Statement about the police attack in Patras and the exclusion of social center “Epi ta proso”
On the afternoon of Saturday, November 7, there was an announced rally against repression, curfew and state management of the pandemic organized by the Assembly for Solidarity against totalitarianism.
From early, police squads had occupied the area around Olgas Square and the “Parartima” squat. A comrade who arrived at the area of the “Parartima” squat was unprovokedly attacked by the police and was taken inside the police station while being injured in the ear. At the same time, all the comrades who were approaching the square, due to its occupation by the police, could not reach it and spontaneously moved to the social/anarchist center “Epi ta Proso” to discuss and coordinate their response.
“Epi Ta Proso” was already open because of the announced call for collection of food and basic necessities during the pandemic and the acute social and economic crisis. The police squads surrounded the area and unprovokedly attacked the people who were there, hitting comrades furiously, bringing 8 of them and breaking the entrance of the place.
For more than two hours, the area around was surrounded by all kinds of repressive forces, while comrades in solidarity joined and tried to approach the space again, which was defending by a lot of comrades from the possible invasion of the cops.
In the midst of a curfew it is imperative and necessary to find ourselves on the streets of struggle and resistance. Under no circumstances should political action be suspended but instead escalated. Against the bans and the coordinated attack of the state and capital, we continue the organized and uncompromising struggle. Lets clash with the laws and requirements of the ascendants.
We are not going to remain silent and let fear prevail in public discourse, we are not going to let our living space, which is the street and the squares, be occupied by the repressive forces of the state that passes bankruptcy laws in the midst of a pandemic, anti-labor laws and legalization of 10-hour work. On the contrary, we propose the social-class solidarity between the working class and the majority of the society that especially in the current situation with the pandemic and its state management we are even more impoverished (unemployed, immigrants, prisoners, the elderly) as well as and the practical defense of our living space, that mentioned before, which has always been a place of meeting, fermentation and struggle of our class.
Because it is through our tools, spaces, speech, actions that the values of the world we dream of, are reflected a world far from the capitalist logics of profit, competition, individualism, a world of solidarity, equality, freedom.
We call tomorrow at 12 noon to an open anti-repression rally – collection of basic necessities, at the social center “Epi Ta Proso” and then to an open assembly to organize our responses to state repression and terrorism.
TO BUILD BARRICADES OF SOLIDARITY AND FIGHT AGAINST MODERN TOTALITARIANISM
IF WE DO NOT RESIST IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS, OUR CITIES WILL BECOME MODERN PRISONS
Assembly for Solidarity against Totalitarianism
Social Center “Epi ta Proso”
Comrades
