Police Everywhere, Justice Nowhere

(The text below, translated into English, French, and Arabic, was distributed at today's demonstration against the State's racist and xenophobic policies. The demonstration, sadly, didn't end in a riot, but there was some spraypainting, huge canvas campaign posters were ripped from kiosks, the right-wing party's campaign booth was smashed, and so was a shop window. I think what was actually most significant about the protest was the tension in the air when it left Omonoia square. Of course, I don't know if everyone felt it but if you've been to a demonstration or two you've felt it before... )


Police Everywhere, Justice Nowhere


After three weeks of continuous police operations against immigrants in the center of Athens, one cop tears up a Koran carried by an immigrant. This was the reason for a large immigrant demonstration that clashed with the police, which ended with savage beatings, tear gas and arrests.

We know it is enraging to be driven off from your home, a place where povery and war rule, to be shot and hunted on the borders, to reach countries where you are welcomed with racist looks and behaviors, to live in horrible basements, to be given humiliating jobs and to be forced to wait in the line to get a permanency card. When they send cops into your neighborhood and fascists to humiliate, beat and arrest you, the only thing you can do is defend yourself.

The war of the police against the immigrants in the countries of the west is the other side of the war that the same countries conduct at the immigrants' lands. They are the same countries that cultivate islamophobia and racism because they need immigrants only as cheap labor for their own growth and well-being.

The immigrants' rage is justified and cannot be confied by political parties or any kind of leaders, which try to manipulate the immigrants' struggle for their own reasons. As long as we are split by borders, countries and religions, we will remain divided and weak. We see in the immigrants' struggle, the struggle for dignity and freedom and will be in the streets next to them at every act of resistance and self-defense against the police and fascist gangs.

IN THE BOSSES' WORLD WE ARE ALL STRANGERS
SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON

- Patision 61 & Skaramaga Squat