IF YOU ARE A MIGRANT: THIS IS GREECE, THIS IS EUROPE

If you are a migrant in Greece you probably know quite well already how difficult life is in this country for those not born here. You know that even if one reaches the borders of Europe – and escapes the poverty and war stoked in Asia and Africa by small and large bosses – one must risk his or her own life. You also know already that those who do eventually find themselves in Europe are not treated by the state and its governments as people in need, but rather are stacked into camps and prisons, without food, medicine, heating, education, and the freedom to go where they want.

But even those who manage to avoid or leave the camps and prisons are living in a state of fear. They worry constantly about their papers, and do not know when the police might stop them on the street to search them – and possibly beat, arrest, and deport them. When they manage to find work they perform the most difficult jobs without insurance and for far less money than other people. They are often confronted with the murderous sentiments of fascists and racists. Their children are not treated as equal to other children in school. They have no security and none of the rights that every living being should have.

The policies of the state – of all capitalistic states – as exercised against migrants are part of the more general attack against all those belonging to the oppressed classes. Because even those born here -or who have been in this country for many years – are experiencing an increasingly suffocating reality. They find it difficult to survive in the conditions that bosses and the state are “offering.” They are paid less and less every day for their work, expensive rents drive them away from their neighborhoods, and they are continuously confronted by police whenever they attempt to self-organize in an effort to pursue better living conditions and more freedoms. They feel increasingly that they have no control over their lives.

Recently, the New Democracy government, continuing the work of the previous Syriza government, decided to forcibly close many buildings in the neighborhood of Exarcheia in which mainly migrants lived. Although the buildings were vacant for years and had been serving no one, the state with its cops evicted them, judging that anyone who wanted to organize, fight, and solve his or her housing problem was a threat to “national security” and to the bosses. They transferred the residents to concentration camps and prisons, and expelled their children from schools in the area. In order to prevent people from returning to these homes, they have filled all the streets of the neighborhood with armed policemen trying to intimidate both locals and immigrants still living in the area.

We all face the same obstacles, as workers, unemployed, locals, and migrants from all countries, with or without papers. We want to put an end to the aggressive strategies of the state aimed against us all. We want to organize and act outside of the channels of political parties and vested interests. We want to defend squats and all the places where people meet, find collective solutions to their problems, and fight. We want to put an end to the repression before all the neighborhoods are filled with police and military. Migrants who are locked up in horrible camps such as Moria, Samos, and Amygdaleza are already revolting. In these fights they will find us by their side. The answer to all that is happening must be given by all of us collectively, as only in this way can we halt the fear and take power into our own hands, only in this way can we resist.

TOGETHER WE RISE TOGETHER WE FIGHT

AGAINST THE DEVALUATION OF OUR LIVES

COMMON STRUGGLES WITHOUT NATIONAL DIVISION
AGAINST STATE AND BOSSES

 

Solidarity Demonstration for immigrants and spaces of struggle // Against the State and Capitalistic Development

[November 2] Solidarity Demonstration for immigrants and spaces of struggle // Against the State and Capitalistic Development

On November 2nd, we are calling comrades from Greece and all over the world to show their solidarity, and to unite their voices through calls, demonstrations, and multiform actions.

SOLIDARITY DEMONSTRATION FOR IMMIGRANTS AND SPACES OF STRUGGLE AGAINST STATE AND CAPITALISTIC DEVELOPMENT VICTORIA SQUARE / NOVEMBER 2 / 12:00

The immigrant population is being debased and eliminated on all aspects of its life. In order to flee war and/or poverty they are walking the paths of refugeeism on sea and land, to the squalid conditions of concentration camps, like Moria, where impoverishment and death are usually the only way forward for them. If they survive, there is a war with the cops in the neighbourhoods they live and work. Murders and beatings at the police departments, identifications and arrests that lead to long-term confinements, disappearances and deportations. At work, they get exploited without any limitation as they are the invisible part of the workforce. Their working undervaluation comes along with a total exclusion from educational, health, and other general infrastructures. At the same time, the NGO industry which is active both in and out of the concentration camps, is one of the most lucrative and developing for greek capitalism. There is a constant conflict between greek and turkish states for which of the human-wardens will grab more of the eu warding funds. In these conditions, immigrants resist and revolt. In the cities, they align and get organised with the solidarity movement, and find refugee in its infrastructures. Solidarity infrastructures like squats that used to be a home for hundreds of immigrants, squats that got evacuated and their tenants got transferred to the hellholes of the state. Generally, the spaces of struggle and solidarity not only cover and provide for a huge number of their needs, they also act as places of organisation of the oppressed, and as a substantial trench against the political and financial interests of the state and capital. Places of struggle, whether squats or public spaces, villages and neighbourhoods like Exarcheia, have acted against further degradation of our lives and against a police state. Starting off with the SYRIZA government, and following up with the government of New Democracy, the capitalistic and state machine is going through a reconstruction, promoting ravaging developing plans both for the environment and our neighbourhoods. As a result, the oppressive mechanisms are attacking viciously as they do understand that the marginalised immigrant population in tandem with places of struggle and organisation of the international, oppressed population, are a substantial obstacle for the fulfilment of their plans. Local and foreign business interests are in alignment with the oppressive mechanisms, and that’s why we have to confront them as a whole, starting by defending the people and structures which are under attack.

COLLECTIVE FIGHT WITHOUT NATIONAL DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE DEGRADATION OF OUR LIVES AND THE DISCPLACEMENT OF OUR BODIES AGAINST STATE AND CAPITAL

On November 2nd, we are calling comrades from Greece and all over the world to show their solidarity, and to unite their voices through calls, demonstrations, and multiform actions.

Open assembly of squats,collectives,internationalists, migrants and solidarians.