[Greece] Workers and Youth together on the streets to Overthrow The Government!
OKDE | 18.12.2008 00:59 | Repression | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | Birmingham | Liverpool
EVERYBODY ON THE STREETS - Workers and Youth together
With Occupations - General Disobedience - Political Strike
TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT OF THE MURDERERS!
The stream of rage got overflowed by the cruel assassination of the 16–year–old boy. “Alex was one of us” is declared by thousands of young people against a regime that shutters their lives. Among the workers, the tragic dead ends of the policies of all the governments are revealed, the anxiety to find a way out of the crisis increases and a path to intervene into the developments, in a mass militant way, is sought.
Enough with the hooliganism of the repressive apparatuses!
The assassination of the 16-year-old boy was not an “isolated incident” due to “loss of temper”, or “over-eagerness”, or “lack of training” or… The provocative plea of the Special Forces’ guard and his layer clearly show that the police and the repressive apparatus have broken loose. Flower stands break demonstrators’ heads and the guilty remain unpunished. Police officers are involved in trafficking and drag deals and at the same time they humiliate, torture and assassinate immigrants. Bigoted squads, using tear gasses, disperse “terrorist”- students, trampling underfoot and arresting everybody, without discrimination. Special Forces’ guards and police officers on motorbikes show off their guns and shoot. Underage boys and girls are taken into custody accused of “setting up criminal gangs”, Ministers of Public Order praise the MAT forces as “praetors” and tell them: “you are the state” (Mitsotakis).
It is them who drag hundreds of militants in court and proclaim that the strikes are “illegal and undue”. It is them who are responsible for the abductions of the Pakistanis as well as for the wire tapping scandal. The “special police forces”, armed to the teeth, turn into gangs of thugs, while, now, the government permits the private security forces to carry guns too!
Money for the banks - Poverty and bullets for the workers and the youth!
Karamanlis has not even mumbled an apology for the dead boy or for the dead ends that the policy of his government has brought about. Talking like a little tin god, he asks from the workers and the young to lock themselves in their houses, shaking with fear. The efforts of the government to cancel the rallies and the demonstrations on 10th of December show their dangerous policies: to deal with the situation by suspending the democratic liberties and strengthening repression.
These are the same people who are deep in corruption: the Siemens and Vatopedi scandals, the bonds, the rich friends of the government who squander away everything, in an endless junketing. While “there are no money” for salaries and public expenditure, the government gives away billions of euros to the bankers. They sell out what is left (Olympic airlines, ports, trains, etc), push the social security funds to bankruptcy, bring health and education systems to the verge of collapse, go on making the working relations more flexible and breaking them up. All these grew big the so called “generation of the 700 euros”, which was only recently discovered and hypocritically whimpered about, by the media. All these flame up unemployment, insecurity and despair, which are now admitted by everyone to being the background of the current situation.
The movement's attitude towards the "clashes" and "destructions"
In every big social crisis, like the current one, there are “uncontrollable” phenomena (like the ones we saw at the suburbs of Paris). The government, all the official parties and the media put an emphasis on the “clashes” in order to cover up the essence, mobilize the most reactionary reflexes and open the way to the strengthening of suppression. The workers’ and the youth’s movement should not bow at the screams of bourgeois legitimacy. Those who destroy the workers and the youth are not entitled to talk about “destructions”. Those who give away 28 billion euros to the banks, who really plunder the salaries and wages, the working relations, the public wealth, the public expenditures, are not entitled to talk about “plundering”. Enough with their hypocrisy that the immigrant poor devil, the young person living in the fringe, the poor worker or pensioner who, in their poverty and despair, laid hands on whatever the “free market” deprives them of, are to blame. Woe is you, Scribes and Pharisees!
The spreading of the clashes proves the depth of the social crisis, which the media try to hide behind provocative rumors about “anarchists moving from place to place” and “unpatriotic centres”. Blind clashes, however, do not offer a way out despite the justified rage against the police.
The workers’ and the youth movement should raise their own answer. Not to side with the screams asking for “condemnation of the clashes”, “order and security”; to pave the way with their own massive movement, their own forms of struggle and their own demands; to protect the character of their mobilizations, which cannot be a blind outbreak; to organize the massive self-defense against the police violence and repression.
Enough with the parties of deception and the "crutches of the government"!
The official political scene has shown how rotten it is. PASOK does nothing but asking for elections, aiming at the power. LAOS has become the unofficial spokesperson of the far right gangs and of “Chrisi Avgi”. KKE, instead of showing the causes of the crisis and turn against the government, has sided with it: it talks about provocateurs, beyond any measure, hits the organizations of the anti-capitalist left, the militants as well as SYN/SYRIZA below the belt, using the most reactionary arguments and, thus, weakening the workers’ and youth’s front against the government. The trade union bureaucracy not only does nothing to organize the workers reply, but it also bows to the government and the parliamentary games, as the cancellation of the strike demonstration of 10/12 showed. This decision was agreed on by SYRIZA, a fact which shows the boundaries of its policy.
The only way out is the mass struggle for overthrowing the government
We are at a crossroads. The only solution which can give some relief from the current crisis to society is to overthrow the government. The movement must give its answer, at this crucial moment. It must not give the government the time needed to reconstruct itself. It must not allow the government –this or the subsequent one- to continue the policies which led to the current situation. If we do, the government will attempt to strengthen repression, using as a pretext the “hooded youngsters” but turning, in fact, against democratic liberties, as well as all the organizations and struggles of the movement.
No worker must allow the government to counterattack. The only way out is the struggle for its overthrowing, through a mass movement. We should struggle to set up occupations in every school and university school, which will be used as the organizational centre of the struggle and help its spreading everywhere. We should set up united action committees of high school and university students and workers.
Inside work places, we should open a spirited discussion not only on the causes of the crisis, but also on the need for the workers to struggle and intervene actively in order to overthrow the anti-labour, anti-popular and murderous government of Karamanlis. We should give the trade union bureaucracy a rough time, call for general assemblies and take decisions for strikes. We should demand: A GENERAL POLITICAL STRIKE NOW. DOWN WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF MURDERERS, OF POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT. This is the way to pave the way for the satisfaction of the workers’ and the youth’s demands, for our solutions on how to be saved from the economic and social crisis that the government and the bourgeoisie try to load on us.
DOWN WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF MURDERERS AND ITS POLICY
- Pavlopoulos and Chinofotis must resign now. Immediate and exemplary punishment of those who are guilty.
- Immediate disarmament of the police. No forces of repression at the demonstrations. MAT and Special Forces must be broken up now.
- Release of all the arrested.
- Escalation of the struggle for the social and political rights of the workers and the youth. The crisis must be paid by the capital.
Organization of Communists Internationalists of Greece (OKDE)
http://www.okde.gr/index.php/languages/english/everybody_on_the_streets_-_workers_and_youth_together.html
With Occupations - General Disobedience - Political Strike
TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT OF THE MURDERERS!
The stream of rage got overflowed by the cruel assassination of the 16–year–old boy. “Alex was one of us” is declared by thousands of young people against a regime that shutters their lives. Among the workers, the tragic dead ends of the policies of all the governments are revealed, the anxiety to find a way out of the crisis increases and a path to intervene into the developments, in a mass militant way, is sought.
Enough with the hooliganism of the repressive apparatuses!
The assassination of the 16-year-old boy was not an “isolated incident” due to “loss of temper”, or “over-eagerness”, or “lack of training” or… The provocative plea of the Special Forces’ guard and his layer clearly show that the police and the repressive apparatus have broken loose. Flower stands break demonstrators’ heads and the guilty remain unpunished. Police officers are involved in trafficking and drag deals and at the same time they humiliate, torture and assassinate immigrants. Bigoted squads, using tear gasses, disperse “terrorist”- students, trampling underfoot and arresting everybody, without discrimination. Special Forces’ guards and police officers on motorbikes show off their guns and shoot. Underage boys and girls are taken into custody accused of “setting up criminal gangs”, Ministers of Public Order praise the MAT forces as “praetors” and tell them: “you are the state” (Mitsotakis).
It is them who drag hundreds of militants in court and proclaim that the strikes are “illegal and undue”. It is them who are responsible for the abductions of the Pakistanis as well as for the wire tapping scandal. The “special police forces”, armed to the teeth, turn into gangs of thugs, while, now, the government permits the private security forces to carry guns too!
Money for the banks - Poverty and bullets for the workers and the youth!
Karamanlis has not even mumbled an apology for the dead boy or for the dead ends that the policy of his government has brought about. Talking like a little tin god, he asks from the workers and the young to lock themselves in their houses, shaking with fear. The efforts of the government to cancel the rallies and the demonstrations on 10th of December show their dangerous policies: to deal with the situation by suspending the democratic liberties and strengthening repression.
These are the same people who are deep in corruption: the Siemens and Vatopedi scandals, the bonds, the rich friends of the government who squander away everything, in an endless junketing. While “there are no money” for salaries and public expenditure, the government gives away billions of euros to the bankers. They sell out what is left (Olympic airlines, ports, trains, etc), push the social security funds to bankruptcy, bring health and education systems to the verge of collapse, go on making the working relations more flexible and breaking them up. All these grew big the so called “generation of the 700 euros”, which was only recently discovered and hypocritically whimpered about, by the media. All these flame up unemployment, insecurity and despair, which are now admitted by everyone to being the background of the current situation.
The movement's attitude towards the "clashes" and "destructions"
In every big social crisis, like the current one, there are “uncontrollable” phenomena (like the ones we saw at the suburbs of Paris). The government, all the official parties and the media put an emphasis on the “clashes” in order to cover up the essence, mobilize the most reactionary reflexes and open the way to the strengthening of suppression. The workers’ and the youth’s movement should not bow at the screams of bourgeois legitimacy. Those who destroy the workers and the youth are not entitled to talk about “destructions”. Those who give away 28 billion euros to the banks, who really plunder the salaries and wages, the working relations, the public wealth, the public expenditures, are not entitled to talk about “plundering”. Enough with their hypocrisy that the immigrant poor devil, the young person living in the fringe, the poor worker or pensioner who, in their poverty and despair, laid hands on whatever the “free market” deprives them of, are to blame. Woe is you, Scribes and Pharisees!
The spreading of the clashes proves the depth of the social crisis, which the media try to hide behind provocative rumors about “anarchists moving from place to place” and “unpatriotic centres”. Blind clashes, however, do not offer a way out despite the justified rage against the police.
The workers’ and the youth movement should raise their own answer. Not to side with the screams asking for “condemnation of the clashes”, “order and security”; to pave the way with their own massive movement, their own forms of struggle and their own demands; to protect the character of their mobilizations, which cannot be a blind outbreak; to organize the massive self-defense against the police violence and repression.
Enough with the parties of deception and the "crutches of the government"!
The official political scene has shown how rotten it is. PASOK does nothing but asking for elections, aiming at the power. LAOS has become the unofficial spokesperson of the far right gangs and of “Chrisi Avgi”. KKE, instead of showing the causes of the crisis and turn against the government, has sided with it: it talks about provocateurs, beyond any measure, hits the organizations of the anti-capitalist left, the militants as well as SYN/SYRIZA below the belt, using the most reactionary arguments and, thus, weakening the workers’ and youth’s front against the government. The trade union bureaucracy not only does nothing to organize the workers reply, but it also bows to the government and the parliamentary games, as the cancellation of the strike demonstration of 10/12 showed. This decision was agreed on by SYRIZA, a fact which shows the boundaries of its policy.
The only way out is the mass struggle for overthrowing the government
We are at a crossroads. The only solution which can give some relief from the current crisis to society is to overthrow the government. The movement must give its answer, at this crucial moment. It must not give the government the time needed to reconstruct itself. It must not allow the government –this or the subsequent one- to continue the policies which led to the current situation. If we do, the government will attempt to strengthen repression, using as a pretext the “hooded youngsters” but turning, in fact, against democratic liberties, as well as all the organizations and struggles of the movement.
No worker must allow the government to counterattack. The only way out is the struggle for its overthrowing, through a mass movement. We should struggle to set up occupations in every school and university school, which will be used as the organizational centre of the struggle and help its spreading everywhere. We should set up united action committees of high school and university students and workers.
Inside work places, we should open a spirited discussion not only on the causes of the crisis, but also on the need for the workers to struggle and intervene actively in order to overthrow the anti-labour, anti-popular and murderous government of Karamanlis. We should give the trade union bureaucracy a rough time, call for general assemblies and take decisions for strikes. We should demand: A GENERAL POLITICAL STRIKE NOW. DOWN WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF MURDERERS, OF POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT. This is the way to pave the way for the satisfaction of the workers’ and the youth’s demands, for our solutions on how to be saved from the economic and social crisis that the government and the bourgeoisie try to load on us.
DOWN WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF MURDERERS AND ITS POLICY
- Pavlopoulos and Chinofotis must resign now. Immediate and exemplary punishment of those who are guilty.
- Immediate disarmament of the police. No forces of repression at the demonstrations. MAT and Special Forces must be broken up now.
- Release of all the arrested.
- Escalation of the struggle for the social and political rights of the workers and the youth. The crisis must be paid by the capital.
Organization of Communists Internationalists of Greece (OKDE)
http://www.okde.gr/index.php/languages/english/everybody_on_the_streets_-_workers_and_youth_together.html
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