Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:50:50 +0100 From: ionnek Subject: [Euromayday] summaries about Greece To: networkers of europe united for a eurowide mayday Message-ID: <493F9F0A.4050708@gmx.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi, Indymedia UK has a summary on the insurrections in Greece in English, http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/414640.html Indymedia Germany in German http://de.indymedia.org/2008/12/234980.shtml Both summaries also include info about solidarity demos in other european countries. Detailed eyewitness reports from the streets are in the occupiedlondon weblog, which is written by or in collaboration with people who are in Greece at the moment. ————- summary of the following: an emotional rant about open versus specific demands, my - possibly idealising - view of the euromayday network followed by a tentative proposal. ————- I talked to some sympathetic people who are involved in local politics here in Switzerland, who had first heard about the killing and the demonstrations through the mainstream media. The question was: "what exactly is it they want?" Because the newspapers report as if it was a spontaneous, quasi irrational mob-reaction - violent youth etc. In Thessaloniki, a "Communique from the Occupied School of Theatre" counters this mob-interpretation: "But rage isn’t just an emotion. It is a fight for social justice. A justice that is evident now that as long as it’s absent from the social reality there will be no social peace, because with such submission and such social inequality only graveyards can claim social peace. Just because we are young like alexandros, just because we want to dream with dignity where the state and the authorities seed submission and despair. Because we want to live and not just get by this winter, we are enraged and fight for all these." The most tangible demands in the statement are for an end to police repression, obviously. Others are much more open and everyday-related: social justice, dignity, "we want to live and not just get by this winter". Somehow these open demands remind me of the debates we had at the Euromayday meeting in February this year - is it enough to have open demands like "global social rights", demands that can be specified differently in different local contexts? Or do we need more specific demands, demands which can lead to measurable results? My gut feeling is that the wider movements against neoliberal globalisation are right in using open demands - those that can easily connect across states and cultural/political backgrounds. I think that we don’t yet have THE SOLUTION, policies that can be rejected or implemented by the authorities. I don’t even know if it is possible to construct a specific alternative which would work in every single state across Europe. I see these open demands as a way to invent / construct / create politics that work beyond the nation state, and which can be adapted tactically to each specific situation - basic income, health insurance, contracts, free spaces… But at the same time, I find it difficult to translate these open demands to "the normal world", to people who are questionning formulas like "social rights", "social peace" etc, and want to know specifically what this means. My way to deal with this is to narrate examples. But there must be better ways! I don’t know how people on this list see it, but to me, EuroMayDay is a format and focus in a wider assembly of social movements. A continuous, transnationally connected movement which theorises the conditions of precarisation in a practical way - through interventions, the creation of images, subjectivities, through re-establishing the first of may as a day of celebration and struggle owned by those who need to sell their labour to survive. Something that, if things go well, creates a point of convergence in addition to social forums, large mobilisations, gatherings at conferences and in connection to other struggles. One thing that strikes me when reading the reports about Greece is how fast solidarity actions are springing up all over Europe. These are rarely reported in mainstream media, and this practice is not really on the screen of social movement research. They are reported on alternative media, and I am under the impression that they stay within the classic alternative media audience of movements and left-leaning sympathisers, that they rarely travel across the boundary between radical politics and the mainstream. But to me - maybe mistakenly, maybe in gross over-estimation, they confirm that there is a real transnational movement. A movement which recognises itself in practices of protest, even without regular, organised, visible conferences and well-formulated statements. Without being able to put my finger on it, I live under the impression that "we" (whoever that is exactly) are aware of something really important, that we are reacting against the many-headed regime of control on every level of live - work, entertainment, communication, social relations. And I see Euromayday as a format which tries to theorise this regime practically. Now this impression might be a result on my focus on media - because I take reports on indymedia and elsewhere as realities, not as representations, and because I am now working on the functions of media from an academic angle as well. Because I am not involved on the day-to-day work of a local group, I might be too optimistic. I see the connections between the various euromaydays scattered across europe, just from the images of demos and parades, but I don’t really experience the frustrations that might appear when not enough people are around to keep all the different angles of work going. I wonder if it would be a good idea to establish an online euromayday meeting point for those who feel like popping into a chatroom once in a while? Maybe this exists anyway between some groups, maybe it would just be seen as an additional duty, but maybe it could also help to exchange experience, discuss strategies, share knowledge etc? Just an idea - ionnek