Démocratie Réelle Maintenant des Indignés de Nîmes

Cleaning Syntagma

In #globalrevolution, Athens on 15 May 2012 at 11:25

Athens, May 15

Comrades Cansino and Aristocrates

Dear people,

The comfort of the squat is dangerous for the revolutionary spirit. Especially when there is little of it. It’s evening and we’re sitting together in the living room, a dozen marchers. In the small kitchen, Mami is cooking for her hijos de puta. The cloud of spicy smoke is so thick that it’s hard to read the writings on the walls.

It’s the first time that our clan has a roof, sofas, a kitchen, a shower to call our own. At least for the moment. After half a year of camping, people enjoy it. And no-one will deny that we didn’t deserve it.

But on the other hand, it’s 15M’s eve. Tomorrow we celebrate the first anniversary of our movement, and right now there is a handful of our people holding the square of Syntagma.

I have been there the first two nights, and I’ll be damned if I don’t join them now. So I rise up from the soft pillows of the sofa, I cut my way through the cloud of smoke, and I go. “Later, people. I’m going to see what’s cooking on Syntagma.”

It’s a twenty minute walk. When I arrive, I see we occupied the center of the square. People with sleeping backs and covers are gathered in a circle. I squeeze in, I lie down and I listen to humming of the conversation as I start to doze off.

Just when I’m about to get some sleep, police arrive. Two dozen officers in riot gear. Because of the blankets, this is considered camping in a public space, and we have to move.

We are not the only ones. All over Athens, thousands of homeless people are ‘camping’ as well. They are more every day.

We take away blankets and sleeping bags. We leave the cardboard. We lock arms and legs together and we humm. It takes as while, but in the end police retreat. We take our stuff again, and we stay in Syntagma for the third night in a row.

The third night in Syntagma

After the retreat of police

Occupy the tree

In the morning, at six, it’s police again for the wake up call. We have to move, seriously this time. The reason is that the sprayers come to clean the square.
We stay put. Riot police is deployed on two sides, and then they send in the cleaning car to put us pressure.

In a white cloud, the water vapour bounces of the tiles of Syntagma. The machine moves slowly towards the group. People start to evacuate, to try and safe their stuff. It could have ended right there. Indignados simply washed away from Syntagma as yesterday’s dirt.

This morning, 15M.

The sprayers arrive

But it didn’t end that way. The real heroine of the day was comrade Sabina from Belgium. She laid herself down in the streaming water in front of the spraying vehicle. And the firm look in her eyes said she wasn’t going to move.

It was the key moment. Max joins in and others follow. Comrade Cansino takes a bath straight in front of the vehicle and comrade Aristocrates plays the guitar. It’s a fabulous scene. And it’s true what they say. Our movement has an innate taste for drama and beauty.

Comrade Sabina, resisting the water

Comrade Cansino

Then police proceeds to evacuate, hesitatingly. They don’t really know how to handle us. If we were a band of hard core anarchists they would have just beaten us off the square and into the bus in ten minutes time. But these crazy foreign pacifists are different. They have to be handled with gloves. Plastic gloves to be exact.

The first people get dragged away. But just before they get to the police car, others come running in and piling up. Police have to start all over again. First, they surround the pile. Sabina got left out, but today she has revolutionary spirit for ten. She charges the police like a wild horse, demanding access to the circle.

Comrade Sabina charging the police

In the end the arrest took more than two hours. About a dozen people resisted, passionately. I didn’t add to their numbers. I preferred to document the scene and spread the news.

Today is the first anniversary of our movement. Here in Athens the marchers and locals on Syntagma marked it appropriately with a determined act of resistance. Not so much against police, but better, against the water.

15M, agora athens, Greece, indignados, indignés, march to athens

Expanding Darkness

In Athens on 8 May 2012 at 17:10

Shopping cArt

Athens, May 8

Dear people,

Days are slow in our camp on the hill. The heat signs the time. In the afternoon, people are snoozing on the steps of the theater in the shadow.

Most of us will be here at least until the 12th, or else until the 15th, the day the agora officially ends. Some will stay a little longer.

Apart from our camp on the mountain we can dispose of a squat in the center of Exarchia, for showers, electricity, internet. People move up and down, but most of us prefer to camp in the public space. Lots of different people in a squat leads to trouble.

On Syntagma things were pretty quiet. Many cameras but no field battles or demonstrations. A thematic assembly on immigration was organised as a part of the agora. It’s a very weighty matter in Greece, it was well organised, but it didn’t catch a lot of attention from the locals.

It’s early evening. My mom is here for a revolutionary visit, together with a friend of hers. We walk through Exarchia, on the way to the hill. I tell them to be careful.

“There are anarchists on the loose here.”

“They don’t bite, do they?”

“Sometimes.”

Tourists waiting to capture the change of the guard at parliament

On the central square of Exarchia, by pure chance, we encounter the comrades who suspected José Miguel of being an infiltrator. They had abbandoned the squat before the march arrived and they hadn’t shown their faces to anyone. They are about to take the plane and leave. Two other comrades from the march to Brussels who had come here to organise the agora had already left.

They look pale and tired. The city has worn them down, both physically and mentally. They go back. It has been a delusion. I hope Spain will give them new strength.

A day earlier I had encountered Timo the flamboyant Finn on Syntagma. He has been here about as long as our other comrades, but he is not thinking about going away. He adores this place.

Athens is grim. You have to be able to cope with that, Timo explains. ‘The dream of the Greek middle classes is over. And with it, the bourgeois way of life. This attracts a whole different type of people.’

Many of them are concentrated in Exarchia. Artists, squatters and punks from over the world in a maelstrom of drugs, repression, resistance, creation and destruction. And no hope.

It’s fascinating to see. The years of the big boom are definitely over. This is a city in full decline. You don’t even have to walk through the streets to notice it. You can see it from above, from the mountain of Exarchia.

At night, the city fails to shine. It’s no happy blanket of lights, like you would expect a metropolis to be. You can see patches of darkness, especially in the neighbourhoods of the center.

For the moment only the Acropolis is still immune against the expanding darkness. She remains a golden rock, suspended in the air while the city around her loses its exuberance, and lights are dimming, every day.

Acampada teatro

15M, agora athens, Athens, Greece, indignados, indignés, march to athens

Syntagma at Last

In March to Athens on 5 May 2012 at 23:58

March to Athens
Day 180-CVI, from Περιστέρι to Αθήνα, 6 km.

May 5 2012. Foto by comrade Juanito.

Athens, May 5

Dear people,

The tents are packed, the shopping carts are loaded, the sun is high. We have no more time, we have to decide where to go.

The answer was obvious all along. There was only one place where the March to Athens could end. At Syntagma square.

The only real issue was the road that would take us there. We narrowed the options down to two. Either we’d pass by the tourist area of Thisio near the ancient Agora, or by the anarchist quarter of Exarchia.

People’s preferences were clear on this. We would pass by Exarchia. And comrade Mami would take us there. She is in charge of the map.

Getting ready to depart from Peristeri

After Madrid, Paris, Brussels and Rome, the march has reached the outskirts of the European Union. This is Athens.

In all the other capitals the march had entered with defying confidence, but this time we are really far from home, in one of the black holes of the crisis. We heard a lot stories about this city, maybe too many, and you can sense that people are a bit nervous.

We paint our faces, like custom. We prepare to make noise with pots and pans and flutes and drums. And when the time has come, we march for the last time, all together.

Along the way we are escorted by one police car. Before we left, they warned us. “Tonight no free camping.”

Passing Omonoia square

We walk and we try to combine our shopping cart parade through the city with a jam session.

In Exarchia we find a burned out Mini and we turn it into a drum and base. It’s like rocking in an urban jungle.

The wildlife of the zone opens windows and eyes to see who has come to disturb its habitat.

It’s the March to Athens. “Hipipipeeeooo!”

On the little square we halt. People are surprised and dressed up in various shades of black. We mix with them and we drink beer. There’s sudden tension because of the tv-camera that came to follow us. The camera soon disappears, and it only returns when we exit the quarter half an hour later.

The march in Exarchia

It’s the last metres to the square, along the artery where the big demonstrations pass. Mami is ahead with the map. She has been very diplomatic in the preparation of our arrival. To avoid troubles with comrade Mimo she wanted the members of the junta to be the first to enter the square.

Field Marshall Mimo

At the last turn we are welcomed by the heavy cavalry. A batallion of Greek indignados on motorbikes. Their honking and the humming of their motors is the soundtrack of our entry in Syntagma.

Here we are. We drop bags, we park prolleys and we abandon ourselves to collective and individual embraces. This is the final square.

On Syntagma at last

The bikers

Music, immediately. The beat is good. The square is ours and it feels like home. All ages and styles come by, and many of them keep hanging around. The comrades who organised the agora had put up a little exhibition with fotos from the march, and the locals brought food and drink.

Police didn’t interfere in any way. They simply warned us that we can’t put up our tents.

Assembly in Syntagma

A welcoming assembly is celebrated. We exchange courtesies and emotions in Greek and English. It’s a satisfying scene on an impressive stage, and it goes on and on. Darkness falls and then comrade Mimo decides that the time is right. He reclaims his position of supreme commander, he puts up his tent and he takes the square.

Field Marshall Mimo occupying Syntagma.

The generals of the junta gather around him, they toast to victory. Among other marchers, tensions go up. Fear for police is high. If we have to believe what we have heard, they are worse than animals, they are monsters.

Three officers have taken note of the tent. Soon, from the southwest corner, a dozen police start to move up to block the stairs on the side.

Syntagma is like a giant pool. From the upper side it’s easy to control. Even though they are only few, the presence of the officers causes a shock. For many of us, but not for the natives. The Greeks in the square don’t even notice the police. Young boys keep whizzing past the officers on their skateboards with complete disregard.

Mimo lifts his tent. An emergency assembly is called for to decide if we stay, if we move or if we camp.

Emergency assembly

Many people don’t bother to participate in the assembly. They have scattered in small groups on the various lawns to enjoy the evening. They don’t see what all the trouble is about. After the tent was lifted, the officers had taken off their helmets and stepped back.

The assembly tries to find a difficult consensus between resisting here, heroically, or going elsewhere to try and get rest. Most of the Greeks gave us the advice of going. They wouldn’t stay here with us, but in other places there would be many people to support us.
Field marshall Mimo was soon fed up with it, and he planted his tent, again. This time he wouldn’t lift it. He was going to sleep in his headquarters on Syntagma.

The second time it wasn’t even necessary for the cops to arrive in order to create tension. Nothing was moving, but the cry of “they’re coming” had immediate effect. After that, it was Mami herself, together with the other members of the junta, who forced Mimo out of his tent, and folded it up.

The second occupation of the square, comrade Mami and general Ollie plotting a revolt against the field marshall

The supreme commander cried treason and hurled threats around, but Mami set him straight with one of her devastating explosions of fury. She is the smallest of us all, but she’s dangerous.

So the field marshall was betrayed by his own generals. Deeply embittered, he picked up his tent, he put me in charge of the square, and he left for the squat in Exarchia.

I walk around. I check the angles of Syntagma. Everything is okay. Little groups of people are smoking weed on the green. Others are passing by. A never-ending assembly is going on. I take a piece of cardboard, I put it next to the fountain in the center of the square, and I sleep. Like the first days in Puerta del Sol.

When I wake up, people are already preparing to retreat. Thirty odd police officers in riot gear entered the square from the side. With or without tents, they want us out.

It would be too much effort to arrest us all, so they just say we have to take our trolleys and they force us down, out of Syntagma.

We put up some lamentful vocal resistance, and we let ourselves be guided down to Monasteraki where there’s the saturday night crowd drinking in the square.

Visually, it’s quite a scene. The cops leave us in an urban desert of graffiti and bankrupcy, where people try to be hip in the bars that remain hip, even if decadence is fashion. The illuminated Acropolis is hovering over it, and we are in the middle, passing through traffic with our trolleys at half past one in the morning.

We move down to Thisio. In the park next to the ancient agora we put up our tents. The march is over, and it has already transformed into something else. But for now we are too tired to realise it.

15M, Athens, indignados, indignés, march to athens, peristeri

Following the Current

In March to Athens on 4 May 2012 at 23:47

March to Athens
Day 179-CV, from Δάφνι to Περιστέρι, 6 km.

Peristeri, May 4

Dear people,

In Dafni field marshall Mimo had subtracted a pipe from one of the newcomers, and he used it as the symbol of his position as supreme commander. From early on in the morning he walked around with the pipe and with a mug of whisky, making sure that everything was under control, inciting his generals to do a good job on the route.

The members of the junta elaborated various proposals for our entry into the city. As the day advanced, the supreme commander accepted every one of them as the best option and kept requesting more routes and more whisky.

Within the group, people shrugged their shoulders. But finally Mami decided that she had enough of it, and she seized the map. Initially the field marshall nominated Mami as one of his generals and ordered her to advice him on a new route, but she wouldn’t have anything of it.

“Hijos de puta! We have our entry into Athens to prepare, damned! Time to play is over!”

So the junta came to fall, and it was mamicracia again.

Mami

Washing dishes

Mami verbally maltreats anyone for any reason all day long. But if you know how to close your ears, you will have no problems with her. She usually goes ahead to prepare the square, and once we arrive she supervises the food collection and distribution. She is a driving force of the group, and she always complains that people don’t appreciate her.

This time she moderated the assembly, something which she hadn’t done before as far as I can remember. She showed a lot of patience. It surprised me, because I didn’t know she had any. But nevertheless it was obvious that the assembly wasn’t going anywhere.

We are one day away from our arrival in Athens and we don’t know yet where we will camp, how we will enter the city, if we pass by Syntagma, etc. After hours of discussion the only thing we tried to decide on was if we should decide right away, or the day after.

Both options were blocked. There is going to be no decision. We are on a ship and we pretend to decide together where we’ll go, but in practice it’s the current that guides us.

Comrade Max

Comrade José Miguel

Today we march into the city. More people have joined us, from France, from Spain, from Canada. And from Athens, the comrades that took their distance from the attack on José Miguel. Still we aren’t many, just over thirty, but we keep growing.

It takes less than two hours, we walk through the suburb of Chaidari to the central square of Peristeri, guided by one of the locals. Police escort us with one vehicle. When we arrive, they let us take the square without problems.

Walking into town

On the square of Peristeri

Dinner

The square was abbandoned to the hot sun. Only in the early evening it starts to fill with people old and young, and with the participants in the popular assembly of Peristeri. They gave us a warm welcome and they brought us a wide variety of delicious home made food. We improvised a little assembly with them and they shared their knowledge about Athens city center and their advice on where to camp.

It didn’t help us reach a decision however. Until late at night we held an assembly of the march to decide on our primary destination. Syntagma, Exarchia, or Thisio, the site of the ancient agora.

Once again all three options were blocked. Tomorrow we march for the last time, we don’t know where we’re going and we don’t know how to get there. But I’m not worried. This is our way of doing things. And besides, Jesus Christ has joined us for the last leg. Now we only need to have faith, and everything is going to be alright.

Late night assembly in Peristeri

 

 

15M, eleusinian mysteries, eleusis, Greece, indignados, indignés, march to athens

Counterrevolution

In March to Athens on 1 May 2012 at 17:14

March to Athens

Day 176-CII, Ελευσίνα.

'Falling down is permitted. Getting up is a must.'

Eleusis, May 1

Dear people,

The day started off great. With a small group we went to see the ancient town of Eleusis. The site was closed for May day, but one of the locals knew how to get in and gave us a clandestine tour.

The site is on a hill in the center of town. It’s an oasis of tranquility. There are bushes, trees, ancient rocks and buzzing insects. We sit down in the shadow, looking out to fair Salamis while our guide tells us about the Mysteries of Eleusis.

This place was probably the most important center of ancient Greek religion. From all over Greece, and from all over the Mediterranean, the faithful came here to be introduced into the secrets of life and resurrection.

Participation in the Mysteries was open to all people, to kings and slaves. But no-one was allowed to reveal anything of the rites, under penalty of death.

It’s a testimony to the force of the Mysteries that they lasted throughout antiquity, and that during all that time nobody ever said a word. Mysteries they were and Mysteries they will remain.

Entering ancient Eleusis

All we know is that they were based on the story of Demeter and Persephone, and infernal Hades.

Demeter was the godess of the grain. She sowed the land and brought abbundance to man kind all year long. Her daughter Persephone was a happy girl who used to trot around in the meadows picking flowers. While doing so, one day she was abducted by Hades, god of the Underworld.

Her mother looked all over for her daughter, she was so sad that she forgot to sow the land, and so great famine was the result.

She finally found her daughter in the abysses of hell, and pretended to take her back up to the light. But Persephone had eaten the fruits of the Underworld, which meant she forever had to stay with Hades.

The case was brought before the Council of the Gods. To satisfy all it was decided that Persephone would spend half the time of the year in the Underworld, and the rest of the year on earth.

During the time she is down with Hades, Demeter weaps her daughter’s absence, and to express her grief, the land doesn’t bear fruit. Then when Persephone returns to the light, her mother’s joy brings spring, and the circle of life starts again.

Looking out over modern Eleusis

When we descend back into the modern town of Eleusis, we see that our comrades who went to Athens yesterday night have returned. The expression on their faces spell tempest. Especially José Miguel.

It’s a long story. I can only tell it from the perspective of the march, and it goes something like this.

In Delphi two of our liaison comrades came to say that we shouldn’t expect anything from Athens.

That was fair enough. I’m sure it’s difficult to get something off the ground in Athens, so I didn’t blame them.

But even with no agora at all I was convinced that they would give us all possible support for our entry in Athens. It turned out that I was wrong.

We would have expected them to be at Eleusis yesterday and today, to share with us all useful information on the entry into the metropolis and the space where to camp. We shouldn’t even have to ask for that. But we did. I sent a message, strongly urging them to be here with details on various specific matters, especially the existence of a plan B in case our entry turns into a full scale catastrophe.

The answer came soon. It said more or less to fuck off. There is no plan B, there is no plan A. There is no nothing.

They have given up. It seems the only person who keeps on trying to make something out of this damned Agora, with unabiding revolutionary spirit, is comrade Marianne.

So while people are dropping in one by one from all over Europe and Greece to join us, the only ones we’re missing are the people of our own vanguard in Athens, a 30 minute bus ride away.

I was deeply disappointed. But the worst was still to come. This afternoon, José Miguel, Chino, Mami and others who were there told me what happened in Athens yesterday evening.

Maybe it’s the oppressing atmosphere of the big city, maybe it’s the continuous and intimidating police presence, maybe it’s simply contagious paranoia, but as I understand it, our comrades in Athens have gone out of their mind.

A small scale event was organised in the anarchist quarter of Exarchia to support the agora. Upon arrival comrade Chino was welcomed by someone from Spain he didn’t even know. “You have a problem. Because your friend is with the police.” He indicated José Miguel.

The guy was lucky that Chino didn’t chop him up. But they were serious. They asked José Miguel for his identification. I repeat: they asked José Miguel for his identification.

Usually only police themselves ask for ID.

That was the end of it. We are alone. With this gesture, our former vanguard in Athens hasn’t only insulted José Miguel, but also Max, Nicholas, myself, and pretty much the entire march.

On the other hand, maybe they are right. Maybe police did come to José Miguel to say to him: “Listen, why don’t you go walking along with these hippies and try to speak to people about self determination and revolution, try to organise popular assemblies, try to raise moral when people are down, and for heaven’s sake make sure you always leave a clean square and a good image. If you do so, you be will doing us, the police, a great favour.”

Maybe this is the truth, but I have a very hard time to believe it.

Not only José Miguel was suspected of infiltration and manipulation. The names of comrade Leonidas and myself were mentioned as well.

During the march, Leonidas has been our liaison comrade with popular movements of the lands we crossed, most notably the No-Tav rebels in Italy. He speaks good Greek, and he did his best to make use of it by trying to establish a connection with the locals.

As for me, of course I’m an infiltrado. It’s as obvious as can be. I’m spewing information almost every day. All the shit is out in the open. If police want to know anything at all about our march, they read my blog.

There are many more things I didn’t talk about. Maybe I can sell all that info to the Mossad, or the CIA, or MI5, and finally make a profit out of all this marching and writing. But the sad fact of the matter is that no-one would buy…

If we are really convinced that police would infiltrate a band of hippie gipsies or a bunch of frustrated foreigners in a squat in Athens, then we are thinking much too highly of ourselves and our revolutionary importance. And if we let this conviction influence our behaviour, then we are just plain paranoid.

So that’s the welcome we got from our own comrades after six months of marching. A stab in the back.

I sit under a tree on the hilltop of old Eleusis, and I think back to the early days of the revolution in Puerta del Sol. It was all a big cloud of love. Nobody did anything for him- or herself, we all worked together for the common good, and it made everyone incredibly happy. Those first few weeks were spent in a state of collective revolutionary drunkenness.

It was magic, and I went along with it completely. Only in a few rare occasions I had a moment of clarity, and I thought: ‘This can’t last. Every revolution has its life cycle. I wonder when this one will begin to degenerate by itself.’

In our case, I fear it has begun.

Internal assembly in Eleusis