AutoritetskritikZIZANIA squatted social center in Viktoria and Ano Kato squatted steki in
Patissia have been evicted.
Zizania is a squatted social center that opened in early April 2021, during the second lockdown and shortly after the events of Nea Smyrni. In this context, we chose to open a squat in Viktoria– having in mind the hard repression that hit the squatting movement over the last years, the huge loss of organising spaces, the policing and privatisation of public spaces, and the marginalisation of the area of Viktoria and its struggles. We chose to squat this specific building both for its central location and its 30 year old history of being a self-organised space(with breaks) in this neighbourhood of the marginalised, the left aside,the undesirable.
Viktoria is where we live, where we met, and in different ways became part of the area’s constant struggles. It’s a neighbourhood of the marginalized— migrants, queer people, sex workers, drug users, poor people, and those the state and society pushes to the outside. It is created and maintained by racist police checks, fascist attacks, sexist harassment, forced social isolation, and deep housing precarity while replicating Greece’s external borders in its criminalisation of people of colour through barriers to healthcare, documents, work and education.
In response to such large-scale capitalist structures and intentions we squat to reassert an antifascist, antipatriarchal presence and consciousness in the area. To shape and build community through practices of mutual aid, active solidarity, inclusive and horizontal organization. To challenge, deconstruct and seek to abolish all norms.
For 2 years Zizania squatted social centre organised vegan social kitchens, various workshops, feminist Kafeneios, film screenings,political discussions, solidarity bars, language classes and self-organised food distribution. We created a freeshop, library and barbershop and provided space for various assemblies which participate in different struggles. Through the anarchist political principles of mutual aid and solidarity the open social centre structure created aspace to enact non-hierarchical and anti-patriarchical organising of daily life accessible to the neighbourhood. We were also active on the square of Viktoria through organising various political and social events while resisting police sweeps and attempts to
privatise the plateia.
For us the way forward is to resist and confront the capitalistic and legal structures that brought us here. We squat against cops, state,real-estate, patriarchy, church and ordinary indifference. We see this as a radical move to continue our struggles together and embed them inthe neighbourhood. We squat to breathe new life into abandoned spaces and open up new possibilities. We rely on ourselves and our relations.
It is clear to us that our eviction and the eviction of Ano Kato are part of the organized attempts by the state to repress free spaces that pose a threat to its system. A squat is a space where our values are put in the forefront, where peoplecan be themselves and dare to build connections based on mutual aid andsolidarity in an anti-hierarchical, feminist way. Any state cannot afford to allow such ways of existing outside of its sphere of control.
The state has decided to evict these two squats in a moment when there are fires from Evros to Crete, when just a few days ago more than 18 people died on the northern border, in a moment where fascists are organizing hunts for people that don’t fit into their ethno-capitalist nightmare. These two evictions will be broadcast and used to build a narrative that the state has complete control and is cracking down on crime. This news will be sold as part of the ongoing distraction and control methods of the state, an attempt to hide the real problems suffocating us.
The state will always fail to see that you can never uproot the wild weeds of resistance, mutual aid and struggle. Like weeds in the concrete, we will sprout again amongst all that is rotten in this society. In the most unlikely spaces, at the most unexpected moments, we will take back our grounds of struggle and community.
FIGHT BACK
SQUAT THE WORLD
Zizania stays!