for it from a kind of kitty that they have built up over the 2 years the kitchen has been running. Come the weekend, a group of them gather and cook together. There were about 12 people at the meeting. I got the impression most of them will be there come the weekend.

So, I got the feeling that the thing totally works! They make decisions as a collective (although its not consensual. They were voting on whether or not to accept a donation from a left political party to purchase a new cooker. They voted no!). They plan the meals together, and in advance. They pay for all the resources from a collective purse. And people come! partly because they advertise all over the place. The meeting was easygoing, lighthearted and efficient! I guess this is why there are so many willing participants. It all contributes to a sense of enjoyment to the project. People participate because its fun and the pressure of carrying the project doesnt fall on any one person, so committing to the project is a  managable thing in someones life. I left the meeting feeling that getting involved will be wicked.

So, I'll definitely be involved in the kitchen. Lets see how it goes.

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Anything can happen in Athens when you leave your flat

Yesterday evening I returned to the Afghan occupation. As I arrived, some kind of demo was coming together in the university square, sharing the space with the Afghan guys. It was a pure black-dress affair of what one guy later estimated to be around 5000 anarchists, mainly students.

As the demo got together and set off, we stood by watching.  One of the guys was tutting and their general reaction seemed to sit somewhere between fear, disapproval and awe. Fear, because times before, protests had happened outside the university that had brought trouble to their occupation in the form of a shit load of tear gas. Disapproval at the idea that they were mindlessly violent. Awe that they really shoved it to the Police sometimes. The overarching sense was that the people were thugs and their actions were nihilistic and therefore unpredictable. Glad that they were marching. More glad that they were marching away. I said my goodbyes and followed the march into the centre of the city.

The demo route cut through Athens city centre, blocking the arterial flow of traffic and rendering Athens at rush hour quiet. More than quiet, there was something like a tangible sense of holding your breath. As the march continued, it set off a Mexican wave of shutting shops, reopening again as it passed. There were very few other people around. Behind them, a small line of riot cops in green, in front of them, a huge banner, colour coordinated with the demonstrators in black. Loud, powerful chants, leaflets chucked all over the place, and a powerful sense of solidarity and possibility.

Possibly the single only person not wearing head to toe black, I joined the march and asked a guy what it was all about. They were calling for the release of anarchist comrade Simos Seisidis, held on charges of bank robbery, money laundering and attmepted homicide. During his arrest, he had been shot in the back and had subsequently had his leg amputated. The guy was languishing in jail with no end date. He said that as this was a small demo and it was unlikely there would be any clashes with police. As a group of only anarchists anything more than marching and the police would come down on them hard. They carried on marching, up towards Exarchia and I left the demo and headed back towards the city.

The difference between how the Afghan guys had viewed the protesters, and the friendly, fun conversation I had just had with the guy in the march was conflicting. As always the idea and the reality of anarchists were out of line. People believe in the idea of the scary mob. Of anarchists creating ‘anarchy’ because they believe their actions are thoughtless and therefore unpredictable. They see them on the streets and are afraid. Partly this is because people only get to see the end result. They don’t see the endless meetings or the deep thinking (I know you can’t actually see deep thinking. Call this poetic licence).

So, the big, black anarchist mass of people was totally awe inspiring to me (and amasing that 5000 people out on the streets on a Tuesday night would be considered a small affair), but it was also kinda sad to hear the misunderstanding and fear from the Afghan guys. It was also sad to see all the power the marchers generated together be so limited - their image both isolating them and limiting their possibilities for action. Its the age old conflict: by attempting to live in non-alienated and free ways, you end up creating your own alienation from the mainstream. Anarchists definitely suffer from bad PR.

Occupation by Afghan Refugees in Athens enters its fourth month


The hunger strike of 300 migrant workers which ended after 44 days earlier this month caught the attention of the (alt) media and the local populace and eventually worked to persuade the government to grant them some rights. But less attention seems to have been paid to the ongoing protest of Afghan refugees outside the main university building in the city. Several hundred individuals began their occupation of the site way back in November last year. Over 4 months later and the group are still there, their numbers having declined to around 90.

They are calling for political asylum in Greece. Until now, they have been living without any formal status (some for more than 10 years), surviving and raising their families without any formal support or right to support themselves. Unable to return home, EU migration controls also forbid them from moving anywhere else. This is a situation of stalemate. On this issue one protester commented “Greece is a prison without walls”.

Beyond the physical occupation – which consists of several tents, an info desk, a communication tent and the commitment of the protesters - 9 of the protesters decided to go on hunger strike, sewing their lips together in order to be heard. This most desperate and resolute of acts, which began in December - was finally met with agreement from the Ministry of Civilian Protection that their cases would finally be addressed. But over a month has passed and beyond the hunger strikers, it doesn’t seem like anything is happening. This lack of attention seems the most crass and shameful element to the government’s response to date.

So the migrants are now calling on the support of political parties, local activist and human rights organisations and other migrant groups so they can firstly defend themselves against fascist attacks on their occupation and secondly reach their demand. Up until now they have gone it alone.

At the moment in Athens, similar protests are ongoing among the Iranian and Palestinian communities as well. What kind of situation is it when such public acts of desperation are the norm? Or when getting attention necessitates this level of extremity?

Link
www.afghanrefugeesgr.blogspot.com

Sunday 27 March 2011

Who are all the anarchists?!

The whole of the district of Exarchia is covered in circle A’s. But who the hell are the anarchists?!

In England I feel kinda weird to call myself an anarchist, as if speaking the label out loud will somehow break the spell! It also feels kinda weird because the anarchists are a group out on their own, in poltical terms. So to identify yourself an anarchist is a sign of some separation. There are no similar groups (but if anarchism is not a political ideology, but a way of understanding and responding to the world in practical ways, then the political / theoretical is only one side of it).

But in Greece, there seem to be more political stripes than people. There’s so many variations on the theme that people seem describe their own politics in much more nuanced ways. People who might be happy to lob a Molotov at a bank might not call themselves anarchists (apologies for the clichéd anarchist analogy, but in this case it seems to fit). Perhaps extreme tactics have simply dispersed further.

Anyways, the idea of anarchism seemed to create in my head a political centre from which I wanted to begin to find out about migrant solidarity activism in Athens and became a focus for the kind of questions I asked. And with the 300 hunger strike ending the week before this was often where conversations went. So this is a summary of some conversations in my first days in Athens, about the hunger strike, and about my attempt to find out who the hell the anarchists are...

With the flat hunting ongoing, me and Phil went to look at some furniture that a girl was giving away. She seemed very relaxed and we seemed to get on. Before we left, we got talking about the 300. At this her tone completely changed. "Don’t mention that strike to me!” she replied. She went on to say how the people who had supported the strike had deliberately withheld the strikers from eating in order to reach their political aims. How she understood that migrants were "human beings", but that the situation was much more complicated in Athens than a struggle for the rights of migrants, where the conflicts between migrants and locals were becoming more common and more violent. "You should try living here" she said.

Her response left me baffled. On the one hand the idea of accepting that migrants were human beings was explicitly and mind-blowingly racist! Time to dismiss her views and walk away. But the anarchist posters pinned up in her kitchen made me question if this was the case. I wondered, was it purely racist or was her message - about the complexity of the political situation in Greece and the growing animosity towards migrants in the city (on top of the existing socially acceptable racism) - confused by the wrong use of semantics to explain her views? I left her apartment feeling the sense of a ticking time bomb around me. Aware of the hugeness the social affects migration was having on the city.

The following day I met a girl who had been involved with the supporters of the 300. Supporters had been there every day (and planning for weeks before) on shifts of up to 18 hours. She had been on the night shift and had barely seen daylight for 6 weeks. Now everyone was exhausted. I told her about the reaction to the strike from the previous day. She gave a sigh and an emphatic reply. She said that supporters had shown solidarity with the strikers, who had refused food that doctors were forcing upon them. She thought that it was likely that the girl was an anarchist, and that people who considered themselves as ‘real’ anarchists had contributed little to the strike. They had also been critical of the ‘success’ of the strike, and vocal against the supporters, who they view as reformists. I suggested the anarchists may have been unsupportive because the strike a) appealed to the state for a response and b) used human rights as the basis for their argument. Perhaps the anarchists – referring to theory rather than the self-sacrificial actions of the individuals in front of them - saw the action as a failure? Now there was a divide between the supporters of the strike and the anarchists.

Later in the week I went to the migrants social centre in Exarchia (autonomous social centres are all over the place and are called Stekis) a focal point for many of the supporters of the 300. They were also involved in actions and ways of organising that could be considered anarchist (the way the Steki was organised - horizontally, through cooperation and mutual aid – as well as the other activities of the Steki, such as their deep involvement in previous NoBorder camps, or organising an autonomous anti-racist festival every year), but they didn’t consider themselves anarchists.

So, I could find people who talked about their involvement in migrant solidarity in ways that I would call anarchist. But so far, no anarchists!

Do these little thoughts say more about my lack of understanding of Greek politics (or lack of understanding of the differences with UK politics) than it does about the lack of activity of anarchists and others? Does it simply show that I haven’t met that many people yet?!
Why does it have to be the anarchists? What do the labels matter?

Perhaps I can’t find them because they’re all hidden away in dark rooms, holding six hour consensus meetings. Joke.

More info on the hunger strike: