Banner: Stop Watching, Get Out Into the Streets

The riots and protests that started almost two weeks ago in Greece are not only persisting, but intensifying.  In addition, there doesn’t seem to be any particular organization or political figure leading the protests – it appears that the resistance is non-hierarchal (thus causing news organizations to term what’s happening as “anarchy”).  Information (at least in the English press) is not very prolific, but of note are the following:

• After breaking into the state TV studio (NET), protestors blocked the broadcast of a speech by the prime minister, unfurled a banner (seen above).  They released a statement:
  

  “Our action is the result of an accumulated pressure which is robbing us of our lives, and not only an emotional explosion based on the murder of Alexis Grigoropulos by the police. We are one more collective, a piece of the revolt which is taking place.

  Against pacification by the mass media, we are carrying out an intervention-interjection in the flow of the program of ERT [state television]. It’s our view that the mass media systematically cultivates fear. Rather than informing, they misinform. They are presenting a multifaceted revolt as a blind release.

  They are explaining the social explosion in penal rather than political terms. They are selectively concealing the actual facts. They are representing a revolt as another spectacle which we should simply follow until the next soap opera begins. The mass media is daily turned into a means of suppressing free and public thought.

  Let’s organize ourselves. No authority can offer solutions to our problems. We need to meet with other human beings. To turn our public places, the streets, the squares, the parks, the schools, into places of unmediated expression. To find ourselves face to face so that we can transform together our thought and actions.

  
  Let’s not be afraid. Let’s turn off our televisions, go out of our houses, continue to lay claim to our life, to take it into our hands.

  We condemn the police violence, immediate release of the arrested demonstrators. For human emancipation and freedom.” (translation by Amee Chew from Dollars and Sense)

• This is not confined to one area – clashes with police are taking place in Athens, Thessaloniki, and other parts of the country.  Banks are being targeted with gas bombs, as well as government property and offices.
• Political figures seem eager to attribute this to a small segment of society:

(Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis): I expected something like this would happen sooner or later. We have a group of people with ultra-leftist ideologies, the active Black Bloc anarchists. There have recently been repeated clashes with them. As of late, their organization has been improving and becoming more flexible, they are using the Internet and text messages. At the same time, we have to weather difficult reforms. That is the deeper reason for the protests, this is why the anarchists have suddenly been joined by disgruntled young people. (Speigel, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,596439,00.html)

• Major sectors of society have been brought to a standstill by the people working in them.  Not only are many universities and high schools occupied and closed, but radio stations are being taken over, air traffic controllers are on strike, and so on.
  

One shared misconception by many media sources is the “spontaneous” nature of the protests.  But after the conviction of 8 police officers for abusing a youth a few years ago, combined with rising discontent about the ordering of Greek society in general, previous roadblocks by farmers, protests by dockworkers, it appears this is a long time coming.  The key question is – what will be shaped from all of this foment?

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