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Title: A glimpse into the elsewhere Language: en Topics: Greece Source: https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/a-glimpse-into-the-elsewhere
From the moment that 14 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos was gunned down by
a patrolling policeman on December 6 2008, the morphology of Greeceâs
capital city and many others, both on the mainland and in many of the
islands, changed. The force of the peopleâs anger against the State and
its paid killers expressed itself with limpid clarity: Athens, a
European metropolis, had no cop station left untouched, no bank left
functioning. Huge stores, banks and public buildings were gutted by fire
and hundreds of luxury cars and car showrooms went up in flames, as the
streets were blocked off with flaming barricades and hundreds of police
in riot gear were forced to run away from the rebels.
It is impossible to render what happened over there in words, because
what took place was a social rebellion, where the outward face of
capitalist society came under assault by massive numbers of disparate
people, acting as one.
Anarchists who had been in the thick of the rebellion around the
Polytechnic in Athens were visibly overwhelmed. Stunned by the events,
their eyes shining with passion and wonder, they were the first to admit
that they had lived moments that they had never imagined even in their
wildest dreams, and which had completely surpassed them.
Many words have been written about these days, beautiful words,
reproduced and diffused in many languages. But it seemed that something
was missing...
This candid account (transcribed as spoken) by an anarchist comrade who
suddenly found himself acting in a completely different terrain to that
with which he was familiar, and the fears and questions that this
awakened in him, is a valuable testimony that opens up many questions
for all anarchists. J.W.
---
The evening of December 6 2008 I was at home preparing for one of my
usual Saturday nights. Then a friend called me on the phone telling me
that something very bad had happened, cops in Exarchia had killed
somebody. I made some phone calls, some of my friends didnât know and
some had already heard. Like them, we immediately went to the
Polytechnic school. It took a little time before clashes began around
it. After some hours some of my comrades and I decided to carry out an
attack on a police station in the centre of Athens. It was important for
us to do this at that time. We made an appointment in a busy area of
Athens where we could be hidden inside the crowd after the attack. As a
friend and I were walking towards the place of the appointment we
encountered a spontaneous demo of a few hundred leftist people who are
not normally seen clashing with the police, ready to attack. The head of
the demo stopped to ask us what was going on at the Polytechnic because
they wanted to go there. We told them that it might be difficult as
there were some police units around, then left, each in their own
direction. I was struck by the look in their eyes, something very
strange for them, because I know them well. It was anger and a readiness
to clash with the police, not just anger but the urgency to clash with
the police. These guys are people that usually fight with the anarchists
on the issue of clashing or not clashing with the police, always in
favour of the latter. The look on their faces was in contradiction with
their whole appearance as Greek leftist students with their carefully
trimmed beards and spectacles.
We went to the appointment. We were about 100 people, which is not the
usual number for a group that wants to attack a police station. It would
normally be 12 to 20. We attacked the police station with molotovs and
stones. We didnât do all that much real damage as it was a spontaneous
action and not well planned. We continued by smashing and burning luxury
shops and chain stores before returning to the crowded area we started
off from.
I went back to the Polytechnic school where clashes with police were
continuing and someone called me from the law school telling me that
there were also clashes there. The leftists we had met before had
obviously ended up there. I remember that when I was on the road from to
the Polytechnic, despite the fact that there were clashes around, we
didnât feel the sense of fear and anxiety one normally has in such
situations.
At the school of law there were also clashes with the police but I think
that there was a different sense. The attacks on the police were maybe
more amateur than at the Polytechnic but definitively this was more a
mass situation. Even the insults exchanged with the police were
different, more sophisticated.
A few hours later I returned to the Polytechnic and tried to get some
sleep as it was nearly morning. I didnât manage to sleep of course and I
think that it was at that moment that I began to realise what had
actually happened with this young comrade who had been shot. At that
moment the human tragedy that had occurred suddenly hit me and I cried.
Eventually I managed to doze off for a couple of hours and when I woke
up, because of all these thoughts, I was even angrier than before.
Sundayâs demo saw several thousand people and we began to move up
Alexandras Avenue towards the police headquarters of Athens. Very soon
clashes began and as always many shops and banks were set on fire.
The clashes with the police that day were very hard, we exchanged an
unimaginable hail of stones with the police and they discharged huge
amounts of teargas upon us. The anger and lack of sleep had left me
totally out of control. I was wounded by a stone and ended up in
hospital for some stitches. The friend who had come with me to the
hospital phoned me later telling me that there were a lot of clashes
around Athens in some normal areas as well as around the school of
economics and other schools.
Next day, Monday, I didnât go to work. A friend called me on the phone
to tell me that some school pupils had attacked the police headquarters
of Pireus, the port of Athens. Later I heard that there had been another
attack in Pireus against a police station and from that moment I began
to receive information about many attacks on police stations in very
ordinary parts of Athens and all over Greece. Even then I had not
realised what was going on. I met my father some time later and he had
seen the attack on the police headquarters of Pireus while at work. He
told me laughing that the pupils had overturned the police cars and
smashed the facade of the building and there were ordinary people around
clapping their hands.
Like some of my friends, I was considering not going on the afternoon
demo, thinking that nothing much would happen there. I decided to go at
the last moment and arrived just a few minutes before it began. When I
came out of the metro station I saw a huge crowd, thousands of people,
tens of thousands, some say between 30 and 40 thousand. There was
already a burning barricade in a side street, and some young people were
clashing with a police unit. As soon as the demo beganâbut rather than a
demo, it was a crowd, a great mass of angry peopleâsome people began to
smash and loot the shops, any shops. At first some people tried to stop
them but very soon the situation was chaotic with buildings, shops,
everything set on fire, even a big hotel which was something that made
me feel very scared, thinking there would be people trapped inside.
Despite the fact that Iâm used to violent events, and not as an
observer, all that was happening all of a sudden was not quite
compatible with my anarchist mentality. The people around me were
totally unknown, again something that was unusual for me.
When I reached Omonia Square right in the centre of Athens, many people
were trying to set fire to a very central prestigious building of the
national bank of Greece where a woman was trapped inside. Other people
were moving towards Omonia police station to attack it, everything
burning and being looted all around us. I met two women anarchist
comrades that I donât know very well. But we were the only people who
knew each other there and they asked me what I suggested doing because,
as they told me, they were not sure if they really wanted to be there. I
told them that I couldnât answer because I felt the same way.
As the chaos continued a police unit attacked the crowd very
aggressively from one side, discharging a lot of teargas, while leftwing
people were desperately trying to retain a sense of demo amidst this
chaos. At that moment the crowd was trapped in a thick cloud of gas, the
situation was very dangerous. Thankfully the crowd managed to spread out
and disperse and I, on reaching Syntagma square, found other masses of
people going in different directions in crowds. Then some demonstrators
set fire to the huge Christmas tree in the big square in front of the
Greek parliament. From this moment, because of this incident, the slogan
âChristmas has been cancelled this yearâ was born and the image of the
burning tree has gone around the world giving joy to many. But at that
precise moment I felt the same fear that I felt when I saw huge
buildings burning, some with people inside them. The fear wasnât for my
personal security but, as I see myself as part of the Greek anarchist
movement, I was afraid that after all this it might be impossible to be
an anarchist in Greece as I was before, that the movement couldnât bear
the weight of what might happen.
In Syntagma square some police units tried to regain control of the
situation, attacking the mass and trying to arrest people. I saw a young
girl being arrested, I ran towards the police unit not knowing exactly
what I wanted to do, and then I realised that I was almost rounded up by
another police unit running towards me. I saw a few other people behind
me doing the same thing. Thankfully I managed to run through the police
unit as did the others behind me, except perhaps one that I couldnât do
anything about.
Later I found a friend of mine and we decided to go towards the School
of Law which was close to us and we knew that there were some riots
around it. The burning and smashing hadnât stopped around the city
centre. We went to the School of Law where opposite a large historic
building was up in flames. Later on we learned was the library of the
School of Law. The size of the fire was so great that it was terrifying.
It was not the only building in Athens in this situation. Going up on to
the roof of the School of Law we saw the smoke of all the buildings that
were burning in the centre of Athens. The fires had created a great
glow, like a livid sunset over the city. We suddenly heard a very loud
noise coming from the burning building opposite â maybe a part of its
roof had collapsed.
A friend called me from the Polytechnic. Heâs a comrade who is always
very eager to be involved in riots and burning. He told me that there
were so many riots around the Polytechnic that he was tired, and that I
could not imagine what was going on there. I went later to the
Polytechnic, the riots had calmed down but everything around had been
burned and looted. A five-storey building near the school had been burnt
to the ground.
I found a very good friend and comrade at the side entrance to the
Polytechnic. I noticed that he was completely alone, sitting staring
into space. He told me that he was very disappointed that he had lost
the demo; I replied that I was not so sure that he would really have
liked to have been there. He asked me why and I told him that they had
burnt and destroyed things like the Law School library and that the
situation was totally out of control. He told me that the same happened
there and that he and some of his comrades had tried to prevent people
from looting shops, which they saw as out of the context of the reason
for the anger, the murder of a young boy in Exarchia.
Then I saw and heard something very strong that was to repeat itself
constantly over the days to come: young people gathered behind a
barricade of burnt cars screaming slogans at the police, using the
burnt-out cars as drums. I saw an amazing image of a guy standing on top
of a car in front of a big fire, arms and legs open, his silhouette
etched by the flames.
From that day on the people who came to the Polytechnic were not exactly
anarchists but young and very young people, a lot of them immigrants,
some junkies and also some âemoâ kids maybe from the better-off areas of
Athens, a mixture that had also been present in the demo earlier.
Over recent years the road outside the Polytechnic has been the scene of
many street battles with the riot police. For the first two days
following Alexiâs murder those fighting were still mainly anarchists,
possibly in the widest sense, but still anarchists or at least people of
the antagonist movement. Many, many comrades who until these days had
never lifted a stone were involved in fighting the police. Leftists
whose negative attitude towards riots or clashes with the police had
until then monopolised our encounters with them were in many cases
involved, and sometimes passionately, in the clashes.
On Monday, the third day, this changed. A mixture of young people but
also many other people impossible to categorise became the driving
force. Many anarchists were embarrassed by this situation. The violence
that these people were releasing surpassed the limits of the mainstream
anarchist mentality. These limits were faithfully adhered to by the
school of economics occupation close by, predominantly occupied by
anarchists without the presence of the ârabbleâ. In fact, the
Polytechnic came to be referred to as âBagdadâ, whereas the ASOEE
(school of Economics) was âSwitzerlandâ.
The ASOEE became the centre of many discussions and also actions which
also gave ideas for the publishing of a lot of stuff. In my opinion, all
these discussions, actions and published stuff remained within the
limits of the typical anarchist mentality â maybe in a wider and
improved sense, but always inside these limits, determined by the
character of the crowd that was gathering in the ASOEE, which was an
anarchist, or in the wider sense a movement-involved crowd at the time
when in the Polytechnic school something different and new was
happening.
The Polytechnic school was a place where a mass of many different people
gathered: very young people, school students, some âemoâ style maybe
from wealthier families, simultaneously with first and second generation
immigrants, many of whom didnât speak Greek, many people who couldnât be
specifically catgorised, and inside this confusion of hundreds,
sometimes thousands, of people there was a minority of anarchists
desperately trying to retain some political character in the occupation.
In ASOEE there were some stories going around about dealings â drugs â
or comrades who were violently trying to prevent looting in the
surrounding area. These stories may or may not have been true, or were
exaggerated, but they are characteristic of the image that people in
ASOEE had of the Polytechnic school.
It has been common for riots or violent clashes to take place outside
the Polytechnic from 1973 onwards, since the insurrection on Nov 17. If
something very important happens, itâs to be expected that everybody
will go there, but itâs not so common to go to ASOEE. Maybe the fact
that so many anarchists went to ASOEE indicates the unwillingness of the
main body of the Greek anarchist movement to be involved with this
ârabbleâ. In my opinion, this also shows our inability to surpass our
limits and to be able to adjust to an unknown and unpredictable
situation.
This situation in the occupied schools lasted from the 6^(th) of
December until the Christmas holidays. In a way, Christmas had come to
be seen as a kind of closure, not only due to some clear fall in the
level of the situation, but also as a kind of expectation from the main
body of anarchists, particularly in the ASOEE.
What happened to all those people that we the anarchists encountered all
these days of December? Some of the Greek students were incorporated
into the main body of the anarchists, but all the others, immigrants,
âscumâ, or just masses of uncategorised people simply vanished into
urban anonymity. We didnât see them, or maybe we didnât want to see
them, again.
For many anarchists December was a success in quantitative terms.
For a few, it opened up a glimpse into the elsewhere.
Maybe these days revealed our incapacity to encounter new possibilities.