Uprising In Greece Enters Day 11- Riots In Augusta, GA Following Police Shooting of 23 Year Old Man

The uprising in Greece has completed it’s 10th day and moved into the 11th, with student protester’s launching a bold petrol bomb attack against the Athens “Riot Police Headquarters” (the fact that such a building exists maybe tells you some of the background of how we got here).  Elsewhere in the city and in other parts of the country, radio stations and television studios have recently become commonly targeted by protesters, who raid and occupy the buildings and usually get a few minutes of airtime before the signal is cut from remote locations.  Yesterday, one such television station take-over saw protester’s interrupt a broadcast of the Prime Minister addressing Parliament to get their message across State TV’s airwaves: “Stop watching TV and get out into the streets” was their banner.

 

Protesters on-air while briefly occupying a TV station. The main banner reads "Stop watching, get out onto the streets"

A handful of great photo-essays of the riots from the past week and a half is over at InfoShop.org, along with continuing updates and coverage.  Here’s a smatering of them though:

Greek Cities in Flames (Updated)

Many anarchists, particularly those of us in the U.S., often watch in amazement at the actions of our counterparts in Greece.  As the (only slight) exaggeration goes: every time there’s nothing good on TV or a traffic ticket gets issued somewhere, the Greek anarchists fire bomb something.  The country has seen a large up-tick in social and labor struggles of late, adding a level of tension to the major cities like Athens and Thessaloniki that is perhaps un-matched by others in Europe or the industrialized world.  Taboot, there is a long-standing feud that plays out everyday between young radicals and the police.

And so it goes: following the police shooting death of a 16 year old anarchist in Athens on Saturday night Greek cities have been torn apart, compared by many observers to a “war zone” and with no end in sight.  Though there are still more questions than answers, the officers involved have been charged with manslaughter.  The long history of police-anarchist fighting throughout Greece is more than I’m going to get into here, but given the degree with which radicals move around and conduct brazen attacks on police headquarters, government buildings, banks, and nearly any other target, it’ll be interesting to continue to watch what unfolds.  There is rapidly developing a perfect storm of radical youth actions along side social and labor militancy among the working class; if you don’t recall, such was the case in Paris in 1968 when the entire future of Europe was turned leftwards.

From CBS News:

Violence often breaks out during demonstrations in Greece between riot police and anarchists, who often attack what they consider symbols of capitalism, such as banks and up-market shops, as well as diplomatic vehicles and foreign car dealerships. Firebomb attacks are usually carried out late at night and rarely cause injuries. 

When chased by police, the anarchists often take refuge inside university buildings or campuses, where under Greek law police are not allowed to enter. Some believe the anarchist movement has its roots in the resistance to the military dictatorship which ruled Greece from 1967-74.

Well That Took Some Balls….

Barcelona Anti-Capitalist Robs Nearly Half a Million Euros From Banks & Passes It On To The Movement

 

From Infoshop.org:

“Enric Duran, long involved with anti-capitalist struggles in Barcelona, has publically announced his robbery of 492,000 Euros from 39 different banks, and gone into hiding. 
Enric gained the money through fraudulent loans. Most of the money has gone towards funding anti-capitalist social movements and paying for a massive publication, though he kept a small portion to aid his flight. The publication, Crisi (“Crisis”), is a one time newspaper printed in Catalan to the tune of 200,000 copies. The newspaper claims the robberies, and contains numerous articles explaining some roots of the current economic crisis, critiquing banks and the capitalist system as inherently exploitative and involved in much more massive and socially damaging forms of robbery, and discusses some collective alternatives for building a new society. 

The 200,000 copies were distributed on one day, 17th September, throughout Barcelona and Catalunya, and the action received frantic and excited capitalist media coverage. The latter mostly focused on Enric as an individual (some of the press referring to the 32-year-old as a “youth”), and alternatively glamorized his action or cast doubts on its authenticity, while minimizing the collective critique presented in Crisi (which was produced by many more people than Enric) as an attack on “the power of banks.” Nonetheless, the media coverage proved to be exciting news and thousands of people sought out the activists handing out Crisi that morning to get a copy of the paper themselves, having heard about it on TV or the radio.

Duran claims the robbery as a form of civil disobedience, but also links it to the age old anarchist tradition of bank expropriations. For better or for worse, Duran’s action has received mass attention and made him something of an anti-capitalist superhero and mediatic figure. 

The police have not yet received any denunciations from any of the banks involved, and say they are investigating the expropriation to see what crimes Enric can be charged with.

Hundreds of other people were involved in the publication and distribution of Crisi, and numerous anonymous groups received money from the expropriations, and it is unknown whether police may try to sanction any of them.”

Crisi has also been made available online, in Catalan, Spanish, Arabic, Euskera, and English; see it for yourself over here.  I’ve got too much on my plate to read through it all at this point, but it’s certainly worth a look.  If I get around to it, I’ll post something at some point about my reaction to his deeds, as well as what’s written in the paper.

RNC Saint Paul S3 (Updated)

 Welcome back folks.  Again, I’ll do what I can to follow along, but those really interested in up to the minute info should check one of the often linked sites from my RNC S2 or RNC S1 posts bellow.  Various protests are planned for today, and of course jail support is on-going.  More than 300 people have been arrested in St Paul, and hundreds more have been gassed, detained, beaten, kicked by horses, shot with rubber bullets, and whatever else.  The male side of the County Jail (it’s separated by gender) contains an unknown number of guys (estimated around two dozen) who are being held without being charged and who are on 23 hour lockdown.  In response, they are all on hunger strike, demanding to be charged with a crime or released.

In other news, scattered reports through the night have been flying all over that the cops have generally moved away from making more arrests by are now simply detaining, beating, and then releasing people.  Non MSM journalists are also being targeted specifically (because they allow folks like me to spread the word to an otherwise oblivious world: just an hour ago I heard on CNN “As many as a dozen people have been arrested in St Paul protesting the RNC” (!?!<!@Q@OK#@()!!!!!!).  Yes, CNN=Politics, as they say…..

There’s no new post from SubMedia this morning, probably because one of Pepperspray Productions videographers was just released from jail this morning and a second member of their team is still at Ramsey County, being charged with Felony Rioting.  This is the latest from them though, posted yesterday:

And don’t forget to do your part- spread word of what’s happening to as many people as possible, send people links (to this site, or even better, to one of the IMC’s I’ve linked to the past several days), and take a moment to make a few phone calls and demand that police act as humans and that people in their care be afforded their full legal and human rights:

Chris Coleman, St. Paul Mayor: 651.266.8510
or Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651.266.8535
Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0)
Ramsey County Sheriff: 651.487.5149

Here are the names and numbers of St Paul City Council people to call as well:
Melvin Carter – Ward 1 – 651.266.8610
Dan Thune – Ward 2 – 651.266.8620
Pat Harris – Ward 3 – 651.266.8630
Russ Stark – Ward 4 – 651.26.8640
Lee Helgen – Ward 5 – 651.266.8520
Dan Bostrom – Ward 6 – 651.266.8660
Cathy Lantree – Ward 7 – 651.266.8670

2:30 (EST)/ 1:30 (CEN):  Real quick- ICE Agents have been entering jails and removing people “with foreign sounding names”; the jails are segregated based on gender, but trans-gendered folks are being placed where-ever pigs want to (usually with the group that they don’t identify as); also, the legal team/jail solidarity folks are exhausted- if you are reading this and live near St Paul (I know all those visits from Minnesota to this site over the past few days aren’t cops and feds) please go down to the Ramsey County Jail or get in touch with the Cold Snap Legal Collective to help plug-in either answering phones, updating the twitter, or assisting with out-take.

9:00 (EST)/ 8:00 (CEN):  Live News Wires are now reporting that a “loud explosion” has just gone off somewhere near St Peter St & 5th or 6th St; my immediate reaction is this could be the FBI’s way of making their case for the “terrorist” charges (since all their other “evidence” is completely bogus and for the most part already been de-bunked by NLG attorneys).  I’ll try to find out more ASAP.

9:30 (EST)/ 8:30 (CEN):  The explosion was just kids setting off fire-works(!); the ATF and Secret Service are reportedly still on the scene though.

Stupid

Stupid, that’s what I thought after reading that a group of self-described “anarchists” took credit for “vandalizing the restrooms” at a handful of McDonald’s in Victoria, British Columbia.  Their “action” was meant as a statement in protest of the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics, to be held there.  “We cemented shut the pipes, disabling the toilets in the bathroom stalls, requiring replacement at all three locations,” said the anonymous group.

OK, time-out.  I fully admit to engaging in similar behaviors, often more randomly than politically-motivated, when I was younger (not that I’m trying to sound old- I’m not even thirty yet!).  But there is no one- I mean no one- who experienced, read about, or heard about this “action” and had their positive, supportive opinion of the 2010 Olympics (or any other Olympics for that matter) changed towards the negative.  I’m going to suggest that means either one of two things: either the perpetrators of this “action” completely, utterly, and embarrassingly failed at their goal (to sway public support for the Olympic games to the negative by associating it with greedy, destructive, inhumane capitalism); OR, their goal was not at all what they claim it to be.  These kind of pranks, while having their rightful place in the worlds of adolescence as well as good-ol-mischievous fun, are not an explicitly “political” act.  This kind of stuff- which I’m fully willing to admit to have engaged in, often, in the past- really has no effect, as far as I can see, on the body politic and the revolutionary potential of the moment.

Now, there is something to be said of the explicitly rebellious potential of a deteriorating social order, and to the degree that this sort of pranksterism takes place, I think there’s a rightful place there.  But these “anarchists” claimed to be acting in protest of the Olympics, and to their point I see no positives.  They have likely succeeded in only three, insignificant things: they have reinforced in their own minds the superiority of their radicalism, their power and individuality, and their intelligence in comparison to the “unenlightened”.  Also, they have added to the confusion and misinterpretation of what is possible from an “anarchist” society.  Finally, they have given me something to write about on a sleepless Tuesday night.

Those Crazy Anarchists

For those of you who hear the word “anarchist” and still think of punk kids with tattoos on their face, piercings every which where and clothes that were clearly just pulled out of a dumpster, I’m re-directing you to some great videos of Jewish anarchists from a short film called Free Voices of Labor.  It came about in the late 1970’s, when, after almost 90 years of publication the Jewish anarchist paper Freie Arbeiter Stimme was on the verge of collapse.  The filmmaker saw to it to interview and document as many “red diaper babies” (as they were sometimes called- I swear I wouldn’t make that shit up) as were around, in hopes of capturing their rich history, culture, and beliefs.  They speak about the conditions of their radical organizations, their union struggles, Leninism, violence, and solidarity.  These folks are radicals.  Screw the lifestyle “anarchism” that gets by nowadays.  With thanks to CK from the Open City collective in NYC.