"The biggest expectations lie ahead of us and we find ourselves in the joyous position of seeking ways to drift along with them."
At 8 a.m., March l9th, dozens of comrades occupied a building on the corner of Patision Ave and Skaramaga Street, the former house of Maria Kallas, right between the Athens Polytechnic and the Economics University in Athens. Work inside started immediately. A soundsystem was quickly set up and the subversive "Carmen," sang by Kallas, echoed across Patision Ave. There are many people in the building, the number increasing by the hour. You can come to the beautiful building and gaze at the sea from its rooftop.
The new Patision Commune is here. Strong, sober and uncrushable.
Carrying on...
We are some people who met on the streets and in the occupations during the events of December’s revolt-events that derive from historical, class, social, and dispositional causes and of course, from the assassination of Alexis by the cop Korkoneas. December was a peak moment, a spark in the powder keg, upon which the peaceful social consensus is based, an accelerating factor leading to an unprecedented social explosion. An explosion that shattered the suffocating normality of our lives. The feast of December blew apart individualisation and the sealed-off private sphere in our lives. A joyous, collective, and wild “we" poured out on the streets. It attacked democracy and its guards; abstaining from any demand or petition, it self-organised everyday life within occupied buildings. It articulated the sharpest critique against the monologue of the commodity destroying and looting its temples, redistributing social wealth, halting consumption in the very centre of the city. It disproved the ambitions of the leftist wanna-be intermediaries, letting them stammer sociological crap on the TV. It cancelled out the convulsive muddle of the journalists, making it clear that whoever wanted to understand what was going on only needed to get out of their homes. It abolished, even if temporarily gendered and spectacular roles. Thousands of people acted as one body; during events where what mattered was what was happening, not who was doing it.
And on the other hand: the State, the bosses, and those with a strong interest in everything staying the same. From the moment they managed to regroup they were anything but spectators. They sought a return to normality by using all means at their disposal. From riot police and paramilitary thugs to the sociologists and sensitive artists. From talk of extremists, gangs, saboteurs, Greek-haters, all the way to the peaceful citizens' claim to the right to celebrate their Christmas. From the hypocritical criticism of the adults to their kids, to the arrest of 265 rebels and the incarceration of sixty-five. They did whatever they could do, in other words, for December to turn into a“sad bracket" where in the end the extremists were punished and those who followed were admonished.
Carrying on,
The meaning of December grows increasingly important. Conditions remain polarised and confrontational on both sides. Only within the context of December's upheaval can one understand events like the acid attack against syndicalist K. Kuneva; the attempted massacre, by hand-grenade, at the migrants’ space as well as the proclamations for the restructuring of the legal and military arsenal of the State, the most recent attempt to awaken reactionary social forces.
At the same time, widened social groupings are constantly developing actions, practices, and a voice, using December’s events as a clear starting and reference point. From the railway stations to the centres of bureaucratic syndicalism, from workplaces to the hospital receptions, from parks and neighbourhoods to the spectacle’s temples, self-organised incentives that are diffused, socialised, and enriched emerge as tools, methods, and ways of reshaping reality and attacking the capitalist relations and the democratic condition. These elements constitute a wider process of radicalisation that seems to have time, continuity and qualitative depth.
Carrying on,
To the extent that we constitute a product and a component of these conditions, we decided to reclaim the abandoned building of 61 Patision Avenue and Skaramaga Street, with the aim of grounding our intentions and desires; in order to turn it into a base for the life that we want. To turn it into an open social space where in a self-organised, comradely, and collective way we will comprise a part of the conspiracy for the destruction of this world, Against all forms of hierarchy and authority against all political and corporative intermediation, against all spectacle - given roles and gendered divisions. And in this attempt of ours we are looking for accomplices...
The revolt is already everywhere.
Solidarity to Konstantina Kuneva.
Immediate release of December’s arrestees.
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