Statement from those on hunger strike in Calais - 11th June 2014

Taken from Calais Migrant Solidarity 

"As agreed, the exiles occupying the place of food distribution took breakfast together this morning. They formed two groups, those who will continue to eat and those who are fasting. Those fasting had slightly bigger portions. They sat in the middle of the courtyard. Yesterday they had a list of 53 people willing to get involved. By late morning they were a large thirty or so, and were waiting for those to join them who have tried to cross that night – which they will no longer be able to do during the fast. We should know more in the afternoon how many are on hunger strike.

Their spokesperson can be reached at 07 53 93 21 53 (he speaks English).

Here is the text of the call out on which they agreed:

'FROM THE MIGRANTS OF CALAIS TO THE FRENCH AND BRITISH AUTHORITIES

After the destruction of our camps and our occupation of the food distribution place, French authorities came two times to meet us. They announced us they will come again to meet us Thursday June 3. Nobody came and we are without any news from them.

Today Wednesday June 11, a part us, with the support of all of us, begins a hunger strike. We ask the French and British authorities to to resume the interrupted dialogue and meet with us without delay.

We remind them our demands :
- Houses in Calais for all the migrants who wish to go to England and the asylum seekers forced to live in the street;
- Houses with proper hygienic conditions : toilets, showers, garbage collection;
- Houses where we can come and go at any time to be able to keep trying to cross to England;
- Houses safe from the police controls and mistreatments and from evictions;
- To have access to three meals a day;
- To open negotiations between France and the United Kingdom in order that people can access the British territory.'”

A Different Calais Narrative

This article is not about the crisis of the sans papiers in Calais. Its not about the regular evictions and camp destructions; the deaths, the losses and the urgent needs. It's not about the multitude of repeating ways that people are denied dignity in that dead-end gateway. It's not about how or why this makes Calais a constant and desperate crisis-scape.

Its about another shade of the story we tell about the struggle of the sans papiers and those who show solidarity with them. It's a reflection on an experience I had in Calais.

Lorries are banned from driving on roads in France on a Sunday. Because of this, Saturday night is a time when people who are trying to cross from Calais to the UK can rest. On this particular Saturday night some Calais Migrant Solidarity folks decided to hold a party, and a handful of us turned up to food distribution (the place where charities give out a nightly meal) with a sound system. It was raining hard. We had a level of enthusiasm among us that was more suitable to having some cocoa and an early night. But the rain cleared and things started to change.

Our crew joined a small group of people huddled round a fire on the edge of a camp of tents where around 150 people lived (it's gone now. Its got razed to the ground a couple of weeks ago). The tinny music that whispered out of our sound system was easy to miss, but people started to gather around the fire anyway. Instruments appeared from peoples' tents. People from different musical traditions, singing in different languages, took it in turns to perform to the growing crowd. There was music from Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria... People danced and performed to each other. Bottles of wine were passed around. In the camp, among its rubbish and puddles and dubious smells, in the mist and cold and silence of the port, there was so much laughter. We partied into the night and it was so good!

To have a party like this in a place like Calais is something of a minor miracle. It is joyful and creative and essentially normal, yet it is this normality that also makes an event such as this transformative. It points to the possibility of another world and another way of being. There are two things about the party that illustrate this.

The first thing is how the party represented a dynamic based on equality. Us 'CMS crew' came with a sound system and the desire to make something happen. But the party wasn't of our making. Something emerged that was beyond us; an essential critical mass of energy created by all of us who gathered there. It was owned by no-one, created by everyone. The party re-affirmed dignity in this communal creativity and at that moment everybody was equal. For me, this equality is one of the things that gave this event such power. It's the cornerstone of a radical solidarity, and is what distinguishes it from say, aid work, because it seeks to change the balance of power between people that is often fixed through differences in race, class, nationality and so on. This isn't the only example in Calais. When we have made and maintained social centres together, and lived together in squats or camps, again we have created moments of equality across our differences. The squat Victor Hugo is a beautiful example of this.

The second thing is the wider effect created by a moment of being together in equality. What is created is fundamentally different from and a challenge to the logic of hierarchy that is foundational to the dominant structures that make up our social world (here I am talking about 'structures' such as capitalism, racism, patriarchy and statism that make certain kinds of dominating behaviour seem 'normal'). The party represented an alternative (if temporary) reality now that doesn't fit within a social reality based on hierarchy and domination. In not fitting – in other words in being 'uncodified' - dominant social reality cannot stamp it out. The police for example, are largely impotent to do anything about these parties. These moments of 'everyday subversive activity' are what the authorities cannot stand, because they point to a persistent dignity without permission, and a wilful disregard for any 'right to exist' that the authorities seem to claim as their own.

I think this party forms part of a different narrative of the struggle of the sans papiers, one that is intimately connected to, yet very different from the one of chaos. It is a narrative of joy, dignity and equality. This other narrative is important because it signals a different way of being that rejects hierarchy and domination. This narrative is often left unsaid I think, because amongst all the chaos, violence and sadness of Calais it can seem crass to focus on moments of joy. Yet I think there is subversive power in this joyful narrative, and I also have the feeling that should we pay more attention to the joy, dignity and equality we are sometimes a part of in Calais, what we achieve together may be much more powerful, as well as more joyful.

The UK Immigration Act 2014 - Legislating for a loss of dignity

A couple of weeks ago (May 14thm to be precise) the new UK Immigration Bill passed into law. The Immigration Act 2014 brings in an array of new measures that, in the words of Theresa May, focus on 'making it harder for people who are here illegally to stay here". The act – along with this statement - could have come straight out of a UKIP election manifesto (if they had one).

The range of measures is vast and comprehensive. They include extensions in the use of force in immigration matters (including deportation), new healthcare charges for people without permanent residency, and greater restrictions on bail for those in immigration detention. They extend powers to enter and search homes and workplaces, and add new powers to search people. This means that in a range of ordinary and every day encounters, from renting a property to opening a bank account or attending a place of learning or worship, people will be required to identify and account for themselves. Opportunities to appeal immigration decisions that label people as illegal in the first place have been further limited through cutbacks in legal aid. Presumably this measure has been taken instead of moves at improving immigration decisions (and it is worth mentioning that last year 32% of deportation decisions and 49% of entry clearance applications were successfully appealed)?

The trend of British Governments' demonising immigrants and using this image as justification to further marginalise, oppress and criminalise them is sadly nothing new, but this act sets a new watermark. In removing access to fundamental public services, the effects are likely to include poorer health, more homelessness, more destitution, and more occurrences of mental illness for the people these measures are aimed at. Removing access to healthcare does not remove people's need for healthcare or remove those people who need it. Making it illegal to rent out homes does not remove peoples' need for housing or remove those who need to be housed. Denying access to places of learning or worship does not remove those people who need to learn or pray. It just marginalises, demoralises and scares people. It weakens their support networks and makes them more vulnerable. They will create greater insecurity, isolation and social exclusion. But that's the point. 'Punish them them till they leave' is the subtext. These measures effectively legislate for a loss of dignity.

The issue as to why we allow for people to be treated like this is justified on the grounds that they are here illegally. Yet why is it that certain people are labelled as illegal in the first place? Illegality doesn't convey some kind of passive 'state of nature' but is a label created by the state. And when Theresa May talks about "making it harder for people who are here illegally to stay here" she brushes over a fundamental flaw in the logic of the state's approach to immigration.

In recent years the grounds on which a person from outside the EEA can qualify to live in the UK have shrunk. At the same time the powers to enforce the exclusion and criminalisation of anyone classified as 'illegal' have grown. The need to 'get tougher' becomes self-fulfilling: we need more measures to catch 'illegal people', because the nets of who it is we define as illegal are being cast wider and wider. This backward logic effectively leads to the continuous expansion of who it is that can be considered illegal and hence legitimately excluded. And this logic of exclusion does not only apply to immigrants. From the stripping back of the NHS that excludes people from accessing healthcare to cuts in welfare that excludes people from social security, we see this trend in other areas of all our lives. I don't want to live in a country where people are denied the right to live in dignity.

When this attack has presented itself in the past, people have resisted. Some of the most inspiring forms of resistance have been those where people have supported those under attack in their efforts to continue to carry out everyday normal activities. For example, since the mid 2000's groups have formed to resist the dawn raids carried out by the (then) UK Border Agency by being present with potential deportees when such raids have taken place. Around the same time, when the government started issuing vouchers rather than cash to asylum seekers (that could only be used in certain shops), some people started schemes whereby people could exchange their vouchers for cash. In response to this new act, we also need to start thinking about Like these acts of solidarity, we need to start showing our resistance to this new act, and to the tide of hatred that it represents.

 This community is grieving

This story was originally posted at calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com  

A fourth person was killed on Friday night whilst in a truck trying to cross to England.



Three people were in the truck and realised it was going in the wrong direction, so they made noise for the truck to stop. It braked suddenly and a person from Ethiopia hit his head. Paramedics were called but he was dead on arrival.
People from different camps gathered for a ceremony before the Sunday football.

It is four people now killed in one week.

This community is grieving.

http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/this-community-is-grieving/

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.