The Attack on Exarchia, an Anarchist Refuge in Athens

Since the establishment of ongoing tensions and building of the metro it had become very clear to the plans of the fascist government of New Democracy lead by Mitsotakis as a clear sign towards a direct attack against left wing groups across Athens, The take over of Streffi & Exarchia had become symbol of victory to fascists across Greece.

In Athens, the neighborhood of Exarchia is synonymous with solidarity. For nearly a century, artists, writers, and activists have made their homes there, drawn by the nearby Polytechnic University. In 1941, the communist National Liberation Front was founded on Mavromichalis Street to resist the Nazi occupation. In 1944, these same guerrillas traded bullets with the British Army during the bloody days of the Dekemvriana, when the United Kingdom sought to suppress the rise of communism in newly liberated Greece. In 1973, an uprising at the Polytechnic University helped take down Greece’s military junta. In 2008, police murdered a teen-ager named Alexandros Grigoropoulos at the leafy intersection of Mesolongiou and Tzavella Streets; the neighborhood riots each year on the anniversary of his death. Rocks fly one way, tear-gas cannisters the other.

August 19, 2022 State attack on Exarchia

such interventions have an absolutely unified framework of values, the promise of order and security to urban populations bombarded by reports that present the center as a hotbed of all kinds of lawlessness ● And absolutely the same purpose: to secure new areas of profitability for funds that are invested in urban gentrification and the private exploitation of public urban goods.

At dawn, just as it was breaking, the repression trucks full of armored policemen arrived. White helmets, shields, weapons spilled out everywhere and filled the square from all sides. In the dark, like thieves, the praetorians of the government took positions, surrounded themselves and kept ready for war. And close by, the contractor's crews unloaded the sheet metal, the concrete bases and the tools of destruction.

Breathlessly, they began to quickly fence off the square with their metal fortification "wall", closing off all access to her, an impenetrable rope that chokes her like another noose around her neck. This is how an inaccessible "Inside" and an "Outside" were created in Exarchia, declaring in the most emphatic way the height of their regime mentality and arrogance, that the public space of the city belongs to them and they close it as if it were their property, without they are accountable to no one.

This policy of Exarchaic interventions has long been shaped in the metropolises of neoliberal governance: radical sociologists have attributed it to the emergence of the "punitive state" (L. Wacquant) that replaced the welfare state and the formation of the city of "post-justice" (D. Mitchell) or the "vengeful city" (N. Smith). Such interventions have a completely unified framework of values, the promise of order and security to urban populations bombarded by reports that present the center as a hotbed of all manner of lawlessness. And absolutely the same purpose: to secure new areas of profitability for capital invested in urban gentrification and the private exploitation of public urban goods.

From this point of view, the metro station in the heart of Exarchia is not a technical choice, nor does it aim to serve the needs of the many. It is a key means of integrating a downtown neighborhood into a neoliberal planning strategy for the city of Athens. A few residents will benefit from the addition of a station in an area already served by stations that are already a short distance away (Omonoia, Victoria and Universidad), but also from two new ones added with line 4 (Moustoxidis and Akadimias), as and by bus lines (far more commuting opportunities than many comparable neighborhoods provide). The Exarchia with a station planted in their center (if it ever materializes) will after years be another link in the tourism of the city.

In the name of such a "developmental" future an important and emblematic open space of the city was turned into a private tenement, forbidding the citizens of Athens even to see inside. Why does the crime they commit in the middle of August need to go unnoticed, now that the city is empty. But the "sheets of shame" try in vain to hide the cutting and death of tall trees. The unprecedented destruction, no matter how many MAT they recruit, no matter how many sheets they raise, will characterize and stigmatize them forever. Revengeful urbanism, punitive invasion of a place that has long nurtured the questioning and alternative production of art and culture, practical reproduction of choices that expand "spatial injustice" and spatial stigmatization.

You turn the corner and you face the glaring eyes of the policemen standing in armor, scrutinizing you from top to bottom, as a potential suspect, as an illegal, something like the "internal enemies" watching and eavesdropping on Maximos. You are brave and live in an occupied and not a free country, where the many police officers on patrol make you feel like a stranger and unwelcome in your own neighborhood. Every now and then they create tensions for no reason, eagerly trying to turn the spotlight on the alleged episodes of the Exarchia, hoping that this way the mega scandal of illegal surveillance that has shaken the Panhellenic world and made our country internationally discredited will be forgotten.

But exactly the same is the cause of the democratic deviation, both in terms of "connections" (the recent euphemism for eavesdropping) and the annihilation of the capital's last open air and green spaces. Just as the individual freedom and the personal data of politicians, journalists and who knows how many others are violated, so is the democratic right of the citizens of Athens to have a say for their city and to fight for its defense. The "tin walls" of shame have already collapsed like paper towers in the eyes of the citizens, just by the fact that the construction site in the square is guarded and guarded by the very ones it is supposed to serve and facilitate.

What if the residents of the neighborhood are protesting: the family that lives in the apartment above, the neighbors from the neoclassical building across the street, the friends who live a few streets above? No one listened to their requests, no one discussed with them in the past, that is, they did not follow the democratic path of dialogue (when it comes to public projects) and not that of "we decide and order" that refers to the darkest authoritarian regimes. The imposition by force of the plans that the government is trying to implement, now in practice and in the most categorical way, shows the "respect" it shows to the opinion and the real needs of the citizens. It declares the complete discrediting of any prospect of participation of active citizens and their collectives in the planning of the city, which means: together with the residents and not against them, for the needs and dreams of the many and not for the profits of the few! At the same time, with systematic misinformation and propaganda, it attempts to impose a lie as truth: that supposedly only a small minority does not want the station in the square and that there are other reasons for the residents' reaction.

The residents, however, with their daily presence outside the "tin walls" shout and demonstrate about the disgrace that is taking place in their historic square and their slandered neighborhood. With the texts and posters that are stuck on the doors of the houses, with the open meetings that they organize every week for months, with the public discussions and now recently with the black flags that hang on their balconies as a sign of mourning for the final death of the unique lung of green they had left.

The self-organization of the residents through unguarded assemblies and actions of solidarity and companionship, is the only hope that nothing is lost yet. And it is the many who stand in the way of the temporary, but mainly long-term and definitive gentrification of their neighborhood. Only through the struggle of "active citizens" can the functioning of democracy be ensured, but also the future of the city as dreamed and defended by its inhabitants.

For what else is the city than its own inhabitants?