The political alphabet of indignation
Democracy under construction
Asyneheia publications 2011, Athens, Language: Greek

Book Review: Matthaios Tsimitakis

There are some events in History that mark the imagination of a historical period, form its vocabulary, create new political values and produce multiple incidents in almost all levels of society, since then on. There’s no doubt that one of these moments in Greek modern history, was the student’s uprising against the dictatorship in the Polytechnic school of Athens, in November 1973. The three days occupation of the Polytechnic school defined the culture of the “Movement” both in the symbolic and the political levels for the whole era of the Metapolitefsis (i.e. the thirty years of political stability that followed the dictatorship). The Metapolitefsis has been declared past now; collapsed in a cloud of social misery, frustration but also intense political struggle due to the political and economic crisis the country is going through; In this context the experience of the movement of the Greek indignados that captured the scene during the summer of 2011, “its structures and institutions, constitute the new common reference for the hundreds of thousands of people that met in the squares all over the country and continue to resist ever since (both in and out of the squares)” striving to form a new political alphabet of resistance.
So, Christos Giovanopoulos and Dimitris Mitropoulos, the two authors of the first editorial attempt to understand what is changing in the Greek movement, titled: “Democracy under construction”, inform us in the introduction of their book.
A “political alphabet” that is being collectively articulated through the rearrangements of previous experiences but most importantly through the emergence of novel political practices in public spaces all over the country. “An open ended and unpredictable procedure, that seems to be moving sometimes with dizzying speed and then extremely slow; through surprises and mistakes – just like a child that is learning how to speak”.
This extremely useful and timely collection of articles is attempting to create a record of the crucial events and conclusions on the one hand and “keep the conversation open” on the other “in order to help the revolutionary procedures that the movement of the indignants and the squares posed”.
The book consists of three parts: the first is an empirical record of various aspects of the movement, coming from writers who participated in its procedures and in various cities. The second part is approaching the issue of the formation of modern political and social movements from a theoretical perspective. And the third part constructs a chronicle out of a collection of documents, but also multimedia in the supplementary DVD at the end of the book, some of which are published in this volume for the first time.

Power to the multitude

Political struggle is not alien to the Greek Society where the Left along with the trade unions have kept the spirit of resistance alive through the ‘90’s and ‘00’s of the globalized neoliberal optimism. But the Greek indignants brought to the forefront an alternative paradigm of organized action. Its innovation is not based on its principles but most importantly on its massive scale, its persistence in time, its internal dynamics and constrains. 
“The heterogeneity of the people involved in the movement, constitutes the most substantial evidence that a series of different political cultures and social practices composed what reflected and embodied to be the experience of Syntagma square and indignation” write the two authors.
“All the squares are unified under one word: Indignants. Everybody identifies themselves in the first two resolutions of the public assemblies of Syntagma square” writes Marina Mpresta a member of resistance to the mid-term bill passed through the parliament in the summer. “A few lines on the page titled ‘who we are’, are enough to define the identity of the indignants and fit them all” no matter how different they might seem. Later in the book, Birkbeck’s director of the Institute for Humanities, Costas Douzinas explains: “Something magical occurs whenever different people meet and start acting collectively. They de- and re- subjectivize. And from individuals they turn into autonomous citizens. Simultaneously, as a multitude or a collective subject they leave the logic of representation and become active, unique and irreplaceable persons”. The multitude becomes the subject of the collective desire to bring the political system to a dead end with the withdrawal of every element of legitimization of the biopolitics of neoliberalism.

Bottom up politics and the Left
 
“If the uprising of December 2008 was the crack that allowed us to imagine again a different world, then the unrest of the squares was the wave that put under interpellation our means and methods to achieve this other world” writes Kostas Charitakis, a member of the group for direct democracy of Syntagma square. According to Homi Bhabha it is Hybridization that characterizes subaltern agency –  the way active subjects are being constructed from the bottom – up. This is a process of relocation and re-inscription, a series of practices in the city that reinvent public space according to professor Stavros Stavridis. “They create, use and disseminate information through the new means of communication on and off line”. And Christos Giovanopoulos cites Castells who declares that if “for the first time in history the basic economic unit is not a person or a subject but a network constituted by a variety of subjects and subjectivities endlessly redefined, then we need to re-imagine the space in which these networks operate”. Giovanopoulos considers the movement as a broad network spread all over the country containing heterogeneous cultures or political positions under the common goal (hyper-text).
In most of the book’s articles runs in parallel a rich and constructive critique towards the Greek Left, which hesitated to adopt the movement at first, though many of us believed  that the indignants were an expression of the hegemony of the Left in the society of the crisis, but expressed in an unpredictable new manner. Many feared that an apolitical and conservative discourse was catching the scene, something that would harm the Left and organized struggle in the long run. “The processes for the construction of a new social and political emancipation do not necessarily stand against the older forms of the struggle as a denial. They more likely modify the contexts and the elements that gave meaning and made these meanings useful” insist Giovanopoulos and Mitropoulos.
Does that mean a reinforcement of the Radical Left and trade unions or maybe the emergence of new forms of social and political organization? To my opinion both, although it’s hard to draw a direct link to any of the above since the indignants left the scene without leaving any recognizable traces. However in opinion polls the Left is presented stronger since then on while a broad network of social groups has emerged during these last months. The only question then is: Has the Left adjusted to this new social condition and culture? Has it seized the heritage that the movements are producing since 2008? Most of the writers of “Democracy under construction” would argue that while some parts of it have done so, the biggest ones both in the Communist and the Radical segments remain bound on the conservatism of bureaucracy that prefers to imagine society anyhow she wants than to actually transform in order to meet her.

On Saturday 3.3.2012, over a 1,000 people marched in Kypselli neighbourhood of Athens in solidarity to squats and self-organised urban spaces in a demo called by squats of central Athens.

Patision 61 & Skaramanga squat wrote on their call:

“In mid-November, a new partnership of Athens Municipality and the police was launched. Together they start a new cycle of Athens city centre management. Initially, they target the occupied “Municipal Market of Kypselli” which addresses housing needs of local residents, which is followed by the ex officio prosecution against the squat “Lela Karayiannis 37″, giving the green light for possible interventions.

The poverty and misery in the neighbourhoods of central Athens is growing. At the same time, increasingly take place attacks by cops and para-state against migrants and small street vendors, against homeless and drug addicts. After all, the promotion of social cannibalism, and the overall ideological war are the tested tactics of “divide and conquer.” In this effort of the state and capital, the city of Athens assumes enhanced institutional role as the guarantor of the development and proper functioning of the city …

Today, when the crisis is more evident than ever before, while the society impoverishes more and more and when the revolts no longer have need of sparks… most people begin to trace the path of struggle.

Thus, squats and self-organised projects, meeting points and the intersections of struggles, are again under fire.

And because the accusations against us keep well, we declare boldly that …

We are the arsenal of mutual respect and solidarity between the oppressed and we are cells of unmediated resistance.
We are centres of circulation for instruments and practices hostile to the established system
We are laboratories of social fermentation of needs and desires away from ethnic, religious and gendered divisions

Resistance to the plans of “sterilization” of central Athens.
Hands off the occupation Lela Karayiannis 37 and the occupied Municipal Market Kypselli!”

original

Since last Wednesday the workers of the shipyards of Elefsina, outside Athens, are on strike demanding from the companies to sign an agreement that are not going to decrease any wages. All companies signed the agreement with the exception of Siemnes and DECO. Yesterday people from Siemens called individually workers in their homes telling them that it is going to be a bus in the square of Elefsina to pick them up and bring them to work, breaking the strike and workers’ blockade of the shipyard. Eventually, out of more than 100 workers hardly 10 turned up in the square and the bus did not cross the blockade. But in front of the shipyards at the moment there are a Siemens manager, 4 patrol cars with police and an attorney general threatening the workers to open the blockade and go to work. The workers decide that the strike will not end until Siemenes signs the agreement.

(Please translate and repost!)

Live from the streets of Europe: an Occupied London call-out

The world around us is changing beyond recognition. In the past few years, months, weeks and days, things we were once used to – from the quality of life we could expect, our interaction with others, our politics, just about everything – seem to vanish into thin air. This crisis has been a systemic one, to be sure, but the collapse of the certainties of capitalism has left so many of our own certainties naked. At a time when action is more urgent than ever, at a historical turning point, change has been so sweeping that it paralysed many. Before, we were trying to learn how to create cracks and open new paths in the solid certainties of the neo-liberal frenzy. Now, cracks wide open, we want to pull out its insides and disentangle ourselves through a generalised and indefinite social strike (1).

We are members of Occupied London, an anarchist project that started in London, UK in 2007, printing journals and writing texts on urban realities from an anarchist perspective. When the revolt of 2008 kicked off in Greece, some of us felt the need to return there to report on and translate into English what was happening in the country’s cities from the ground.
Nearly 1,000 blog-posts and one book later, we are absolutely determined to keep on writing about what is happening on the streets and in people’s everyday lives as capital strikes its final blows in our daily lives preparing for its departure, leaving only the violence of the state behind to defend their pipelines of wealth.

We now see a need to grow, to become even more relevant, to move beyond the usual political subdivisions and beyond reacting to capital and state violence and grasp seriously this moment of rupture. Our contribution in this direction is this call to effectively share analysis and coordinate action across Europe.

Information coming from the mainstream media intends to divide us: it seeks to put the blame for the crisis first on the laziness of one People, then on the greed of another. In the mainstream media, people are seen as isolated victims or as a mass of protesters, but never as thinking, desiring and acting people who can take control of their own futures in common. This is a new battlefield where our conditions of living, producing and reproducing will be set for generations to come.

With this call-out we are seeking new comrades and friends. Whether you are an individual or group, get in touch. This is a project that aims to be as wide as possible; there is space for everyone feeling close to our wider social antagonist movement, but no space at all for sectarianism of any sort. The way we envisage this network, each local information point will operate in a completely autonomous way, while a main node of information will gather all local material at one place, tagged in a way that makes the content as practically useful as possible. Dissemination of information and analysis across Europe and beyond, and coordination of action are our main aims.

This is very much a work at progress. So contact us at editorial@occupiedlondon.org and we will be more than happy to discuss any details. Members of our collective are travelling to various places in Europe in the next few months to discuss the idea as far and wide as we can. If you want to host an event and get to discuss the project in person, get in touch.

(1. By generalised social strike we mean the systematic -but wildcat- pause of our normal activities (working, consuming, using networks etc.) and
extracting it from the sphere of capital, combined with marching and occupation of public spaces, taking place to as many countries as possible
simultaneously. So we overthrow the normal and sovereign flows of capital, products and information.)

With love,
The Occupied London collective