This is Athens

A personal account of my short visit to Athens, Greece. My initial intent was to do a report on the anarchist neighbourhood assemblies. Truth be told this task was more challenging than I expected. Few within the neighbourhood assembly scene agreed to be video taped or photographed for fear of retaliation by the police, their employers and fascists. I was also made aware of the troubling hardships undocumented immigrants and their supporters face, the rise of the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn, and the role of the police in suppressing social struggles. This piece is only a snapshot of the complex situation of a country in a state of “civil war.” and how anarchists are reacting to it.

THIS IS ATHENS

(Filmmaker) Athens, June 2012.
I'm here to witness a place I've been following since 2008.

The raw courage of the Greek anarchists fighting with cops
captured the imagination of people around the world, including mine.

In december of that year a cop murdered Alex Grigoropoulos, a teenage boy who lived in Exarchia, a neighbourhood home to a large anarchist population.

(Antonis Vradis) These kids were basically hanging out on the pedestrian street in Exarchia.

A police patrolling car drove up to them, there was a bit of a quarrel,

and the police shot Alex in cold blood, killing him on the spot.

And what followed was kind of a spontaneous call for a response to this murder, people started gathering in Exarchia.

And very soon thereafter in most of central Athens, marched through the biggest part of the city and smashed up a lot of corporate and state targets.

And they quickly culminated in what was a full-on anti-state and anti-capital kind of revolt.

(Filmmaker) But I didn't come here looking for riots, I wanted to find out how the Greek anarchists were organizing themselves in response to the financial crisis.

I wanted to learn how neighbourhoods had bypassed the state to provide services such as free meals, healthcare and community self-defence.

This task proved more challenging than I hoped. Few within the neighbourhood assemblies seen, agreed to be videotaped or photographed

for fear of retaliation by the police, their employers and the fascists.

Yes, fascists, but we'll come back to that.

During my time here, posters from the competing political parties were plastered all over the city

Just days prior to an election, signalling to the world that Greek democracy was still functioning.

(Kristina, Commitee for a Workers' International) These elections are very important, because we have the chance to change the political scene. We have the chance to go left.

(Filmmaker) The graffiti and anarchist posters told a different story,

they show Greece as a country that's in a state of civil war.

(Antonis Vradis) This is a civil war, it already feels like a civil war, but this is not a capital C cival war, it's a small cap civil.

Civil, as in civilized, as in covered still, for the time being, under this veil of civility.

So you have a society that's still post civil war. The kind of dichotomies, and the kind of tensions, and the antagonisms from a civil war are still here

and they are re-emerging now, but for the time-being they are being covered under the civility of a country that's still, just about, supposed to be part of the global West

and aspiring to this idea of global progress, capitalist euphoria, and development and so on and so forth...

(Gelly, Solidarity activist) Here in Greece... it's the civil war syndrome I call it. Because our parents lived in the civil war of 1944-1949.

And they can remember and they have a fear that when the war comes we don't have [food] to eat.

(Filmmaker) Gelly was one of the few anarchist who agreed to appear on camera.

She got involved in community organizing during the Syntagma square occupation of May 2011.

The action was inspired by the Spanish public square occupations, the same actions that inspired the North American Occupy movement.

(Antonis Vradis) You definitely had a lot of anarchist groups and anarchist initiatives springing up, and trying to play a role, not of replacing the state in any way,

but actually filling a void in a different kind of way, in a way that will no longer be hierarchical or authoritarian,

in a way contributing towards people's pre-conceptualization of their everyday life.

(Gelly) We were gathering clothes, and food, and medicine. Everything that the person needs.

And it's too easy to find homeless these times in Greece.

(Filmmaker) After the occupation was evicted by cops these groups continued in some more of it into neighborhood assemblies,

focusing their energy in their localities

Others, like Gelly, chose to help those who have migrated here from faraway lands in search of a better life.

(Gelly) The situation is awful for the immigrants.

If they have a house, in a very, very small house: 10 or 15 people. Sometimes they don't have [food] to eat. Most of them live in the streets.

The government signed the Dublin II, so nobody can leave the country.

(Filmmaker) Dublin II is an agreement between European Union members, that states that an undocumented immigrant

found in any EU country, will be returned to the country where the person entered.

This essentially transforms Greece into a migration dam, since most of the undocumented immigrants that come to Europe, enter through here.

Aid to migrants in Greece is virtually non-existant and people are going hungry.

This is the second time that Gelly's group delivers food to a community of Kurdish immigrants outside of Athens.

The Kurds are a people without a state, whose homelands are in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Some of the people I've met are escaping political repression due to their affiliation the the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

An armed rebel group fighting for autonomy within the Turkish territory.

(Gelly) We don't care about their political beliefs. Kurds never had the country on their own,

and the most of the people, who are 30-35 years lived and were born in the war, they don't know peace.

(Filmmaker) Even though the situation in Greece has not officially been called a civil war,

there's a low intensity conflict going on in the streets.

(Nikolaos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn leader) All the illegal immigration out! Out of my country! Out of my home!

(Anonymous) Greece has a problem with neo-nazi groups such as Chrysi Avgui, Golden Dawn, which plans to enter the parliament

and organise armed groups so that they can assault immigrants, students, workers on strike.

(Filmmaker) Racists affiliated with the neo-nazi political party Golden Dawn routinely attack immigrants, sometimes with the aid of the cops.

According to our Greek daily about half of Greece's cops voted for Golden Dawn,

helping it capture a handful of parliamentary seats in the may 2012 election.

During a televised debate a member of Golden Dawn assaulted a member of the Communist Party.

The man was never arrested.

(Botsi Chryssa, Act Up Athens) We already know them for a very long time, what happens now is that they became legal,

they have been elected in the parliament, so now they are a legal party, so they can be more of use, and in fact they will get money from the state.

(Filmmaker) The following day immigrants and thousands of their supporters took part in a rally denouncing Golden Dawn's violent attacks.

But even with this large show of outrage, many people who support immigrants

face real dangers and can not count on the protection of the police.

(Botsi Chryssa) Our home is quite known because there are people coming and going, we collect money and clothes for the refugees, for migrants,

so we have a visibility in the neighborhood I mean, so we have been warned to stop our action

and we had a bombing now placed at 3 o'clock in the morning, it was june 2008. The police say they can not protect us.

(Filmmaker) Anarchists have provided a counter-power to this fascist menace.

(Antonis Vradis) There has always been a huge level of street fighting, the anarchists basically trying

to make sure that the Golden Dawn doesn't have a visible organized mass presence on the streets, way before the crisis, for many years.

And this has continued and kind of even become more intense after their electoral succes.

(Filmmaker) Anarchists have also secured public spaces for the gay community.

(Botsi Chryssa) It was the first open Gaypride, in an open place I mean. So they have warned that people in case you are going to parade, we will attack.

And there was an anarchist reaction, the anarchists came over and said: "We'll be by you, don't be afraid." And they didn't show up.

And even today they didn't show up, as you have probably seen.

(Filmmaker) With about 500 undocumented immigrants entering into Greece everyday, and with the economic situation

showing no signs of improvement, it's safe to say the tensions in Greece are likely to get worse.

Many people on the left have put their hopes in a Syriza win,

but with the narrow victory by New Democracy, the right wing party, and with Golden Dawn winning 18 parliamentary seats,

the false illusion of Greek democracy was shathered once again

Following the election, attacks on immigrants increased

and it was revealed that once again nearly 50% of Greek cops voted for Golden Dawn.

But the past has not been forgotten by folks here.

The nazi occupation and brutal dictatorships of the 20th century have not been erased from peoples memories.

To many people here it's becoming increasingly clear that the security and well-being of their territory will not come by the state and their police,

but by the long term efforts and solidarity of autonomous organizers and their communities of resistance.

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WRITTEN, PRODUCED, SHOT AND EDITED BY FRANKLIN LOPEZ

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