Many of us felt like this in the late 60's-early 70's. I glimpse it now in the struggles for justice for immigrant and other low wage workers that are supported by the Workers Center that is the focus of my political work.
The author(s) are The Movements for the Generalisation of Revolt, a group of anarchist workers who occupied the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE, a Greek Trade Union) building during the December uprising.
I don't know anything about GSEE or the occupiers, but It's the passion, the confidence, the solidarity... so missing from US political and labor institutions that appeals to me. It's what the many apologists for capitalism and empire dismiss as utopianism. They ignore that the analysis and the solutions (which they repeatedly call for) don't exist outside of radical working class consciousness and resistance. We may disagree on programs and strategies, but something in the following strikes me as authentic, and a voice radicals in the US should want to hear.
"Nothing will ever be the same" in Greece (more at link)
http://libcom.org/news/nothing-will-...-same-22122008
"The bullet that pierces Alexis’s heart was a bullet to the heart of exploitation and repression for an important part of this society who knows that it has nothing to lose apart from the illusion that things might get better. The events following the murder proved that for a large part of the exploited and oppressed have sank in this swamp up to their neck, and this swamp has just overflowed and threatens to drown bosses and politicians, parties and state institutions. It’s running its course to clean this dirty world that is based upon the exploitation of human by human and the power of few over the many. It filled our hearts with confidence and filled the hearts of bosses with fear.
The destruction of the temples of consumption, the re-appropriation of goods, the ‘looting’ that is, of all these things that are taken from us, while they bombard us with advertisements, is the deep realization that all this wealth is ours, because we produce it. ‘We’ in this case means all working people as a whole. This wealth does not belong to the shop-owners, or the bankers, this wealth is our sweat and blood. It is the time that bosses steal from us every day. It is our sickness when we start our pension. It is the arguments inside the bedroom and the inability to meet a couple of friends on a weekend night. It is the boredom and loneliness of Sunday afternoon and the choking feeling every Monday morning. As exploited and oppressed, immigrants or greek, as working people, as jobless, students or pupils, we are called now to answer back to the false dilemma posed by the media and the state: are we with the ‘hoodies’ or are we with the shop-owners. This is dilemma is only a decoy.
Because the real dilemma that the media do not want you to ask is: are you for the bosses or are you for the workers? Are you for the state or for the revolt? And this is the one reason that journalists need to do their best to defame the movement, talking about ‘hoodies’, ‘looters’ etc. The reason they want to spread fear among the oppressed is simple: the revolt makes their position – and that of their bosses – very precarious. Revolt turns against the reality they create, against the feeling of ‘all goes well’, against the separation between ‘rightfully sentimental revolt’ and ‘extremist elements’ and finally against the distinction between ‘outlaws’ and peaceful protesters.
In this dilemma we have one answer: we are for the ‘hoodies’. We are the ‘hoodies’. Not because we want to hide our face, but because we want to make ourselves visible. We exist. We wear hoods not for the love of destruction but for the desire to take our life in our hands. To build upon the grave of commodities and powers a different society. A society where everybody will decide collectively in general meetings of schools, universities, workplaces and neighbourhoods, about everything that concerns us, without the need of political representatives, leaders or comissars. A society where we will all together guide our fortunes and where our needs and desires will be in our hands, and not those of every MP, mayor, boss, priest or cop.
The hope for this life was put back on the table by the barricades that were set up everywhere in Greece and in solidarity abroad. It remains to make this hope a reality. The possibility of such a life is now put to the test by public assemblies in occupied municipal buildings, trade union buildings and universities in Athens and elsewhere in Greece, where everybody can freely express her opinions and shape her action collectively, based on her desires and needs. The dream of this life has started taking shape.
What remains to do to see this dream realised?
We should organise in our paces of study, work and habitation. In our workplaces we discuss our everyday problems and we create nuclei of resistance against the terror of the bosses. In our schools we contribute and support their occupations, we create counterinformation groups, we organise lectures and workshops, we question sovereign knowledge, we produce new knowledge geared to our needs and not those of capital. In neighbourhoods and housing blocks we talk to our neighbours, we create gatherings and committees, we share knowledge and skills, we decide collectively for actions. We take part in marches and protests, we stand by each other, we break the fear that is spread by the state, we help the pupils that are now bearing the brunt of the attack of the state. We stand in solidarity to those arrested in the revolt, both greeks and immigrants, in Greece and abroad, most of which are now prosecuted with every legal trick in the arsenal of counter-terrorism laws because they opposed the dictates of the state.
Everything begins now. Everything is possible."
Originally Posted by curt_b
