ENGLISH - News 22/12/08

Below we are publishing the statement that was distributed during the solidarity protest in Ljubljana, 20.12.2008.

Report from the action is here.
Photos from the action are here and here.

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GREECE TODAY – WHOLE EUROPE TOMORROW


On Saturday 6th December 2008 the police murdered 16 years old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. An uprising throughout Greece followed and two weeks after the crime was committed it has not ended. Once again a young life was killed by the state. The bullet that was fired did not only hit a heart of a sixteen years old comrade, it dispersed the fog curtain of democracy and we are at last compelled to face with sober senses, our real conditions of life. We live in a society that puts our lives at the mercy of forces that are beyond our control. At the heart of this society lies the production of alienation and simultaneous organization of images of success and satisfaction.

The bullet has triggered an uprising in cities across Greece and solidarity actions from Copenhage and London to Madrid and Ljubljana. In actions of comrades in cities of Europe we recognize ourselves. We are united thorugh our actions. Young people that are fighting with police for the control of their streets know that there is no future for them in this society, they know that slow death in working places, in hunting grounds of capital, is what is in store for them. Murder that was committed by the greek state is the truth of this society in an extremely concentrated form. Fire that consumes banks and police stations, shopping centers and insurance companies fuels our imagination and desire. “For in the destroyed and pillaged streets of our cities of light we see not only the obvious results of our rage, but the possibility of starting to live.”

Those who pulled the trigger are now commanding that we have to mourn rationally, with dignity and responsibility. But what is more dignified than total rejection of imposed silence? What is more responsible than recognition that a death of a comrade is a particular moment of general suppression? What is more rational than taking control of the street and expelling the servants of existing order – the police and it’s other lackays?

We have our eyes on the streets of Greece, we are listening carefully what comrades are communicating, we learn from them, as we learn from compañeros of Latin America, from the Balkans and Europe. Their radical rejection of state, capital and police is a rejection of world without future. We also want to live without constraints of everyday subjection; without humiliating cathedrals of stupidity and submission into which our universities were transformed; without totalitarian dictate of lies of individual realization that are being repeated hundred times a day; beyond virtual worlds into which we retreat in search of love and community, beyond modernized illiteracy and spectacular superstitions, that only make the power of masters bigger. We also want to become authors of our own history.

Greek uprising does not give any guarantees and does not lead anywhere just by itself. Yet it does once more remind to the power of negation, to the power of radical rejection. Greek youth knows that there is no place for police on their streets, it knows that every crime needs to be punished and it knows also that the trivial phrases about untouchability of private property have not use value for it. The only untouchability that greek insurgents are interested in is the untouchability of murderers and only in order to smash it.

In this very moment it is our imagination and theory, that is being realized on the streets, behind computers and at the assemblies, that is warding off the violence of the state. Today all over Greece 800 schools and faculties are occupied. Discussions in which people finally recognize each other as comrades last through the nights. In concreteness of the struggle a new theory is emerging. The future will be what we make it to be. In Greece as much as in our own neighbourhoods.

Instead of lights of consumerism greek cities are today being enlightened by the fire of history. An era of disturbances has begun. Finally a holiday worth celebrating.


RELEASE ALL DETAINED – NO PROSECUTION!
DON’T WATCH THE NEWS – CONSCIOUSNESS IS BORN ON THE STREET!
SOLIDARITY MUST BECOME PRACTICE!


Anarchist Initiative
Ljubljana, 20.12.2008