kasama-rl
1st July 2011, 15:40
Kasama has just received our first news from this summer’s traveling reporter team.
By Eric Ribellarsi
I arrived twelve hours ago in Athens, and rushed to find the crowds of streetfighters. The police tear gas has already hit around me about twenty times.
Athens’ Syntagma Square has for weeks been the site of the People’s Assemblies, huge rallies that challenge the government’s plans. Tonight this Square, the very heart of Greece, is a battleground where the police and resistors have been fighting face to face, line against line.
And all the while, people are singing and dancing and debating about revolution.
Welcome to the General Strike
The moment I stepped off the plane, any grogginess from two days’ travel disappeared.
I’m ready to join the action and start sending you my reports, but there is one problem. No buses. No way to get out of the airport.
Working people have shut down the entire country with a general strike.
Their workstoppage is a determined rejection of the massive budget cuts and austerity measures being forced onto Greece by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU). These measures come in the midst of a 1-in-6 unemployment rate and a widespread hatred of capitalism.
A general strike like this is not routine, or symbolic, or passive or pre-orchestrated – this is a real fight by one class of people against another class. It is part of a serious power struggle and a real uprising: Which way will Greece go? What will the people’s future be like? Who will decide?
This is a place where an amazingly large number of people are wearing Che Guevara or circle-A on their t-shirts, and know what such symbols mean. In the midst of these strikes and street fights, a new generation of young “indignados” is emerging. They feel they have no future under this system, and have drawn great inspiration from the Arab Spring and the similar events unfolding in Spain.
Since there is no public transportation, the only available option is to take a taxi into Athens. The wait for a cab ended up being nearly three hours. The cost was over 90 U.S. dollars. But meeting my cab driver makes up for both the wait and price gouging – because we are quickly into some serious political conversation:
“The thing about Greece is there had better be a revolution soon. We need to reset everything and get rid of the EU.”
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-athens-peoples-assembly-riot11.png?w=350 (http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-athens-peoples-assembly-riot11.png)
photo credit: Eric Ribellarsi (click for full pic)
He tells me that about the coming evening’s major demonstrations in front of parliament. Jokingly, he says he isn’t going because he is still paying his hospital bills from last week.
Along the ride, the driver explains to me some of the posters and graffiti of the various groups. Hammers and sickles, circle-a’s, and assault rifles line the walls.
The most common posters we see are for KKE (which stands for the Communist Party of Greece, a large Soviet-style party that is hated by many for its open opposition to people’s uprisings and its defense of the government). I ask my driver what he thinks of KKE. He makes a face like I just handed him some excrement.
“KKE hates the poor and unemployed people, and the other parties have no solution for them.”
I ask what he thinks of other communist formations, like the Maoist KOE and the groups in the SYRIZA coalition. He isn’t sure yet. I ask what his politics are.
“Hmm… Revolution.”
Revolution. Real revolution, meaning: overthrowing the government…. that is a popular sentiment here. Many I have talked to so far seem to have just recently come into political life. Their concerns and thinking don’t neatly fit into any ideological demarcations you might be familiar with. But there is among them a cohering, smoldering, broad revolutionary sentiment – which is starting to deserve the name “revolutionary movement.”
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-athens-peoples-assembly1.png?w=350 (http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-athens-peoples-assembly1.png)
photo credit: redpines (click for full pic)
After parting ways with my cab driver, I step into the subway to find the location of the strike rallies. These won’t be just any rallies. Apparently, the rallying point for strikers will be at the site of the People’s Assembly, a mass encampment of radical forces outside parliament. The People’s Assembly has been operating as a sort of parallel regime with radical democratic demands. Those demands include the exit of Greece from the EU and International Monetary Fund and the institutionalization of new people’s democratic forms of government.
In other words: This is now openly about breaking the grip of capitalism’s powerful international banks and creating new forms of peoples power.
Underground Maalox medics
The doors to the subway car open at my stop, and instantly a cloud of tear gas pours into the train. My eyes are burning. I’m coughing. In the subway station I’m surrounded by a crowd thousands of radicals. They’ve occupied the place. The turnstiles have been ripped out, making the subway free. A huge maintenance room has been cleared out and turned into a medical ward for treating people’s injuries in the street fighting up above ground.
for the rest of the piece (http://kasamaproject.org/2011/06/30/eyewitness-to-greece-arriving-into-a-whirlwind/)
By Eric Ribellarsi
I arrived twelve hours ago in Athens, and rushed to find the crowds of streetfighters. The police tear gas has already hit around me about twenty times.
Athens’ Syntagma Square has for weeks been the site of the People’s Assemblies, huge rallies that challenge the government’s plans. Tonight this Square, the very heart of Greece, is a battleground where the police and resistors have been fighting face to face, line against line.
And all the while, people are singing and dancing and debating about revolution.
Welcome to the General Strike
The moment I stepped off the plane, any grogginess from two days’ travel disappeared.
I’m ready to join the action and start sending you my reports, but there is one problem. No buses. No way to get out of the airport.
Working people have shut down the entire country with a general strike.
Their workstoppage is a determined rejection of the massive budget cuts and austerity measures being forced onto Greece by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU). These measures come in the midst of a 1-in-6 unemployment rate and a widespread hatred of capitalism.
A general strike like this is not routine, or symbolic, or passive or pre-orchestrated – this is a real fight by one class of people against another class. It is part of a serious power struggle and a real uprising: Which way will Greece go? What will the people’s future be like? Who will decide?
This is a place where an amazingly large number of people are wearing Che Guevara or circle-A on their t-shirts, and know what such symbols mean. In the midst of these strikes and street fights, a new generation of young “indignados” is emerging. They feel they have no future under this system, and have drawn great inspiration from the Arab Spring and the similar events unfolding in Spain.
Since there is no public transportation, the only available option is to take a taxi into Athens. The wait for a cab ended up being nearly three hours. The cost was over 90 U.S. dollars. But meeting my cab driver makes up for both the wait and price gouging – because we are quickly into some serious political conversation:
“The thing about Greece is there had better be a revolution soon. We need to reset everything and get rid of the EU.”
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-athens-peoples-assembly-riot11.png?w=350 (http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-athens-peoples-assembly-riot11.png)
photo credit: Eric Ribellarsi (click for full pic)
He tells me that about the coming evening’s major demonstrations in front of parliament. Jokingly, he says he isn’t going because he is still paying his hospital bills from last week.
Along the ride, the driver explains to me some of the posters and graffiti of the various groups. Hammers and sickles, circle-a’s, and assault rifles line the walls.
The most common posters we see are for KKE (which stands for the Communist Party of Greece, a large Soviet-style party that is hated by many for its open opposition to people’s uprisings and its defense of the government). I ask my driver what he thinks of KKE. He makes a face like I just handed him some excrement.
“KKE hates the poor and unemployed people, and the other parties have no solution for them.”
I ask what he thinks of other communist formations, like the Maoist KOE and the groups in the SYRIZA coalition. He isn’t sure yet. I ask what his politics are.
“Hmm… Revolution.”
Revolution. Real revolution, meaning: overthrowing the government…. that is a popular sentiment here. Many I have talked to so far seem to have just recently come into political life. Their concerns and thinking don’t neatly fit into any ideological demarcations you might be familiar with. But there is among them a cohering, smoldering, broad revolutionary sentiment – which is starting to deserve the name “revolutionary movement.”
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-athens-peoples-assembly1.png?w=350 (http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-athens-peoples-assembly1.png)
photo credit: redpines (click for full pic)
After parting ways with my cab driver, I step into the subway to find the location of the strike rallies. These won’t be just any rallies. Apparently, the rallying point for strikers will be at the site of the People’s Assembly, a mass encampment of radical forces outside parliament. The People’s Assembly has been operating as a sort of parallel regime with radical democratic demands. Those demands include the exit of Greece from the EU and International Monetary Fund and the institutionalization of new people’s democratic forms of government.
In other words: This is now openly about breaking the grip of capitalism’s powerful international banks and creating new forms of peoples power.
Underground Maalox medics
The doors to the subway car open at my stop, and instantly a cloud of tear gas pours into the train. My eyes are burning. I’m coughing. In the subway station I’m surrounded by a crowd thousands of radicals. They’ve occupied the place. The turnstiles have been ripped out, making the subway free. A huge maintenance room has been cleared out and turned into a medical ward for treating people’s injuries in the street fighting up above ground.
for the rest of the piece (http://kasamaproject.org/2011/06/30/eyewitness-to-greece-arriving-into-a-whirlwind/)