Montreal, QC : Greek consulate disrupted

[Eastside Revolt]

Montreal, QC : Greek consulate disrupted in solidarity with anarchists and immigrants (Canada)

http://325.nostate.net/?p=2438

16 May 2011
“On Monday, May 16th a dozen people created a disruption at the Greek consulate in downtown Montreal located at 1002 Sherbrooke West on the 26th floor. We entered the office chanting slogans of solidarity to anarchists and immigrants facing heavy repression at the hands of the Greek state and organized fascists. Furniture and plants were overturned and hundreds of fliers were scattered. One office employee attempted to detain a comrade but failed. Outside people displayed a banner stating “(A) Flics-Porcs-Assassins, Solidarité contre la reprèssion d’État en Grèce” and handed out fliers.”

Text from the flier:
In Athens, Greece, during a general strike on May 11th against extensive economic restructuring led by the IMF, the repressive forces of the Greek state brutally attacked the strike demo (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2011/05/11/470-vicious-police-attack-against-todays-general-strike-demonstration-in-athens-leaves-at-least-twelve-injured-one-in-very-critical-condition/). Dozens were hospitalized and one man was so severely beaten he fell into a deep coma and is on life support (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2011/05/15/490-update-on-the-health-of-yiannis-k-the-demonstrator-seriously-injured-by-police-at-the-general-strike-demonstration-of-may-11th-in-athens/).
In addition, a Greek man was killed on May 10th in a largely immigrant district, triggering a police-sponsored fascist pogrom that is still taking place in the immigrant neighborhoods. Immigrants had their car windows smashed out while they were driving, many have been beaten on the street, a Pakistani family had their house fire-bombed, and a 21 year old immigrant was murdered by fascists (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2011/05/13/482-21-year-old-bangladeshi-stabbed-to-death-in-athens-almost-certainly-by-fascist-thugs-4-5000-march-in-the-city-against-police-repression-fascist-pogrom-during-the-day-sees-at-least-15-more-migr/). The police have been directly sponsoring and protecting this racist terror and have also cooperatively attacked anarchist social spaces which have been showing direct solidarity to the migrants (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2011/05/17/493-%e2%80%9cfrom-the-social-trench-of-villa-amalias%e2%80%9d-a-statement-by-the-villa-amalias-squat-in-athens-regarding-the-events-of-the-past-days/) by physically confronting this fascist pogrom in the streets (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2011/05/14/485-photos-from-the-fascist-pogrom-and-anarchist-resistance-in-athens-in-the-past-few-days/).

In times of economic crisis, immigrant populations are often used as scapegoats as an outlet for people’s frustrations with austerity measures. Such racist and nationalist ideologies have always served to prevent solidarity between immigrants and those “native-born” exploited who persist in the delusion that they have more in common with the masters who exploit them.

In Canada, with a different intensity but following the same logic, immigrants are swept off the streets, jailed, and deported according to the needs of capitalism and social control. The raids, border walls, and detention centers serve to terrorize all immigrants into accepting their current conditions, just as prisons and police terrorize everyone into accepting the current order.

Here, like elsewhere, resistance movements that pose a threat to the continuation of capitalism find themselves necessarily in conflict with the police. As anarchists, we want to destroy police, prisons and the world of exploitation that creates them, which steals away the capacity to create our lives on our own terms.

Cops, Pigs, Murderers
Solidarity with anarchists & immigrants in Greece.
Let’s destroy the repressive machine wielded against all of us.

[Eastside Revolt]

On the night of May 15, several crews of anarchists in Montreal painted slogans on about three dozen walls throughout the city against the police and state as a modest act of solidarity with anarchists in Greece.

"Flics-Porcs-Assassins (A)", "All Cops Are Bastards", "Police sont Meurtriers, Souvenons de: Fredy Villeneuva, Anas Bennis,Dudley George, Tués par la police", and others.


Covering blank walls with our hate for the police spreads an easy, reproducible form of revolt against police control over the space in which we live through communicative signals of disorder. This can play a small part in shifting the tone in our neighborhoods from a space of work/consumption towards a space of consistent revolutionary anarchist activity; a project which Exarchia provides ample inspiration for.


Against the state and their dogs,
with love and in struggle,
-some anarchists

[Eastside Revolt]

On the evening of Saterday the 14th, the Community Policing Center in East Vancouver, Coast Salish Territory, had gallons of paint thrown across its facade and a hammer taken to its windows. The windows did not break however, for they've been replaced with Plexiglas after being smashed a number of times in attacks from years past. The CPCs are run by volunteers and are an attempt to normalize snitching and police presence in neighborhoods throughout Vancouver.

This act is a greeting to our comrades in Greece, specifically Yannis Kafkas, beaten into a coma by pigs at the General Strike demonstration on May 11th. We are anarchists, our solidarity knows no borders.

[Eastside Revolt]

Revolt burns in us on this day, Monday May 16th, because to live is to rebel. Thus, in the spirit of solidarity with those in struggle in Greece, we blocked a busy intersection in the business district of Seattle during rush hour with a banner that read: "Revolt burns in us. The time is now. From the first sparks, we are with you."

This intersection is outside an office of Goldman Sachs, architects of the financial crisis that set the stage for the IMF takeover of Greece.
Hundreds of leaflets were afloat as the citizens gaped, open mouthed, but our actions are not for them.


This brief halt in the normal movement of the city traffic was a small gesture committed out of our hatred for this world.


The time is now.


From the first sparks of rebellion we conspire because the only reason to live is for a dream of what is not.


We are with you. Not out of pity or duty but because solidarity is our weapon.
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The flier read as follows:


There is a war in the streets of Athens.



The war is with us in Seattle, too.


Last week in Athens, one could hear it in the sound of police truncheons cracking skulls. Around fifteen people would be rushed to the hospital. One

remains in a coma. He may not survive.


He is not the only one on life support. The war in Athens is one in which the future of global capitalism is at stake. Decades of routine exploitation has driven Greek society into a deep crisis, and now the Greek state, conspiring with the International Monetary Fund, expects that the Greek people will have to give up more of their lives to keep the parasitic regime afloat. Those wounded had been marching in the street, demonstrating in conjunction with the general strike of May 11th. As has come to be common, countless workers refused their roles in turning the gears of the economy, reclaiming their lives by choosing sides in the war.


The violence of the police reveals the State's desperation to clear the streets, to return people to work, and to protect the rich. They seek to maintain the normality of everyday life; they mask their war with peace. But social peace itself is only a weapon in the war--a weapon used to disarm us and keep us from finding ourselves and one another in struggle.
For those in Greece resisting domination, the police's attack only reaffirmed the war: sparking riots, daring physical attacks against police forces, and occupations that subverted university campuses into centers for resistance. The doctors at the hospital where the attacked are being treated released a statement condemning the government and expressing solidarity with those who resist.


But other forces leap to take advantage of the emerging battlefield. Since May 11th, fascists gangs have been carrying out orchestrated, violent attacks against immigrants. Where anarchists find solidarity in the struggles of all oppressed, fascists are trying to exploit the explosive situation to build hatred of who they call "foreigners." Fascists stabbed and killed a Bangladeshi man, firebombed a Pakistani family's home, and have attacked many other immigrants. They are also collaborating with the police to carry out attacks against anarchist social spaces. Anarchists and anti-fascists have responded by actively combating the fascists in the streets, even as the police defend them.


The particulars of the battles raging in Athens may seem so distant--separated from our realities in the Northwest by more than half the globe. On any given day, the streets of Seattle do not resemble a war zone. But the facade of social peace is a thin one. Hidden plainly in the towers of downtown, financial institutions like Goldman Sachs--chief architects of Greece's current debt crisis--orchestrate global misery with pen strokes and mouse clicks. Only months ago, hundreds of people flooded the streets of Seattle over and over to oppose the murdering Seattle police, who continue to kill with impunity. And also in February, fascists in Spokane attempted to bomb a public celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr Day.
Capitalism and domination are a tapeworm insidiously wound throughout every piece of our environment, and even ourselves. Fascism may at times appear distinct from the clean functioning of the healthy body of this parasite, but in reality it is only its rotten underbelly. Even as its putrescence affronts the healthy tissue of the state, which responds with its own antibodies, they reinforce one another in their mutual attacks against all who desire real freedom. It may feel impossible to find and dig out the root or the tip of the worm, but we find all around us opportunities to hack at its body. We take action to express solidarity with our friends and comrades in the struggle in Athens. But we act also for ourselves, because we recognize that their war is also ours.


Against the lie of social peace.



For social war!
http://pugetsoundanarchists.org/node/613