Social and Class resistances are not subdued, they do not capitulate
Announcement by the Occupied Rectorate of Athens University
Γη και Ελευθερία
Γη και Ελευθερία
In a world of deep and systemic crisis, where state and capital have launched an unbridled attack on those from below, the state capitalist crime in Tempe has created a break in the Greek reality.
The state, losing its legitimacy from a large part of the social base, is putting itself on the defensive, aiming to decompress social anger and re-legitimize itself at the ballot box. Now is the moment to intensify social and class resistances!
We have no illusions. As long as the state has as an end in itself the maintenance and exercise of its power and the monopoly of violence, and as long as capitalism constantly seeks to increase its profits, the neoliberal capitalist restructurings will not stop. The wars between the dominant power blocs will escalate and the oppressed of this world will continue to be the fuel of this murderous system.
Against the constant attempt of the power to decontextualise the struggles of yesterday we say that memory is not rubbish and the meanings of the insurgents of the past lay the foundations for the uprisings of tomorrow. We continue the struggle of the students and workers against the military dictatorship in 1973, the student movement in 78-79, the students in 1991, the squatters' movement of 2006-7, all those who resisted the degradation of our lives.
We have been defending art and culture for two months now, defending the beauty of this world. The movement that has been created in the last two months has not yet said its last word and is becoming more and more radicalised with each passing day. We seek to connect social and class struggles, break stereotypes, unite our voices and build a collective consciousness by zeroing the distance between theory and practice.
Through the occupied centre of struggle, the Rectorate of the University of Athens, we break the guild perception of separation, we reposition the defence of university asylum and its social character at the forefront of the student struggle, we escalate the resistance against the Presidential Decree 85, we sabotage educational restructuring, we demand justice for our dead who are killed every day in hospitals, at the borders, on the trains, in the streets by the police. We attempt to create a libertarian pole within our schools.
From day one, they try to force us to abandon the building of the Rectorate, which was occupied on March 13 by art schools’ and university students & people in solidarity. They try to do so through an operation of encirclement and blockade by the police, through slander and isolation, the deprivation of basic living conditions (food, heating, medicine) and communication, the denial of access for journalists and lawyers, the police's bullying and arrests of people expressing solidarity and even the inhumane beating of a comrade who tried to leave us food. We don’t forget that such a olan was first implemented in 2015 by the first SYRIZA government with Minister of Citizen Protection G. Panousis, where after 18 days with the signature of the rector they broke the university asylum and arrested 14 anarchist militants who stood in solidarity with the struggle of political prisoners. The state continues to suppress, impoverish and murder. So today, Rector Demopoulos and the Ministry are implementing a war-type siege plan that reminds us more of the Middle Ages than of the 21st century.
It makes us very happy that for some people the rectorate is an issue that needs to be resolved, but it also fills us with strength and with even more joy that for many more people the occupation of the rectorate is the meeting point of our militant fervour and our need for collective action. The occupation of the rectorate of the University of Athens territorializes the projects of social self-organization, class solidarity and militant resistance. Against the climate of defeatism and division, we therefore advocate the continuity and massification of the movement through unmediated relations and the linking of struggling subjects for a collective class consciousness, for a movement without patrons, for grassroots libertarian organisation.
SOLIDARITY WITH THE REBELS IN FRANCE
10 100 1000 SQUATS AGAINST A WORLD OF ORGANISED DECAY
UNIVERSITY ASYLUM BELONGS TO ALL OF SOCIETY
POLICE FORCES OUT OF PROPYLAIA
Assembly of art schools and university students & solidarians
of the occupied rectorate of the University of Athens
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Break the siege of the Occupied Rectorate of Athens University
* On the morning of Monday 13 March, a body of art and university students ('Students' Movement for grassroots libertarian organisation) occupied the building of the Rectorate of the University of Athens against the all-frontal and increasingly blatant attack of the state - capitalist system on our lives, with the crime in Tempe train “accident” and the Presidential Decree 85/2022, as part of the wider educational restructuring according to neoliberal imperatives. The aim of the project in this critical moment is to connect the art and university students’ movement and to create a center of self-organized struggle which, through horizontal processes and based on libertarian organization from below, will enable us to fight collectively.
A bunch of murderers, with their prosecutors, their ministries and of course with the responsibility of University of Athens administration, decided with all formality to pretend that they are besieging the castle of Alamut. They are the well-known murderers, the ones who sacrificed the lives of at least 57 people on the altar of profit in the train “accident” Tempe, the ones who are killing and torturing at the borders, in police stations and prisons, who are covering up for rapists.
In their arrogance they believe that they are going to overpower us and blackmail us into giving up the occupation and the struggle by the following method: They turn off the heating so that we freeze at night. They deny any access to food and medicine, installing riot squads around the perimeter of the building and arresting solidarians who come to break the cordon.
You foolish lackeys! They are so ridiculous that all they accomplish is to manifest the pettiness that rules their authoritarian minds.
They forget that we are part of the art students who are fighting for more than three months, occupying numerous schools and theatres, against the Presidential Decree 85/2022 which degrades their studies and the arts.
They forget that we are part of the university students who are fighting against educational restructuring, the university police, the abolition of asylum and class barriers in education.
They forget that we are part of the world of struggle that fights collectively, self-organised and from below for Utopia and in the darkest of times has nothing to fear.
They forget that we are part of society.
A society that itself experiences every day the threat of police raids during home evictions, a society that itself starves and freezes because of poverty, unpaid bills and rents. And yet it insists on resisting, flooding the streets in recent weeks shouting that The State and Capital are killing us!
Immediate removal of the police forces around the Occupied Rectory and the Propylaea.
Break the silence, break the police cordon.