Παγκόσμια Συνέδρια
It is not a danger for public health
It is not an opposition-backed plan
It is not a front of democratic forces
It is the rage of our class
During the last weeks in Greece, and above all the last weekend, we saw a great wave of demonstrations across literally the whole country. On March 13-14, thousands of youth, working people, women and migrants responded to a call for demonstrations against police violence, which has been especially marked in the past weeks. It was clear though, that these demonstrations went clearly far beyond being anti-repression and expressed the rage of our class against the general governmental policies in the sectors of public health, education, democratic and labour rights. There has been a clear shift in the current situation and the self-confidence of the working class to struggle is now, despite the complicated circumstances, the highest in many years.
They banned the gathering of more than three people, they used water guns, they beat us up, they arrested us, they put handcuffs on us, they threatened us, they founded new police groups, they spied on us, they cencored us, they slandered us, they got out of their mind, and what have they achieved? Thousands of people demonstrating every day in Athens and Thessaloniki downtown, in the neighbourhoods, in every city and town.
The ND government does not constantly exacerbate their oppression and reppression out of some right-wing vice. They do so because they know that the indignation of the working class and the oppressed will burst out. Their rage will burst out for all the deceased of the pandemic, the danger they face everyday at work for their employers’ profit’s sake, the unemployment that is skyrocketing again, the precarious working conditions, the police camping occupying the universities, the students’ expulsions, the sexual and workplace abuse that is unveiled everywhere, the decay in the sectors of sports and culture, the new austerity measures coming after quarantine ends. It is this indignation that the government wants to restrain, while there is still time. The government increases repression and oppression because this is the order and the need of the class they represent, the capitalist class.
The police does not beat the people because it’s stuffed with uneducated special guards, nor because it’s infiltrated with fascists. They do so because it’s their job, to violently impose the unhindered functioning of the capitalist system.
The huge angry demonstrations of the last days are not some random outburst. They are the physical continuity of the mobilizations of November and December, that were done under conditions of absolute clandestinity, the demands put forward by health workers, the abstention of teachers and professors from the “evaluation” process, the students’ movement against the Kerameos law, the movement of solidarity with the hunger striker Koufontinas against the state vengefulness, the students’ resistance against police invasions at the university of Thessaloniki, the feminist strike and demonstrations. It is not yet the peak, as more massive mobilizations are to come.
The working class, the youth and the oppressed masses are fed up with what has happened, are anxious of what is coming and takes confidence in its every new mobilization. This very combination is more than anything scaring the bourgeois class, the government, the state and their media.
This outbursting movement cannot be manipulated, nor guided, neither by SYRIZA nor by the various “democratic” forces, that are far more afraid of the working class outbreak than capitalist exploitation and state violence. They can only hope to electorally exploit it, as they have done in the past. We can’t allow this to happen again. We don’t deserve sweating and bleeding in the streets, in the strikes and occupations, only to passively watch the switch between more and less aggressive governments that essentially do the same job, champion the bosses’ interests.
We are not demanding just our democratic rights, we demand our emancipation. We don’t crave to be exploited under more democratic rules, until the next one comes and wipes them off again, we want to put an end to exploitation and oppression. We don’t want a more democratic police, we want to not see cops again. The capitalist system parties do not at all intend to compromise and have nothing to offer. We need an independent political expression of the interests of the working and oppressed masses, a mass anticapitalist force. The mass struggles provide the raw materials for that.
For the struggles to win, the government and the whole system has to get endangered, as it has been in the early years of the crisis. We have to find out the demands and ways of actions that unite all the oppressed groups, the workers at every place, the youth in the universities, schools and the military, women, LGBTIQ people, the immigrants and refugees. We defend the whole of our class against our common enemy, even if its rage is expressed in ways we consider ineffective, as “hooligan violence”. We are not interested in the unity of all “democratic” parties and forces on the basis of a vague and indifferent compromise among them. We are interested in the unity of all working and oppressed masses on the basis of their common interests, far from professional, gender and racial divisions. In order to win, we have to make the opponent paralyse. For this to come true, we have to combine revolt with political consciousness, rage with organization, the demonstrations with occupations and strike,which is what hurts the ruling class the most, as it puts its holy grail, profit, at stake.
- Disarmament of the police, dissolution of all the special police forces
- No demonstration banned, no police in the demonstration
- Asylum and papers for all refugees, legalization of all our migrant colleagues
- Close the concentration camps, decent housing for everyone
- Vindication of all victims of rape and sexual violence, both famous and anonymous
- No restrictions on the trade union activities, no state control over the trade unions- down with the coming draft of the Labour Ministry
- Abolishment of the SMS system and the curfew
- Free means of protection and adequate health infrastructure for all. Requisition of the private health sector without recompensation
- Vaccines for all here and now. Abolishment of the patent system. Nationalization of the pharma industry without recompensation in order to produce what is necessary for the health of the population and not what is dictated by capitalist profits
- General strike to cease any production branch not immediately necessary, with full salary for all the workers
