Fascists, out! Anti-fascist gathering at Attikis square, Athens: October 8th at 6pm

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Two great posters have come out calling for an anti-fascist gathering at Attikis Square, tomorrow (Friday, October 8th) at 6pm. There is also an assembly tonight at 8pm at the Gini Auditorium in the Athens Polytechnic, to discuss the logistics of the demonstration.
Attikis square is in the heart of a vibrant area with a large migrant community, where fascist groups have recently tried to make a visible presence. The square of Ayios Panteleimonas, an operational centre for these fascist groups, lies only a few yards away. Tomorrow’s demonstration, for this reason, will be crucial.

DIVIDE AND RULE.

It is the policy that promotes interclass conflict in order to strengthen
state power and sovereignty of the capitalist system.
This is the policy of state power through which the immigrants of the ‘second and third generation’
are used as tools against the so called “new” immigrants.

The same fascist logic that until yesterday was striving against us
today is using us as a tool to serve their political interests and racist purposes.
Do not forget that we the Albanians immigrants always represented “the rubbish” from which they want to “clean” the squares.
Do not forget that our common enemy is the exploitative and oppressive
system, the state and its tools.

Gathering of Solidarity at Attiki Square on 8 October at 18.00

Against the social and state racism.
Against the fascist and nationalist logic
Solidarity is our weapon against the racist policies that aim at the
discrimination of immigrants and sustain racial discrimination.
For a self-organization of immigrants and a common struggle
via anti-racist collectivities for a life of freedom and dignity.

Forum of Albanian Immigrants.

“Migrants United, Fascists Trashed” (Poster in the Albanian language by the Albanian Migrant Forum)

• The fascists’ knives

Recently, fascist and nationalist violence has been on the rise once again in the wider area of Ayios Panteleimonas. From September 11th to September 14th, fascist gangs used the cover of some locals and the police to attack, beat and stab migrants and to smash up their shops. Yet the migrants don’t retreat. They defend their lives, they crouch together and defend against far-right attacks and pogroms. Ahead of the [local municipality] elections the far-right is intensifying its shouting against migrants who “steal our jobs” and “are responsible for the crisis”. At the same time [the far-right parliamentary party] LAOS is voting in favour of the IMF agreement while organised gangs support the “average greek tradesman” – that is, the same person who has for years now exploited their employees, whether local or not.

• are supplied by the state

The “citizen protectors” arrest, beat up, torture and arrest injured migrants. The local police station enforces the policy of the state and its bosses against the migrants. A policy which names endless policing as “citizen protection” and equates “organised crime” with “petty thieves”. A policy creating migrant detention centres, spills blood on the borders of the EU and names “illegal” all those forced away from their places.

• they’re sharpened by mass media and the national body

Mass media, regularly hiding away reality, present the groups of neo-nazis, macho greeks, racists and descendants of nazi collaborators as “groups of enraged locals”. They hide away racist pogroms, the stabbing of migrants and police violence and they instead project “a suffocating situation” and “increased crime rates”.
In the midst of the crisis they continue to target migrants as a “national threat to health, national order and security”. They are moulding a national body on behalf of those who sit on our necks, perpetuating national divides, racism and xenophobia.

Common Struggles by locals and migrants

Us locals and migrants must find common ground to breach national unity, to create embankments, to fight together against all sorts of fascists, the attack launched by the state and bosses, the contempt for our lives.

Solidarity gathering: Attikis Square,

Friday October 8th, 6 pm

AGAINST EXCLUSION, RACISM
AND SOCIAL CANNIBALISM
People in Solidarity