One year has passed since the State crime that led to the destruction of thousands of hectares of the natural world. Burned forests and dried up rivers, animals killed by the flames of capitalist development, all sacrificed on the altar of green investment. The first signs of this summer presage a repetition of the same project. And if last year the will met with ignorance in effective assistance, it is now more necessary than ever to use collective experience to overcome any mistakes, failures and even weaknesses.
The first images of the fiery devastation found all of us onlookers with the feeling of rage seizing the collective body. And it was that moment when you had to choose where you really belonged: next to those in immediate danger or in the warm embrace of your couch with the remote control turned into an extension of your arm. From the very first moment, hundreds of supportive people from political and social collectives, associations and institutions, groups and even individuals rushed to help at the operational and social level, where hundreds of fires were magically coordinated.
In Varibobi, in Evia, in Ilia, in Vilia and in any other place where we were needed, we became one of the inhabitants and an important part of the firefighters and international assistance forces who were indifferent to the central orders of the Ministries and the EMAK command. Orders that implicitly but clearly said: no assistance – no participation, let the place burn to the ground. An unprecedented wave of active solidarity against the generalized withering of collective perception, resignation and individualization was present in fighting the fire, searching, rescuing and caring for injured animals, sending support packages and building mutual aid structures for the victims.
In places where hours seemed like an eternity, we witnessed extreme images and emotions. We saw with our own eyes what massive losses and martyrdom meant as we encountered hundreds of animals dead from burns or suffocation along the way. We saw people desperate to lose the obvious overnight. We saw the ease with which government circles declassified entire areas that were previously protected and therefore productively unusable. Dozens of testimonies from residents and firefighters reached our ears about the deliberate negligence of the operational mechanisms of the Fire Brigade, at the same time that the Ministry of Civil Protection was sending suppression units to evacuate entire villages, so that there would be no witnesses. But we also saw smiles full of optimism, covering the dystopian sadness, from the local communities to each and every supportive person, smiles of people who could not fit in his mind that there were people who were at his side selflessly. People unknown to him, both locals and immigrants, who could not simply see death as an image on the news.
Today’s preclinical images show that this summer we are preparing to relive the same nightmare. And precisely because the salvation of the social base is in its own hands we must make past experience a weapon for today’s battles. Both as a movement and as a society in general, we must learn from our mistakes so that we do not have to repeat them.
Today more than ever we must prepare ourselves for what lies ahead. Political and social collectives must be a dynamic presence in local communities that will be in the crosshairs of the capitalist frenzy to spread organizational automatisms based on self-organization, on the margins and against all institutional and partisan do-gooders who instrumentalize for the benefit of their own projection of quinine solidarity. Our position must be unitary and indivisible, cultivating the collective consciousness that says «I live, protect and defend my place», aiming the arrows towards the rulers and not towards inter-social conflicts and cannibalism. We must activate and organize popular militias to patrol and guard our forests, prevention and operational intervention teams to help directly and effectively in the fight against fire, the rescue of animals and the creation of support structures, accommodation and care for those affected according to the needs that arise.
In this barbarism, characterized by the insolence and immoral gluttony of the State and the bosses, we must take sides to displace fear towards the palaces of tyranny. Those who today hold me captive, pretending that the attacks of Anarchist Action endanger human lives, are directly and totally responsible for the death of hundreds of our fellow human beings by fires, floods and all natural catastrophes, whose guilt lies in the anthropocentric intervention in the natural world and in the investment activity of the capitalist monopolies. They have covered up their crimes under the cloak of green growth, serving the interests of the European Commission in pursuit of energy imperialism. They are fully responsible for the massive loss of thousands of animals, for the destruction of forests, ecosystems, habitats, etc. They are fully responsible and must pay for everything, for the blood that is continuously shed to fill their pockets. They have fortunes, they have investments, they have total power around us, but we have the law and the law always triumphs over fear.
The coming period must find us united, angry and determined to be at the center of circumstances and social and class needs. For before us rises an organized project that sets its sights on our lives and on nature as a whole. We will never forget our fellow men, like the 38-year-old volunteer firefighter Vassilis Filora, who ended up with serious injuries on August 5, 2021, losing the battle for life on the operational front of the Hippocrates State. A man who gave his own life to save hundreds of people. In this dark age, the only flame worth lighting is that of rebellion. To cleanse this land of injustice and exploitation.
«You will be ashes, old world, you are destined to the path of destruction and you cannot bend us…»
Fire in the ballot boxes, not in the forests.
THANOS XATZIAGKELOU, captured member of the Anarchist Action Organization
Fourth Ward, Korydallos Prison
20/6/2022
| SOURCE: ATHENS INDYMEDIA TRANSLATION: ANARQUÍA |