On Tuesday morning [July 17th, 2018] a bulldozer (with agreement of the owner of course) demolished squat in Exarchia, Athens, which was acting as the only occupied gym in the city. No one was arrested. Workers worked on the building while riot police was on alert and protecting the area. [Read More]
Athens: March 24, demonstration to defend the squats community of Koukaki & in solidarity with squats & places of struggle
24 of March, Saturday, 12:00 in Paidiki Hara, Koukaki we are calling comrades, friends, from Athens and all over Greece, all of ages, genders, persons who work, studying, or are unemployed, with animals, with their music instruments and their expression means, to walk together.
Almost a year ago, a new project bloomed in the neighborhood of Koukaki. We created a community of housing and struggling squats. We occupied three empty buildings which were getting rotten at Matrozou 45, Panaitoliou 21 and Arvali 3. We rebuilt them through a lot of work to become sustainable, to become places of gathering and communal organization. Some us them are living here permanently.
We are coming from different places of the planet, co-exist with dogs and cats, creating relations of solidarity and freedom. This community, as its buildings is opened to the people through discussions in public spaces, projections, music events, café-bar, presentations of theories, and games with children. We have create structures for common use like library-reading space, compost on the Filopappou hill, public bathroom-laundry and free shop to exchange clothes, laboratory of conserves production and urban gardening. From the very start, we knew that freedom can be claimed only through struggle. Our community is part of the anti-authoritarian/anarchist/libertarian movement and participates to the defending of the squats, in struggle against state repression, prisons and detention centers, against patriarchy, fascism, destruction of nature and stand in solidarity with migrants. [Read More]
Greece: Gathering of Solidarity to the Termita Squat
In the morning of 04/01 in Volos, there was a coordinated operation to evict the Termita Squat. The eviction was made by the University of Thessaly and the police force of Volos and other forces of the region. During the eviction 3 comrades were arrested and released some hours later with the accusation of disturbance of domestic peace and the 6 buildings were demolished right after the operation.
We put here the text of Termita Squat that explains why it was targeted by the state and the university of Thessaly:
Squats are our liberated grounds, liberated from state control, in order to house our needs and desires; they are the structures which connect the struggle to society, which embody the vision of freedom and solidarity. They are meeting points for all those who question state and capitalism, who choose to collectivize outside the institutional framework. They are the ground on which communities of struggle are built, on terms of participation and equality. All this means that squats are not spaces of an alternative lifestyle, but a refuge in the midst of a war, for all those who are besieged by the world of authority. Especially for migrants, outside of self organized communities, the state maintains a special regime of repression: persecution, incarceration and deportation. [Read More]
Athens: Requesting Funds for an Arrestee
For almost 10 years the 6th of December has marked the day a 15 year old boy named Alexis Grigoropoulos was murdered by police in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens, Greece. His murder was the spark that ignited a wild fire of insurrection across the country in December 2008 that
caught the world’s attention and inspired general revolt for years to come; both in Greece and beyond its’ borders. Every year the memory of Alexis lives on through the resistance of courageous individuals coming together to fight the state and its bastard police in the streets of Exarchia (where Alexis was killed, and where police are not welcome).
For more information on the 6th of December and its history please look here.
Berlin: Solidarity with Gare Squat and arrested comrades in Athens
On Sunday, the 26th of November, OPKE units and plain cloth officers entered the Gare-Squat in Exarchia. Although there was resistance from the inside, the eviction was completed in the afternoon with four people being arrested, who were in the house at that time.
The eviction of Gare is directly connected with the attempt of the state to raise the pressure on the resistance before December 6th and to occupy strategic points. The 6th of December is the anniversary of the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos, who was shot by a cop nine years ago in Exarchia. Since then, every year on that day it comes to riots and fights with the cops, where they try to take over the neighbourhood confronting a massive resistance, terrorizing it with chemicals and detentions.
As active friends and comrades of Rigaer Straße in Berlin, we are in solidarity with the fight for Exarchia, as a self-organized and ungovernable district. Our aspirations, our concerns and straits, but especially our hopes connect us in the fight for a life without authorities. The Gare-Squat, as an active part in this fight, plays an important role for the local structures with an international orientation and their history is our history. Because of this reason, the eviction and the permanent siege of the house, as well as the daily police-terror, is an attack on us. [Read More]
Athens: Today City Plaza is one and half years old
22 April 2016 – 22 October 2017: One and a half years of City Plaza
Today City Plaza is one and half years old.
On April 22, 2016, 250 activists and refugees took over the hotel City Plaza in the center of Athens. A hotel which like many other businesses stood closed for 6 years after the economic collapse and the government’s policies of austerity. This abandoned hotel was transformed into a Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space. Since then the solidarity initiative has, for more than 500 days, provided free and decent housing to over 1700 people in the center of Athens, irrespective of their nationality and residence status. These people are housed in the hotel’s 120 rooms, 350-400 persons at a time, a third of whom are children.
There are other ways you can measure what’s been happening here over the past 18 months; with the 385,000 warm meals served by the kitchen group or with the 35,000 working hours spent at security posts by the hotel’s entrance and on the balconies of the building. With the 13,560 hours of shifts at the reception desk or with the more than 32,700 rolls of toilet paper distributed by the warehouse team. It can also be counted in 156 full van-loads of fresh vegetables and meat; or in the countless hours spent cleaning the building, or in the medical center, in the hours spent teaching in the two classrooms, or in the women space and in the playground or with the 18 tons of heating oil used in the boilers and radiators. [Read More]
Solidarity statement from Rosa de Foc Squat in Athens, Greece, to anti-airport struggle ZAD in France
As an international housing squat we think solidarity is our weapon, and as we all know weapons have categories, from handguns to nuclear bombs. Revolutionary solidarity doesn’t have boundaries and can only benefit the struggle. We are already starting to try our theories in practice about this.
International solidarity means bringing and taking ideas from one place to another, placing priorities and supporting the place that needs our help the most. Help is not only texts, supplies and solidarity demonstrations in our territory, but also our physical presence there. Working with the people, learning their language and their culture. Basic ingredients if we want to be effective and helpful, because every battle ground is different. [Read More]
Athens: Solidarity statement from the squat Rosa de Foc to XM24 squat
As international collective, self-organized and based on anarchist and anti-authoritarian principles we believe that the international solidarity represents the strongest weapon that the movement has. We are all aware that this weapon can be used at different levels, from words to direct actions.
As living squat and self-educational center Rosa de Foc of Exarchia, we believe that is essential to express our solidarity to all the squats and battlegrounds that are under attack from state apparatus of repression. Especially, for affinity in ideas and practices, we want to assert our vicinity to the squat XM24 of Bologna. A squat that resists to the power’s oppression for 15 years, in constant struggle to create a concrete alternative to the dominant lifestyle that repress and humiliate an increasing number of individuals. We feel close to XM24, a place where, thanks to the many collectives acting inside it, during the years it were built a big number of projects, alive and active, which have made a shelter against the gentrification and the monetization of our neighborhoods. At the same time it isn’t just a provider of ‘alternative services’ but it has maintained alive his fighting and rebel soul that doesn’t surrender to the current situation. [Read More]
Solidarity actions across Europe for City Plaza, SquatBo and all other squats
In Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, Lübeck, Wuppertal and many other cities across Europe people protested against eviction threats against squats on Friday; #HandsOffAll Squats!
Spontaneous demo in Wuppertal, Germany, June 23rd 2017. [Read More]
Greece: Anarchist refugee squats prepare for State onslaught
A new spate of recent evictions and interventions by the Greek State against refugee solidarity occupations run by the anarchist movement in Athens has prompted callouts for a major emergency gathering this Friday.
The callout and associated international day of action comes in the wake of a series of crackdowns and repression [1][2] against the solidarity movement, which has helped thousands of refugees self-organise to house themselves and defend against far-right violence since the Syrian crisis began.
It has been supported by six major occupied centres and groups, Oniro, City Plaza, 5th School, Notara 26, Underground Railroad, Spirou Trikoupi, Jasmine School and Acharnon School, which have put out a joint statement on the deteriorating situation in the city:
During the last month we witnessed the State escalating its anti-immigration policy of restrictions against refugees and the solidarity movement. In Addition to the EU management of migration issues which include forcing people to live in horrible conditions ,deporting them and denying them their basic human rights, the Greek government is revealing its totalitarian face by demonstrating its repression power through evicting political and housing squats for refugees. [Read More]
Athens (Greece): Statement of CityPlaza Squat against the threat of eviction
City Plaza will not bend / Resist the “immigration & passport bureaus”, the frightful flags of states and diplomacy war weapons factories
The court order for the evacuation of the Refugee Accommodation Space City Plaza is the latest scene in the repressive management of refugees and the solidarity movement. From the closure of the borders to the shameful EU-Turkey deal, from the prisonlike camps to the evacuation of squats, a policy of casting refugees as a peculiar enemy is being articulated. [Read More]
Athens: Rosa de Foc, international squat house in Exarchia
We are an autonomus, self-managed collective based on libertarian and anti-authoritarian principles. We are living on Ashmakh Fwthla 18 in Exarcheia.
We come from several countries, including Greece.
The governing organ of our community is the General Essembly (GA). All important decisions regarding the house or its inhabitants must be approved by GA. Any decision taken otherwise will not be considered legitimate. We will not tolerate any threat of our autonomy, and will protect it. At the same time we perceive the solidarity among squats as self explanatory and continuous situation.
We will be vigilant and active in the struggle against drugs and drug dealing around the area of Exarchia as well as against the possibility of this happening inside the movement.
In addition, we are open to suggestions and political projects that promote the non-profit and anticonstitutional character, the strengthening of relationships among comrades and the general struggle for revolution and Anarchy. We want and we have the ability to house self-educational activities, as well as activities that promote political discussion and communication.
We send our greetings to the revolutionary comrades that fight for freedom around the world, and all the political prisoners that have been kidnapped by the state. Our space constitutes from the beginning a crossroad for comrades from all around the globe and we desire to remain as such.
Whoever wants to take part in our community life and build a connection with us or has some projects or ideas, are welcome every Friday at 1p.m. At this time we organise collective kitchen. [Read More]
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