Statement released on January 11th 2013
A few words on the targeting of the “Parartima”* occupation in Patras
Since yesterday, those miserable provincial journalists of our little town have kept reproducing a ready-made story, of the kind that the police distribute – and that refers to the two occupations of the city of Patras: Parartima and Maragkopouleio.
It appears that they are unable to abstain from the crescendo of authoritarianism and narking by which you can tell every loyal servant of the memorandum-led authority. But then, from that point to the erasure of 40 years’ history of social struggles, there is much of a distance to cover…
We’ll repeat the story, in the off-chance that they remember it.
It is already 40 years now that Parartima serves as a point of reference for the local community of Patras. It belongs to no-one. Not, of course, for the mayor, nor to those currently using it. Parartima belongs to all the people of Patras who have been resisting since November 1973 up to December 2008, from the student protests of 1991 and Temponeras’ murder to the events of 1985 that led to Kalteza’s murder. It belongs to the hundreds of thousands pupils, students and workers of this town who have at times turned this space into a place of Struggle, Resistance, Solidarity – in such a way that it is impossible for any resident of this town to ignore its existence. This is where tens of events take place at a weekly basis; this is where all those persecuted migrants – by the police’s ‘Xenios Zeus’ operation –– sought asylum last autumn, a space from where demonstrations and students protests start and where the revolted dignity of 2008 was crouched together.
What the older ones call ‘university’ and the youngest ‘Parartima’ is actually a social and not a university asylum, as the lackeys’ rags would have it back in 2008. This is why power cannot even touch it. And this is something all those arrogant cronk writers of the various tabloid websites (dete, thebest) know well – but even more than them, it is something all those who have ever passed through this place know.
The attempt to transfer the ‘war’ from the metropolis to the periphery is not going to be an easy one. Memories, struggles, the locality of resistance and the roots of struggle, the multiple meanings that spaces of resistance acquire – they will all form a barrier against this Law and Order operation.
We are here and we are waiting for you…
PS: If you wish, we can also talk about those 500 million drachmas [approx 1, 5 million euros – translator] that were spent supposedly in order to convert the space into a ‘conference centre’, or for the money spent so as to let it rot: we have kept these disgraceful invoices that we found in the trash…
PS2: We could also talk about the supposedly “accidental” arson of 1992 that preceded the regeneration of the building…
Parartima was and will remain liberated land.
More information on the past and the present of the space:
http://kanali.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/pararthma_patra_1978/
http://manitaritoubounou.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/1973-parartima-patras-xristianiki-1/
http://paliapatra.gr/index.php?/category/38
* Parartima (lit. Annex) is a building in central Patras where the city’s university was originally hosted before its relocation to the suburban campus of Rio. Parartima has been a long-standing political occupation, as explained in the text.
Published on Occupied London
