The Racial Dimension of a Train Journey

Friends have previously accused me of being no fun cause I label everything as political (as if that aint fun!). Here’s a story of one recent train journey that perfectly illustrates the political dimension of simple daily things.

I have come back to Greece for a few weeks and came to Athens from Istanbul. After a pretty interesting hitch-hiking experience, my journey back to Athens continued by train. From Alexandroupolis, its 7 hours to Thessaloniki, and from there, another 6 hours to the capital. It’s a long but fairly beautiful trip.

Alexandroupolis is a frontier town. Between it and Orestiada, a little further northeast, it’s one of the first places you are likely to come to if you travel by land from Turkey. It’s a place that seems to have given in to the atmosphere of a waiting room, or the dreariness of a giant bus station. I have only ever been there when leaving to or coming from somewhere else. In the last decade it’s got a reputation as a stop off point for people travelling document free. In recent years, this has become much more visible and apparent as the numbers of people reaching the city (often by foot, across the Evros river and then through Orestiada) has gone up. Recently, at a guess, the destination of Athens has become more common as immigration controls in other areas has become more violent, and as work has dried up in other parts of the country. I would assume this means that the route from Athens via Alexandroupolis is an extremely well trodden one by now.

When I got to the station to take the train, there were around 40 document free travellers also waiting (I am making the assumption they were travelling without papers, because Greece does not give residency to anyone from Africa or the Middle East). Many looked like they had been waiting a long time for that train. Clothes were airing over railings. People were sitting around in the sun, on the platform, in thw waiting room in small groups, mostly according to nationality/ethnicity. All were men, except for one family. I got talking to some guys from Bangladesh, and sat with them on the train.

A curious thing happened during the journey. Over the course of a few hours the ‘ethnic mix’ of our carriage changed despite few people leaving or getting off. It seemed that, having previously been spread out throughout the trains 4 carriages, all the black people came to be sitting in our carriage. It seemed that the conductor had moved them. At the same time, all the white folks were slowly leaving (or were also moved?). Why? Why? For what reason? Why? Why this segregation? Why? I was the only white person left in the carriage. And now it was a fucking political statement to remain there; a statement of solidarity.

So, I passed my journey in the jovial but also anxious and anticipatory atmosphere of the folks separated out according to their colour and assumed lack of status, by the dude checking tickets and his balding friend rudely selling snacks. Welcome to Greece! I wish them all the best after this welcome.

The Wall Between Greece and Turkey Built in 5 Months

The mainstream media site Ekathimerini.com reported today that on Thursday the contract to build a 12.5km wall between Greece and Turkey was signed by the two governments. The fence is due to be built in 5 months. The article – and the Greek government – claim that the wall will “deter illegal immigration and trafficking”.

But the wall is much more than that.

It is a visceral, physical construction of the racism at the heart of the European Capitalist/Imperialist daydream. It is a symbol designed to send out a message of control; that Europe is closed and that us who are enclosed are safer. Safety and control are far from the same thing. I don't want to live in a place that conflates the two.

The wall will also be a blank page, because it exposes the fake heart of any claim from European power to uphold the rights of refugees (how can a wall discriminate between 'types' of migrants?). In the process it again exposes the constructed of illegality that the control regime has itself constructed.

The wall will also be a straw man, because Europe’s borders don't start and end at its external edges. Despite this sickening news, the wall doesn’t take our eyes off the daily realities of random stop and searches, imprisonment, dawn raids and internal port controls that target migrants from outside of the white world. This wall will be a thread in a much bigger web of control. It is just another barrier among many.

But building a wall and controlling the thing the wall is supposedly built against are not the same thing. The controls get bigger and more complex, but the ways around them are not put out, because the desperate desire or desperate need to move endures. The ways around control might become harder (side effects of the wall could include higher smuggler fees, or changed routes), but they also adjust and change.

Because for all the fake reassurance of control this wall affords the forces of repression, the reality remains; people who desperately want or need to move, will continue to find a way, and they will continue to find a welcome from movements of solidarity. The wall will create a false sense of control. And in that false sense there remains possibility to undermine it.

But for now, solidarity with those at whom this wall will target can and must begin with opposition to its construction.

Ideologies and Realities: some thoughts on migrant solidarity in Athens

Something I wrote and first posted on ContraInfo, now reproduced below, for your delectation...

Saturday December 3^rd, approximately 200 people gathered in Omonia Square to show their solidarity: Against fascism; For the legalisation for all migrants and refugees; For citizenship for all 2^nd generation migrant children. The demo was called by SEK and the Union of Immigrant Workers.

Representatives from different migrant and native communities spoke about the real and daily experiences of racist discrimination and violent persecution in the city. Many spoke in Greek and also in their native languages. Their messages were heard by the gathering crowd, those passing through and those from the neighbourhood of Omonia.

After an hour or so of speeches, the rally evolved and expanded into a moving demonstration of maybe 500 people, who took to the streets together in a march to Syntagma. The march progressed along Stadiou street, around Syntagma square, pausing outside the parliament before returning back to Omonia along Akademias street. The path of the demo was sounded out by a mix of political slogans, chants and the rhythm of African drums, making an atmosphere that was both defiant and celebratory.

One unit of MAT made a symbolic presence at Syntagma but were otherwise visible in their total absence from the rest of the demo; neither to scare, nor control; neither to protect nor attack. No fascists showed their faces.

Speaking to a Senegalese man carrying a placard reading ‘Against fascism! In solidarity with immigrants!’ he said he had come to the march to fight for freedom in a city where he had experienced regular police attacks after living here 9 months without papers.

If the aim of Saturdays demo was to generate a greater feeling of solidarity among communities, we can call the demo a success. But a demo is also a symbolic act; showing those who don’t participate, who disagree who hold ‘the power’ how much power we also have. In this dimension, the demo was not successful. Where were the anarchists on Saturday?

Because it seems on that day, the reasons not to attend were greater than the reasons to be there. And this seems to be the case more often than not. The complexity of the reality; the confusion of mapping political ideology onto the situation, freezes us to act despite our desire to do so. Reasons not to act take on greater importance than the reasons to act. Maintaining the purity of our ideologies seems to become more important than the reality of the situation. On single issues, this dilemma often exists: between acting to bring about a world we want to see, and dealing with a situation that is created by and within dominant power. On the issue of migration, the dilemma of whether to act seems to go something like this: As a movement that is anti-state, anti-capitalism, how can we really show solidarity with migrants who, by their mere status as migrants, are appealing to the state for their rights, and to the capital for their place within that system?

But which is more important? The purity of an ideology, or the reality of the situation? If we walk around the centre of Athens right now, we see people searching through the rubbish for scraps to eat or sell[1]. If we walk around Ermou, se find street sellers who regularly have all their goods stolen by police. If we go to the squares where its still safe for them to hang out and talk to people, we hear stories of no work, no money, no means of escape despite the plans to leave. No hope. And this is just what we can see. We can’t see into the basements, housing 5 people to a room, into the prisons doing the same, into the squats where people take shelter. And say we go beyond the city and head into the mountains around Igoumenitsa. We find people starving and thirsty, because the police refuse to let them enter the city to look through the rubbish for food[2] (and some people have lived that way for years).

In front of all of this, what can we say? That we cannot show solidarity because what they want reinforces the state and capital? Because the way you struggle is ‘not very anarchist’?

Because there is a difference between wants and needs. Ideology cannot feed you. If we wanna face the reality, most people who migrate here and then face these violence’s are 'not very anarchist'. But the oppressions they face here are very real and very different from our own (despite coming from the same source). But, like anarchists, they also want freedom.

So, I see my role - as an anarchist - to fight: against my own oppression, and the oppression of others, under this system. In the first case, I can do it in my way, or in the way of the collectives I chose to participate in. In the second case, I can show solidarity with those who may not feel like they can fight, or who may choose to fight in ways that I might not actually agree with. Here, I try as best I can to be led by those experiencing the oppression first hand. In both cases, as a citizen, my ability to rebel is also a privilege and having a passport is a massive freedom. It gives us the privilege to act upon our political ideologies; to dedicate time to rebel in ways people without papers cannot. I fight against the idea of a passport, I fight in solidarity for those who don’t have one to have the right to a passport. This massive contradiction is also at the heart of the dilemma of acting to bring about a world we want to see, and dealing with a situation that is created by and within dominant power.

So, we take our ideologies and we don’t forget them, but we combine them with being lead by the needs of those facing this oppression. We help people break and keep squats so that people have a place to stay. We coordinate ourselves so that we can accurately document racist violence and police violence against people of colour and we share this information with others. We take to the streets and show solidarity together, when the people who face this oppression feel they can show their power. We create hybrids from the connections we make with people who don’t think the same way as us, and new things become possible.

Saturdays demo was just one event, using one tactic with one rhetoric; just one blast of smoke out of the volcano. The reasons not to be there were many (the political intentions of SEK, whether immigrants really had any actual power/say in the event and whether making a demo was the right strategy).

But if we don’t like what we see, particularly if we feel that migrants are being lead, rather than being heard, then we must make our own things happen. Starting by making connections to those experiencing this oppression first hand, that we witness with our own eyes, on our own streets every day. Daily experiences of racist and structural violence transcend political ideology.

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[1] Extreme poverty clearly does not just affect migrants, but economic inequality, combined with xenophobic racism works together to make migrants far more likely to experience extreme poverty.

[2] We would also need to be capable of time travel, because this summer, after several previous raids, the mountain camp in Igoumenitsa was razed by cops, and the majority of the 400 (needs checking) people living there arrested. Those who remained were told that if they dared to claim asylum, they would also face arrest. Indeed, this happened. Igoumenitsa has now been hailed as a ‘migrant free zone’ by its Mayor.

Talking about the R word at a time of 'crisis'

During this time of ‘crisis’, people say that you cannot talk about rights. There is no ear and no taste for it. To do so is to engage in a luxury that Greece doesn’t have right now. So its kinda bitterly ironic that as the avenues for talking about rights are closing, so those most oppressed by this lack seem most affected by the ‘crisis’, and even further to the outside of this thing we could call Greek society. It becomes clear that at the moment, rights are the reserve of Greeks. That this crisis is a Greek one, Greek business. Any migrants affected by it are merely caught in the crossfire.

So, as Greeks demonstrate, discuss and occupy buildings, all around the city migrants are looking through the rubbish, searching out scrap to sell and scraps to eat[1]. As the country gets poorer and work becomes more scarce, the old adage that migrants are the first and hardest hit is here, in front of the eyes of all in the city. Yet it is essentially ignored. Searching through the rubbish is becoming a very necessary and increasingly competitive way to survive. You can sense the bare existence of thousands of people struggling; and the blackness at the heart of any crisis that can ignore this. This is a humanitarian crisis, not an economic one.

Migrants are mortally affected by the crisis, but have the least possibility to give voice to this violence. Why would you engage in voicing your pain and rage at a political situation you have been excluded from? And between political activity and survival, survival wins out every time. So far the crisis is affecting migrants, but as objects, not as subjects.

At the same time, migrant communities are struggling to respond. They are increasingly called upon to provide basic support: food, medicine and shelter. Yet they appear less and less as hubs for the struggle for the rights of their communities. How and why to be spokespeople when the government pays no attention to anything not framed in economic terms? How and why to represent people who are trying desperately to escape from Greece? All of it seems to have left many groups and networks  at a loss as to what to do, or as to what their role is now, in all of this.

But the presence of thousands of migrants, ignored by the government (but not by the police) also highlights the farce of the state and its claim to represent people and their interests. On the one hand the ‘subjects’ it claims to represent despise it, and on the other, the people it claims are illegitimate are stuck here. The question is not just how to look to the state for rights and recognition, but also, and more importantly, why to look to the state at all?

The fight to be here doesn’t stop just because the state isn’t paying attention. As much as the state won’t pay attention, now it also cant. Just as the people feel themselves backed into a corner, so does the state. Its under attack and maybe getting weaker. Migrants in Greece could never rely on the state, for rights and recognition or support without a fight. Everything that was given was done so begrudgingly. They have had to look to their communities and nurture those structures of support that have absolutely nothing to do with the state. The difference is that now the situation is more dire, and Greek communities must also do the same. For all of the extreme hardship this crisis creates, especially for those most oppressed, it also necessitates finding ways to meet people’s needs in ways outside of the state.

Mosques have been feeding and sheltering thousands of people this last year (its estimated that one mosque alone was feeding 600 people every day during Ramadan). A few weeks ago, a collective started a community health project in one neighbourhood in Athens. Such community based projects, right now, is what needs to happen. There is becoming an ever clearer shared necessity to survive. And nobody is likely to be going anywhere right now. They have the potential to reconnect people together through the mere nature of them being in the same place and sharing the same need at that time. No other qualification is needed (Ok, in the case of the mosque you must be a Muslim so this is a whole other issue of exclusion). Such projects make more apparent that the exclusion of migrants that is so viscous right now is only the language of the state speaking through us, like a poltergeist that we can and must exorcise, if we don’t want the response to be a xenophobic kicking out or locking up.

So when people say that the opportunity for talking about rights has passed, what they actually mean is that the opportunity to talk about rights to the state has passed. But rights haven’t gone away. They aren’t just statements made to and by the state. They are also acts of survival, among and between people. So just as a conversation with the state is off the agenda, the opportunities to make rights still exist. Perhaps there is even a greater chance to act out rights now, when the state is both weak and not paying attention. But perhaps framing all of this in the language of rights is itself a bit to grand and daunting. It’s about finding ways to meet people’s needs in the here and now. And right now those needs are basic and great.

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[1] Thats not to say that this separation is absolute. The Union of Immigrant Workers is one of several groups supporting strikes and present at demos.