Pavlos Fyssas Murdered in Cold Blood by Neo-Nazis

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PAVLOS FYSSAS

Left Activist and Hip-Hop Artist


The Left and organised working class need to organise a powerful anti-fascist front. By Andros Payiatsos. Original published Sept. 19, 2013 in Xekinima (CWI Greece). Translation by Socialist World.

Pavlos Fyssas a.k.a. Killah P

Pavlos Fyssas
a.k.a. Killah P

Last night (18/09/13) the municipality of Keratsini in greater Piraeus, second largest city and biggest port in Greece, was overwhelmed by tens of thousands of anti-fascists from all over Piraeus and Athens. Piraeus has strong working class traditions and a history of struggles. The anti-fascists were expressing their anger at the cold-blooded murder of Pavlos Fyssas, a rap artist and anti-fascist activist.

Pavlos Fyssas was well-known for his bold anti-fascist songs and left ideas. He was attacked by Golden Dawn thugs in front of many witnesses and four (armed) policemen who did nothing to prevent the killing.

A supporter of Golden Dawn was arrested by police yesterday and he reportedly confessed to the murder. He was arrested on the spot. Although fatally wounded, Pavlos was able to point out his assailant to police. There were also many eye witnesses to the stabbing, as the attack took place in a central square.

After admitting having killed Pavlos Fyssas, the suspect said he was a member of Golden Dawn and that he visited the offices of Golden Dawn in the area very regularly, “five to ten times every month”.

The police searched the suspect’s house after the murder and found Golden Dawn literature and other party material. It is reported in the media that his wife told police that immediately before the suspect’s arrest he telephoned her and asked her to take all the Golden Dawn material away from their home and to bring it to the house of one of his relatives – who is the leader of Golden Dawn in the area.
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Costas Panayotakis in the NYTimes Examiner

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GREECE AND WEIMAR

Originally Published in NYTimes eXaminer
By Costas Panayotakis
Above: Anti-Fascist demonstration in Athens, Greece. Photo by NYT eXaminer.

Above: Anti-Fascist demonstration in Athens, Greece. Photo by NYT eXaminer.

The economic crisis, political and economic polarization, and the meteoric rise of the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party/criminal gang has given rise to a lot of comparisons between today’s Greece and the Weimar Republic, the period of German history in the 1920s that led to the rise of Hitler. Roger Cohen’s rehearsal of this theme(i) in The New York Times this week does not really add any insights to this conversation but simply advances a number of contradictory and misleading claims.

For example, while the column is entitled “Why Greece Isn’t Weimar,” Cohen begins by suggesting that the Greece/Weimar analogy is a valid one, attributing the rise of “violent extremism” in today’s Greece to the same ingredients of “national humiliation, economic disaster, high immigration, political division and international tutelage” that, in Cohen’s mind, can best be understood by “[l]ook[ing] no further than Weimar Germany.” By the end of his column, however, Cohen completely reverses himself by claiming that “[t]hrough Europe, Greece has been saved from the fate of Weimar.” In this respect, Cohen thinks, Greece today is more comparable to Germany after the war, when Europe, allowed Germany to “c[o]me back” by “help[ing] usher [it] from its cataclysmic ‘zero hour’ of 1945”.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of post-war Germany knows that this was a period of rapid economic reconstruction that led to Germany’s current status of an economic superpower within Europe. Only someone who naively accepts the Greek government’s narrative about Greece’s supposed economic recovery would seriously think that today’s Greece is closer to post-war Germany than to the Weimar Republic. As Cohen himself is aware, unemployment rates in Greece have skyrocketed to record levels, indeed levels surpassing the unemployment rate the United States experienced at the peak of the 1930s Depression. And yet Cohen assures us that Greece’s “economy is turning slowly” and that “the most acute phase of Greece’s economic crisis has passed.” The fact that Greece’s economy is still shrinking, but only by 4% a year, and that it will take decades for unemployment rates to return to normal levels of course explains why, as Cohen recognizes, “the most acute phase of [Greece’s] political trial is upon it.” In other words, it is easier to buy into the Greek government’s economic boosterism if you are a New York Times reporter than if you are an average person in Greece who, as Cohen himself admits, has yet to feel any improvement in their lives.
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AKNY – Stop Neo-Nazi Violence After Murder of Pavlos Fissas

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Support the Anti-Fascist Struggle in Greece

SIGN THE PETITION TO GOVERNMENT OF GREECE
By AKNY-Greece Solidarity Movement (www.AKNY.org)
& Syriza-U.S.F., New York (www.syriza-ny.org)
Stop Golden Dawn PetitionAround midnight on the 17th of September in Amfiali, a working class district of Piraeus, Pavlos Fyssas, a 34 year old musician, anti-fascist and community organizer, was stabbed to death by a gang of neo-Nazis, members of Golden Dawn. Pavlos was from a working class family, and, like his father, a member of the Metalworkers Union employed in the Perama Industrial Zone.

Based on eyewitness reports, Pavlos and his friends were chased down the street and assaulted by up to 25 neo-Nazi thugs. One of them pulled up in a car and stabbed Pavlos Fyssas three times while a group of police stood idly by, even discouraging onlookers from getting involved.

This last murderous strike against a well-known anti-fascist is neither random nor isolated. A Senior Consultant of Nikaia Hospital, where Pavlos died, said “yesterday’s murderers have been training on the bodies of immigrants for three years.” The man arrested for the murder, a GD member, was known in the area for his participation in these kinds of attacks.

The murder comes shortly after a similar attack on September 12th, when about 50 black-shirted supporters of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn group with crowbars and bats enhanced with nails and screws brutally attacked Greek Communist Party (KKE) and Communist Youth (KNE) members in the dock-side district of Perama near Piraeus. The unprovoked attack led to the serious injury and hospitalization of eight of them. Among the injured was Sotiris Poulikoyiannis, President of Pavlos’s union.

The attack once again was neither spontaneous nor haphazard. In a video taken on August 8th, still available at the GD’s official website, Golden Dawn MPs boast of their plans to use violence against workers who had been organizing against the bosses’ job cuts. So far no-one has been charged for these crimes.

AKNY – Greece Solidarity Movement, and Syriza- U.S.F. New York, denounce the systematic and well-orchestrated attempts on the part of Golden Dawn to cultivate a climate of violence and civil war. We stand with the hundreds of thousands who flooded the streets of Athens and many other cities all over Greece in the days after the attacks in protest against violence and the complicity of the police.

Compounding the tolerance of Golden Dawn by the ruling coalition, indeed its very encouragement of their actions through allowing police collaboration with GD thugs, is their ideological campaign to blame violence on “two extremes,” falsely equating violent fascists on the one hand with millions of workers and their allies fighting against the troika-imposed austerity, which the ruling coalition supports, on the other. It is this austerity against which teachers, other public sector workers and millions of other workers are striking this week. It is no coincidence that the fascist attacks happen right as the anti-austerity movement renews and deepens itself.

Please sign at Change.org to demand the prosecution of Golden Dawn to the fullest extent of the law, and to stand in solidarity with the people of Greece and all the people around the world fighting against fascism and for social justice and freedom of expression.

AKNY- Greece Solidarity Movement (www.AKNY.org)
Syriza-U.S.F., New York (www.syriza-ny.org)

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AKNY Petition In Support of Greek Teachers’ Strike

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Support Striking Greek Teachers!

Greek teachers and other public and private workers are under terrible assault.
We all have a stake in their successful resistance.
SIGN THE PETITION
To:
* Greek Federation of Secondary Education State School Teachers (OLME)
* AKNY-Greece Solidarity Movement and Syriza-New York
We Stand in Solidarity with Striking Teachers
and Other Public Employees in Greece
Statement by AKNY-Greece Solidarity Movement
(Web: http://www.akny.org/ and on Facebook).
and Syriza-New York (Web: http://www.syriza-ny.org/ and on Facebook.)

September 17, 2013

We stand in solidarity with OLME, the secondary education teachers union in Greece, which has launched a five–day rolling strike as of September 16th, following the decision of the teachers’ general assemblies. At the end of each five-day strike the teachers’ general assemblies will take stock of the situation and then decide on the course of the strike action.

Teachers here in the United States face a similar assault, with teacher layoffs, school closings, and relentless testing of students which serves to justify attacks on teachers rather than actually supporting and improving education.

In addition, we stand in solidarity with the many other public employees in Greece who are also going on strike to resist brutal government-imposed austerity measures, including staff at the social insurance funds, the state employment agency and labor ministry, and hospital workers.

The situation in public schools in Greece is dramatic. The “Troika” (the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank) and the cooperating Greek government of Samaras (New Democracy) and Venizelos (PASOK), using the economic crisis as a pretext, and without any communication with the interested parties, have taken a series of harsh measures such as
• 20% reduction of the number of teachers in secondary education since June 2013.
• Closing down of 102 Vocational Education Schools
• Suspension and possible dismissal of 2,500 Vocational Education Teachers
• 47% reduction of spending on education by 2016 compared to 2008
• compulsory transfer of 5,000 teachers to primary education and administration posts

These measures aim at privatizing part of vocational education, introducing apprenticeship as a form of minor/under-age employment replacing education process and at establishing a harsh, examination-centered system in all forms/grades of upper secondary education, forcing students to seek private tuition outside school and leading to school dropouts.

We support the striking teachers in Greece and demand that public education not be sacrificed to comply with the wishes of the “Troika.” The Greek teachers and the Greek people do not stand alone in this struggle. This struggle is not just for public education but also for workers dignity, civil rights and liberty and true democracy itself here in the United States and around the world.

NOTE: OLME intends to create a Solidarity Fund to support teachers in strike. You can contact OLME (@OLMEGR) at the details below.
OLME-GREEK FEDERATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION STATE SCHOOL TEACHERS
2, Kornarou & Ermou Str.
Athens (10563), GREECE
Tel: 0030 210 3230073-3221255
Fax: 0030 210 3311338-3227382
www.olme.gr
E-mail: olme@otenet.gr, and interolme@yahoo.gr

Sincerely,
[Your name]

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SAMARAS IN NEW YORK AT UNITED NATIONS

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Emergency Protest Against Greek
Prime Minister TODAY (August 9th)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

GREEK AMERICANS AND SUPPORTERS PROTEST
PRIME MINISTER SAMARAS VISIT IN NEW YORK
(See Facebook Invite)


On Friday, August 9 at 5pm in the Peace Park at 42nd Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, across the street from the United Nations, two groups are staging an emergency protest in solidarity with the ongoing struggles of the Greek people and against the visiting prime minister of Greece, Antonis Samaras. At that time, Samaras is scheduled to be meeting at the United Nations with UN General Secretary Ban-Ki Moon. “We want the media and the public to know what the Greek people know unfortunately all too well,” according to the protest statement from AKNY – Greece Solidarity Movement and SYRIZA-New York.

The groups’ statement blasts Samaras for leading a government that “devastates the economy, panders to the neo-Nazis, and destroys democracy.” Both groups have been active in left politics in New York since early 2012. They blame the austerity policies imposed by Greek governments, in concert with EU and IMF demands, for a staggering 28% unemployment rate. “Growing numbers of people can no longer afford to use hospitals,” according to their statement. “Poverty, hunger, homelessness and despair are growing rapidly. Suicide rates are skyrocketing.”

The statement continues, “The Samaras government has become increasingly authoritarian and repressive. It has moved the country toward the extreme right, legitimizing the neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-gay Golden Dawn Party by pandering to its anti-immigrant slogans. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the international media have documented the fact that Samaras’ conservative party, the police, and the judiciary have all turned a blind eye to the rise and escalation of criminal acts of Golden Dawn, which has grown rapidly as a result of the social havoc that austerity policies are causing. We are witnessing the evisceration of Greek democracy: extreme police violence against protesters, holding camps for immigrants, torture of prisoners, arrests of journalists… Golden Dawn refers to Jews as ‘vermin,’ and a Golden Dawn member of parliament reads aloud from the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion with no protest from the government. ”

“As bailouts for the rich and budget cuts for the rest are now becoming adopted in other European countries, the U.S. and beyond, it has become clear that what is happening in Greece affects us all. For this reason, we are here to express solidarity to the Greek people and to affirm that their struggle against Samaras’ brutal austerity policies is also our struggle.”

Please DOWNLOAD the Statement:
AKNY and Syriza-NY Protest Samaras at UN - 9 Aug 2013

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MEDITATIONS FROM A GREEK AMERICAN LIVING IN GREECE

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By Sia; Edited by Queen Arsem-O’Malley; picked up at youngist.org

RIGHT CLICK TO DOWNLOAD AUDIO

Lysistrata Lyceum

“A country that doesn’t take care of its children is a dead country.” – May 1968

Athina is an Atlantis
of cheap goldshops and arid goldmines,
firewood funerals fueling tears of teargas
choked amid a broke power of imagination,
infant whimpers collapsed upon their cradle-grave nation,
adolescent rage pierced by Alexis bullets that have
ricocheted onto the backs of all the yelasta paidia,
their paideia sold to a Common Market of common lessons
on how to think and how to congregate,
where to shit and how to clean up shit
in what the prime mini-master calls our New Greece.

They say utopia is the good place and also no place,
but dystopia is a place. It’s here,
its particulars not yet clear
but the main points etched onto troika memoranda,
making us a pile of shit, suspended in this system,
undesired, undeclared, under its table
until on the table they motion us to a special place,
unimaginable but real and definitely something of our own,
a fit-for-automatons Special Economic Zone,
where we can no longer close our noses
as we pass by open air prisons,
the sweat of migrants pervading spaces of exception(al) myths,
past shipyards and onto superyachts
of privatized isles with submerged fetuses,
no heirs for the patros, no soldiers for the ethnos,
just a multitude of concrete slabs of copulation
screwing doctrines into pipes of accumulation.

So let’s call this what it is, reclaim that fated no from fascist pigs
and fuckin’ strike for fuck’s literal sake,
put an end to this dead-end mode of re-production
and give ‘em that grand ultimatum of extinction:
We don’t get futures? They don’t get kids.
But in fact this the rulers already know and fear,
frantically teaching us that history’s actually not over,
desperate for its reconfigured doses of peripheral plunder,
ignoring the quakes and signs and cries
that bankers seeking bailout bangs can
live their myth in Greece but only until she dies.
Because when solidarity is trumped by polarity,
the greatest weapon of the people is refusing not labor but life itself,
not one more alexis, only patches of atlantis.
Youths of the world, wake up! unite, embrace our Common Deaths.
They give us no futures; we give them no kids.

Sia_photo

Sia, 24, is a first-generation Greek American who studied and organized for five years in Philly before spending this past year working and learning alongside comrades in Athens. She’s moving to New York City in August to begin graduate school in Sociology. Her “Meditations” are thanks to youngist.org

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SAKKAS CASE EXPOSES GREEK GOVERNMENT

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A dissident detained indefinitely without trial. A country in the grip of authoritarian rule and emergency decrees. A ruling party contemplating coalition with the Nazis. Hara Kouki and Antonis Vradis sum up the Greek situation in The Guardian, July 4, 2013:

In Greece, Things Move Fast –
Except Justice for Kostas Sakkas

Behind the anarchist’s hunger strike is the tale of his illegal detention. It would have sounded unbelievable in the recent past

By Hara Kouki and Antonis Vradis

A banner before the stage reads, immediate release of Kostas Sakkas, who is on hunger strike

Banner calls for immediate release of Kostas Sakkas, who is on hunger
strike following his illegal imprisonment. Photograph: Nikolas Georgiou/Corbis

What’s in a month? Thursday 4 July marks one calendar month since Kostas Sakkas – a 29-year-old anarchist arrested in Athens in December 2010 and held in prison without a trial since – started a hunger strike, demanding an end to his detention. According to Greek law, pre-trial detentions can extend to 18 months, or 30 in exceptional circumstances. On 4 June, having already reached his legal maximum time in pre-trial detention, Sakkas had it extended by another six months by an Athens court of appeal.

One full month on hunger strike: compared with the pace of wider social developments in recent years, Sakkas’s story looks slow-paced, sluggish even. After all, it took only a few hours for the Greek government to order and then execute the closure of ERT, the state broadcaster. Its decision to lower the gross monthly minimum wage to €586 was equally rapid, along with the selective introduction of a six-day working week and significant cuts to disability benefits – all bringing a lowering of the standard of living for thousands of people. Before that, it took an equally short period of time to cancel out the reform of the 2010 Greek citizenship law that had provided potential access to citizenship for second-generation immigrants, or to begin the Xenios Zeus operation, cracking down on suspected undocumented immigrants and sending them to newly established “holding centres” across the country.

Sakkas had been originally detained as part of the wave of arrests targeting the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire group. While clearly stating his own anarchist convictions, both Sakkas and the group itself have denied his active participation. But whether Sakkas was indeed a member is no longer the question, nor do the juridical authorities seem to care. Sakkas has been held in custody for what is a national record after a series of convictions of Greece by the European court of human rights in 1996 precisely for this type of violation; Epaminondas Korkoneas, the special guard who was eventually convicted for the death of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos that sparked the December 2008 riots, was temporarily released during his trial as his own pre-trial maximum had expired.

There may be no rational explanation behind the extension of Sakkas’s pre-trial detention, then. Yet by now this looks like one more exceptional event in the sea of exceptions that make up everyday reality here in Greece. Since May 2010, the majority of austerity-led cuts and redundancies (even if meticulously prepared for in the media discourse) have been announced and executed at a pace that would make it all but impossible for most of those affected to follow them, to express any concerns or, woe betide, dissent against them. Getting used to such a wave of attacks might seem normal; resisting this new normality could even appear to be meaningless, or futile.

What might the motive be that drives the Greek authorities’ decision to trample over the rights of a single dissident, to order the shutdown of its own broadcaster, or to sack public servants overnight? Sakkas’s absurd story may highlight something more alarming than a mere “tough stance” on a self-confessed enemy of the state. In a statement responding to a parliamentary dialogue concerning Sakkas’s case, New Democracy (the main government coalition party) not only didn’t try to defend this unprecedented breach of legality, but instead lashed out against the leftwing main opposition Syriza for defending “any sort of accused who are charged with anarchy and terrorism”. This would have sounded incomprehensible in the very recent past, as would have been the case with the call by Vyron Polydoras, an experienced New Democracy former cabinet member who explicitly called for his party to co-operate with the Nazi party Golden Dawn.

Sakkas’s case encapsulates precisely the nature of the injustice that reigns over daily life in Greece – and further afield. Across Europe, stories of police violence, governmental injustice and intrusion into citizens’ lives are rapidly turning into a banality; an alienation, even an outright rupture between state and society is building up fast. In our fast-moving times, a month feels like a lifetime. For Sakkas, it has become precisely that: he has now put his own life on the line.

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Left Forum, Πλατεία Ταξίμ και Αστόρια

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Κόκκινες σημαίες στο Πάρκο Ζουκότι

του Κωστή Καρπόζηλου (by Kostis Karpozilos, picked up from Enthemeta)

Zuccotti Park, June 8, 2013

Ζουκότι Παρκ, 8.6.2012. Η φωτογραφία από το σάιτ της
Αριστερής Κίνησης Νέας Υόρκης (AKNY.org)

Νέα Υόρκη, Πέμπτη 13.6.2013. Το μεσημέρι του Σαββάτου 8 Ιουνίου το πάρκο Ζουκότι, η καρδιά του Occupy Wall Street, γέμισε ξανά με συνθήματα. Η εκτυφλωτική κυριαρχία του κόκκινου προσφερόταν για νοσταλγικές αναπολήσεις, αλλά στη συγκέντρωση συμπαράστασης στους «φίλους, τους αδελφούς και τις αδελφές μας που έχουν καταλάβει το πάρκο Γκεζί στην Ιστανμπούλ» οι κόκκινες σημαίες, τα κόκκινα μπλουζάκια και τα κόκκινα καπέλα είχαν εθνικές συνδηλώσεις, καθώς ανήκαν σε τουρκο-αμερικανούς διαδηλωτές. Η ανθρωπογεωγραφία της συγκέντρωσης ήταν μια μικρογραφία των ανταποκρίσεων από την Κωνσταντινούπολη, καθώς μεσήλικες με σημαίες του Κεμάλ συνυπήρχαν αρμονικά με διοπτροφόρους νεαρούς που σε πιο υποψιασμένο ύφος έκαναν λόγο για τις «νεοφιλελεύθερες πολιτικές» του Ερντογάν.

Η επίδειξη των εθνικών συμβόλων του «παλιού κόσμου» στο αμερικανικό έδαφος είναι υπόθεση άξια συζήτησης από μόνη της. Ο τρόπος που η κοινωνική διαμαρτυρία διαπλέκεται με τις εθνοτικές κοινότητες είναι πασιφανής, για παράδειγμα, στην πρωτομαγιάτικη συγκέντρωση της Νέας Υόρκης, εκεί που οι σημαίες των χωρών της Λατινικής Αμερικής συμβαδίζουν με τα συνθήματα για τη νομιμοποίηση των μεταναστών. Η νέα γενιά μεταναστευτικού ριζοσπαστισμού ενώνει τις εξελίξεις σε διάφορα σημεία του πλανήτη με τις διεργασίες της αμερικανικής Aριστεράς. Το παράδειγμα της ελληνικής Αριστερής Κίνησης Νέας Υόρκης –που έγινε δεκτή πανηγυρικά από τους συγκεντρωμένους του Σαββάτου– συνιστά μια οικεία ένδειξη αυτής της κινητικότητας. Το ενδιαφέρον για την ελληνική κρίση και η νέα μεταναστευτική εκροή συναντήθηκαν με τις διεργασίες του κινήματος Occupy, με αποτέλεσμα σήμερα στην Αστόρια, την κατεξοχήν ελληνοαμερικανική γειτονιά, η τοπική πρωτοβουλία Occupy Astoria να αποτελεί σημείο συνάντησης ελλήνων, ελληνοαμερικανών και αμερικανών ριζοσπαστών.

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AKNY-GREECE UPDATE – JUNE 14-27, 2013

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AKNY-Greece Solidarity and this site are all-volunteer efforts without party affiliation or outside funding. Sometimes a lack of update here is in part because we are too busy with happenings in the real world. We plan to update the site more frequently in July. In the meantime, check out the latest!

Greece Solidarity in the News
& News from Greece

TONIGHT, 6/27: ALL ARE INVITED
Screening of the historical documentary hit, “Greek American Radicals – The Untold Story” at Brecht Forum, Manhattan, followed by Q&A with filmmakers, party, wine, pizza and live music. (FB invite)
GAR
AKNY IN THE MEDIA – JUNE 2013
New York Turkish-language newspaper Posta 212 interviews AKNY members on the joint Turkish-Greek solidarity action at Occupy Wall Street on June 8th.
Posta 212 Link

See photo essay here.


TURKS, GREEKS, BRAZILIANS JOIN IN PROTESTS IN US
The international rallies at OWS on 6/22 were also covered on CNN Turkey and in the English edition of mass-circulation Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.
#OccupyERT at #OWS

In solidarity with #OccupyERT at simultaneous Brazilian, Turkish and Greek rallies.
In Zuccotti Park, June 23. (From Hurriyet/AA Photo, more photos below.)

#OccupyERT – RECENT EVENTS IN GREECE

(6/27) In Athens last week, one of the junior partners in the Greek government, DIMAR (center-left, pro-austerity) quit the ruling coalition over the ERT issue. The New Democracy-led government under Prime Minister Samaras was reported to be on the brink of collapse. However, the remaining junior partner, PASOK, chose to stay in as the cabinet was reshuffled to advance loyal soldiers of the two austerity parties. The coalition retains a 3-vote majority in parliament.

The Finance Minister (ND) thereupon called for the studios of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) studios to be vacated. These have been occupied by employees since Wednesday June 12th, following the government’s surprise executive order to immediately shut down the public broadcaster. ERT studios and offices have been surrounded at times by tens of thousands of protesters under the banner of #OccupyERT.

ERT employees have continued producing news programs while members of the fired ERT orchestras have played open-air concerts for the protesters. A strike also temporarily shut down the private news broadcasters. Despite a Greek Supreme Court order for the government to allow ERT to continue broadcasting until the planned reorganization, ERT is only available online. However, ratings have shot through the roof as the network has for the first time turned to frank, unvarnished coverage of the nation’s crisis. (This week, ERT also broadcast the US-Greek historical documentary, “Greek American Radicals.”)

ERT employees have refused the vacate order and called on trade unions and everyone to join the manifestations and protect the studios. Trade union leaders are considering an open-ended general strike. ERT employees called on the diaspora for “Worldwide Solidarity with ERT” rallies.

The arrival of riot police to execute the vacate order is considered possible at any time. Scenes reminiscent of the recent weeks in Istanbul may follow.

“WHO IS ROCKING THIS CRADLE OF DEMOCRACY?”
Host Jerry Ashton interviews Nikos Levis on Greek crisis, #OccupyERT
and international solidarity activity for WGRNRadio’s “15 Minutes of Fact.”

“HOW THREE COUNTRIES FOUND THEMSELVES”
(Solidarity Brazil, Turkey, and Greece)
Video by George Lyter taken at Zuccotti Park, June 23.

MORE PHOTOS FROM JUNE 23 AT ZUCCOTTI PARK:June23 #OccupyERT at Zuccotti ParkJune23_Brazil-Turkey-Greece_at_OWS_1June23_Brazil-Turkey-Greece_at_OWS_2June23_Brazil-Turkey-Greece_at_OWS_3June23_Brazil-Turkey-Greece_at_OWS_4From Hurriyet photo gallery. Credit: AA Photo.

Note: The above is a compilation from many sources. No endorsements are implied.

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AKNY STATEMENT ON GREECE UNDER AUTHORITARIAN RULE

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Democracy Under Attack – The People Resist

By AKNY-Greece Solidarity Movement

As the austerity program imposed on Greece by the EU-led Troika continues to devastate the economy, tear the social fabric into shreds, and ruin the lives of workers and ordinary citizens, the Greek government increasingly resorts to patently undemocratic practices that attack basic human rights. We note three recent examples that demonstrate the tendency of brutal austerity to transform itself into an anti-democratic, state authoritarianism:

1 – This week the Samaras government issued an executive decree to immediately shut down ERT, Greece’s public television and radio, on less than 24 hours notice, without prior warning. The riot police disabled transmitters so that the programs produced by ERT journalists and workers who occupied the studios could not be disseminated. Both the popular mobilization against this outrageous decision and the ERT employees’ decision to assume control of production against the wishes of the Samaras government are heartening developments and deserve our support.

We are holding a New York action in solidarity with #OccupyERT tomorrow!
Saturday June 15, at Zuccotti Park, from Noon until 4 pm.
See here or download flyer or join the FB event:
OccupyERTBanner
#OccupyERT, June 13

#OccupyERT in Athens, ERT Headquarters, June 13th:
More than 100,000 people rallied on the second day of protests to
save public broadcasting, as ERT workers occupy the studios and refuse to move.

2 – The preemptive use of civil mobilization to prevent a strike by secondary school teachers in May was the third time in a few months that the Greek government has resorted to this extreme measure, making it clear that it will no longer tolerate the basic right of Greek workers to go on strike when their livelihoods as well as their basic rights and working conditions are frontally attacked.

3 – Contrast the Greek government’s zero tolerance for strikes to its equanimity with respect to the fascist thugs of Golden Dawn. The government’s tolerance of neo-Nazi violence has most recently been confirmed by its decision to shelve the anti-racist legislation prepared by the government’s own Minister of Justice. This development makes clear that the current government will do anything to cling to power, including sacrificing the basic human rights daily attacked by neo-Nazi thugs in order to ingratiate itself to the xenophobic segment of the Greek public that is either already supporting Golden Dawn or might conceivably do so if the current government does not prove racist enough against immigrants.

As these examples demonstrate, resistance against the criminal austerity policies imposed by the Greek government is essential – not only because a stop to the continued immiseration of workers and ordinary people in Greece is long overdue comma but also because a continuation of these policies is impossible without an accelerated erosion of basic democratic rights.

For all these reasons, we declare our solidarity and unflinching support to all the political forces and social movements in Greece, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa that are fighting against the barbarism of solving capitalism’s crisis on the backs of those least responsible for it.

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