Austerity & Democracy in Athens

Monia Cappuccini

Austerity & Democracy in Athens

Crisis and Community in Exarchia

ISBN 978-3-319-64127-0 ISBN 978-3-319-64128-7 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64128-7

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Monia CappucciniLa Sapienza UniversityRome, Italy

Translator Brent Waterhouse

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Investigating the present is never a simple task. Twists and turns affecting the events under observation, even deeply at times, always lie in wait just around the corner. And yet, this is a risk worth taking. What’s more, social issues are never static entities in themselves; closely following the way they unfold over the short- to medium-term exposes one’s research to the temptation of infinite procrastination, matched only by the inad-equacy of applying priorly defined historical frameworks to the subject at hand. All of which proved to be true with this ethnography.

From 2012 until today, Greece has seen no shortage of upheavals, some of them so sudden and far-reaching to have completely overturned the conditions that, over a period of roughly two years, shaped my field-work in the neighbourhood of Exarchia in Athens. Truth be told, this was not such a considerable lapse of time, and yet the new historical winds that have arisen are strong enough to have substantially changed both Greece’s internal situation and the degree of attention we external observers had been accustomed to giving the country until not long before. The gruelling negotiations and the subsequent capitulation to the Troika, along the fault line that in summer 2015 opened up between the Eurogroup in Brussels and the Parliament in Athens, no doubt marked a decisive moment in this process. This ethnography, dedicated to the neighbourhood of Exarchia and its radical antagonism, describes the period that immediately preceded these events; going entirely against

Preface

vi Preface

the grain of the original premises and objectives of my research, it provi-sionally attempts to set Greece’s anti-austerity urban social movements within a historical frame of reference.

I first arrived in Athens in November 2012, exactly four years after the bubble caused by real estate speculation in the United States had burst, setting off the global financial crisis, while at virtually the same moment a violent revolt broke out across Greece after fifteen-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos died at the hands of the police. Even though the huge demonstrations against austerity measures, which in turn took up and amplified the events seen during that formidable December 2008, had already run their course when I got there, the echoes of an unprecedented social conflict still rang through the air. My fieldwork in Exarchia came to a close, instead, just before the radical left-wing party Syriza won the January 2015 elections, marking a further significant episode in the polit-ical life of Greece and at the same time foreshadowing the definitive decline of the hopes for change inspired by that historical victory.

In hindsight, actually, I believe that my stay in Athens may have coin-cided with one of the most difficult periods that both the city and the social movements of the crisis have recently experienced. Once the fires of their first and firm mass reaction had been put out, they witnessed a time of discouragement in terms of expectations and large-scale participation, also becoming a target in the security crackdown introduced by ex-Prime Minster, Antonis Samaras, aimed at containing this phase of strong inter-nal dissent. Incidentally, these intentions were readily backed up by the neo-fascists of Golden Dawn, who at that very moment made an alarm-ing entrance both on the political scene, becoming a more highly visible party, and in urban life, with their rough and brutal street actions. Along with the deterioration of living conditions and the psychological backlash caused by the imposition of the first austerity programmes, all of this could only lead to a scenario of further destabilisation. During the two years of my PhD research, in fact, never was I able to spend time in Athens without witnessing acts of violence against migrants or other marginali-ties, a disproportionate presence of the police in urban space, or again arbitrary and specious operations aimed at restoring and reinforcing con-trol and repression. Put briefly, a general climate of fear and intimidation ruled, which made Athens a city strained by heavy social tensions and

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instability. Simultaneously, the extent of the influence reached by bottom-up urban solidarity movements had shrunk to a local scale, while expec-tancies for a change of course in the confrontation with the Troika began to point, as a last chance and more or less audaciously, towards Syriza as the leading government party, an eventuality barely missed in the 2012 elections and by then widely held to be only a matter of time.

This ethnography took shape during that period of waiting, within the atmosphere of deep political and social polarisation into which Greece had plunged following the shocking announcement of its state of default. This combination of uncertainty and laceration both nourished and infected my work, without however crushing it under its own weight. In this context, concentrating on the dialectics between austerity and democracy allowed me to take a valuable step forward, creating the con-ditions for a balanced empirical observation that succeeded, time and time again, in focusing on the conflict’s urban aspects rather than its spectacle or its phenomenological representation. In describing Exarchia’s unique features, and using them as a lens through which to see Athens as a paradigmatic case of a pilot experiment in debt politics, I could attempt to portray the overall complexity of the economic crisis, based on the contrasting narrations involving both domination and resistance it had produced on a local scale.

That Exarchia is a unique neighbourhood virtually goes without say-ing. It has traditionally been so, owing to its historically inherited way of life and its “extraordinary” nature, made up of shared practices and a consolidated rituality. This was the case long before Greek fire flared up on the fateful night of 6 December 2008, and before the country exploded when the anathema of financial downgrading was hurled upon it by the hawks of Europe. It still is the case, for the neighbourhood’s ability to remain at the vanguard within the geography of urban radicality, not only inside Greece. And it was so just as glaringly on 5 July 2015 when, to the dread of its own activists, with an unexpected 57% YES vote, it caught public opinion and observers off guard, going against the current with respect to the overwhelming OXI (No) in the referendum called by Alexis Tsipras after a months-long, fruitless tug-of-war with the country’s international creditors. Given this firm mandate, the ensuing debacle at the negotiating table was difficult to digest, with the talks not benefitting

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even from the surprise resignation of the eccentric Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, unpopular among his European colleagues. After a seventeen- hour marathon, the Greek Prime Minister was unable to obtain the slightest improvement in the economic deal, on the contrary, capitulating to the conditions of the third Memorandum and ultimately taking off his jacket in front of Europe’s leaders as a sign of surrender. Humiliated, Greece accepted another tranche of aid coming to €86 bn, in exchange for the diktat of a yet a new burdensome package of fiscal reforms and austerity measures.

And yet, even the time of the kolotoumba seems to have been rapidly consigned to history. With enthusiasm hitting a record low, nine months later Greeks headed once again to the ballot boxes. On 20 September 2015, without too much acclamation, Syriza confirmed its 35% of the vote and renewed the alliance with a right-wing party, the Independent Greeks (Anel), to form a second government. Following the internal dis-pute sparked by Alexis Tsipras’ “summersault” at the Euro summit, Syriza’s dissidents walked out and formed a party named Laiki Enotita (Popular Unity), which however reached less than the 3% required to gain seats in Parliament. From that moment on, a phase of political trans-mutation opened up for the coalition of the “ex-” radical left, now decid-edly gathered around the sole figure of its leader, while the country’s economic recovery still hangs from the noose of the large amount of debt incurred in recent years, representing a heavy burden for its present and its future.

Alongside these problems related to its housekeeping goals, Greece was also suffering the repercussions of a Europe approaching the brink of col-lapse. As early as spring 2015, for thousands of desperate people fleeing from war and poverty, the main route across the Mediterranean had shifted towards the islands of the eastern Aegean, close to the Turkish coasts, first and foremost Lesbos, which surpassed Italy for the first time as to the number of arrivals. The so-called migrant crisis reached its peak in October 2015, with an average of 7,000 arrivals daily. This flow of humanity continued at an alarming rate at least until the EU-Turkey cooperation accord, effective as of 20 March of the following year, which included financing totalling €6 bn going from Europe to Erdogan’s regime.

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According to estimates provided by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in the first three months of 2016, at least 150,000 asylum- seekers had crossed the sea towards Greece. More than half, 53%, were women and children, while the vast majority, 91%, were fleeing from areas torn by conflict—Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq being the foremost countries of ori-gin—and were thus entitled to refugee status as guaranteed, among other treaties, by the Geneva Convention. And yet, international protection and immigration policies were not regularly applied. The sheer size of this flow, if anything, triggered panic in Europe and, owing among other things to internal nationalist parties, some member states began to barri-cade themselves behind walls and fences, while others decreed a tempo-rary suspension of the Schengen Agreement on free movement. Hundreds of thousands of people were thus trapped inside a no-man’s land where, concretely speaking, the dream of a united Europe vanished.

The last act was played out in no other than Greece, along the border with the Macedonian Republic, in the area surrounding Idomeni. Following the closure of the Balkan route, a temporary refugee settlement located in this northern region of the country had become a symbol of the migrant crisis, hosting, in early 2016, as many as 13,000 people. The dramatic humanitarian situation had grown so unsustainable that in late May the Greek government forcefully evacuated the site, along with other informal shelters that had sprung up nearby, simultaneously transferring the refugees into institutional camps and beginning official registration procedures. Suddenly, at least 50,000 people found themselves blocked in Greece, invisible and condemned to the slow process of asylum applica-tion, relocation and/or family reunification, whose results soon left much to be desired. As for the EU’s goal of distributing 160,000 migrants among member countries within September 2017, in July 2016, it still stood at 3,000. Considering the over €10 bn allocated by the European Commission to cover the entire emergency, the quality of services and the living conditions within the camps and hotspots controlled by the Greek government, as repeatedly reported by aid workers and volunteers and made even more critical by the exceptionally rigid temperatures seen dur-ing the last winter, were similarly disappointing. Translated once again into figures, in January 2017, due to the cold weather three people died in less than a week in the Lesbos town of Moria.

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The refugee emergency in Greece has had a direct impact on the city of Athens as well, where migrants still continue to be transferred after being registered and issued a temporary permit on humanitarian grounds in the islands where they first arrive. Landing at the port of Piraeus can be con-sidered, to all extents and purposes, the end of their sea-crossing and the first leg of their trip over the mainland towards Northern Europe. Before the government camps set up in the Attica region became fully opera-tional—about a dozen structures located outside Athens now accommo-date roughly 8,000 people, often in overcrowded conditions—several informal and spontaneous shelters had already appeared in the area sur-rounding the port, as well as in Victoria Square and Pedion Tou Areos park, both located in central Athens not far from Exarchia.

Beginning in spring 2015, along the green subway line that connects Piraeus to the city centre and is generally used in the summer by tourists to reach the ferry terminals, throngs made up of entire families, single people, groups or unaccompanied minors were seen headed towards Victoria station with the few personal effects they had managed to bring. Many simply passed through, staying just long enough to resume their trek towards the border; others, instead, in the hundreds, wound up remaining in the square twenty-four hours a day, passing the night in sleeping bags or tents. During the summer of 2015, this open-air infor-mal migrant shelter moved to the neighbouring Pedion Tou Areos, one of Athens’ largest parks, before being definitively dismantled when the refu-gees were forcibly transferred to State-run camps.

In an urban landscape already scarred by the marginalisation and poverty that accompanied the economic crisis, for long months public space in Athens witnessed a new kind of social suffering, treated by the local population, however, with an extraordinary surge of generosity. In the absence of adequate basic services and appropriate institutional intervention, ordinary citizens alongside a wide spectrum of associa-tions—grassroots organisations, political collectives, volunteers and NGOs, the Orthodox Church, networks and groups already active on immigration issues—were mobilised in order to deal with the situation that had arisen so suddenly. Caught by surprise by the sheer number of refugees, but by no means off guard when faced with social emergen-cies, many of the solidarity structures born in Athens during the earlier

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years of the crisis readily adapted to the new circumstances. On a daily basis, both in Victoria Square and Pedion Tou Areos, collective kitch-ens saw to distributing hot meals; solidarity networks provided tents, blankets, clothes and other basic necessities, along with games or rec-reational activities for children; document issuing procedures were tended to by self-organised teams of lawyers; first aid, screening and health care by doctors and support for the most vulnerable by psychologists.

Being located so close by, it was only natural for Exarchia to become one further link in the chain of solidarity, inaugurating at the same time a new season of activism that gradually changed the shape of its previously existing local urban movements. Under the slogan “Refugees welcome”, indeed, the permanent occupation of a few disused buildings— alongside temporary initiatives involving spaces found within the Athens Polytechnic—immediately offered a viable solution that guaranteed a largely sustainable hospitality, compared to the inhumanity of Victoria Square. Over the long-term, acceptable living conditions and an alterna-tive, inclusive model of coexistence within the city were thus ensured, as opposed to accommodations in the outskirts, as was the case with the official camps.

In November 2015, three hundred people thus stepped inside the first occupation created in Exarchia. Called Notarà 26, after the name of the street where the building is located, just behind the Polytechnic, it is man-aged by members and refugees together on the basis of principles such as self- organisation, equal participation, horizontality and direct action. A similar initiative was seen at Themistokleous 58 in January 2016, when another building was transformed by a collective of anarchists into a labo-ratory for political projects and a living space for migrants. Or again, between Valtetsiou and Prassa streets, bordering on the rich neighbour-hood of Kolonaki, a group of activists reopened the doors of a school that had been closed for roughly two and a half years, the 5th High School of Athens, Exarchia, turning it into a haven for refugees.

Comparable situations have appeared in the centre of Athens where, incidentally, the number of available empty buildings has increased pre-cisely because of the recessionary effects of the economic crisis. Among these, one of the most inspiring is without doubt the City Plaza, an

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ageing three-star, seven-storey hotel closed six years ago and left disused since. In April 2016, it was occupied by activists coming from the Greek extra-parliamentarian left and now houses four hundred people, mainly families, from Syria and Afghanistan. The building is found in Acharnon Street, not far from Victoria Square and close to Aghios Panteleimonas, an area of Athens with a high concentration of migrants, which, while fieldwork was being done on this ethnography, had become a stronghold for the gangs of Golden Dawn and was thus off limits for social move-ments, as will become abundantly clear in the following chapters.

Just like the occupations in Exarchia, the City Plaza is run in an inde-pendent and strictly self-financed way, through crowdfunding campaigns and subscriptions. Out of respect for the principle of autonomy, these initiatives have not been willing to accept either European subsidies or any kind of affiliation with the world of international cooperation, the only one to be given official permission to intervene in government-run camps. This refusal is matched by a rejection of state interference within these self-managed spaces and, consequently, of any compromise or pos-sible mediation with the refugee (non-)reception policies adopted supra- nationally. Thanks to this adamant anti-systemic stance, clear sides are taken as to the meaning of humanitarian aid generically understood, even including charity, and active solidarity, claimed on the contrary as a non- negotiable political fact. In Exarchia, furthermore, this network of new occupations has been flanked by private hospitality initiatives, highly indicative of the difference between a Europe that raises walls and the idea of a participatory society that, on the contrary, opens the doors of its own homes to other citizens of the world.

On the whole, bearing in mind that from a historical point of view, Greece’s urban social movements do not have a tradition of occupying for housing purposes, the birth of these self-organised entities is an entirely new factor. On the other hand, given the Greeks’s extraordinary ability to react, amply proven during the difficult circumstances of the debt crisis, as will be narrated in this ethnography, it was only natural for them to be at the forefront in welcoming migrants. Ever since refugees began to appear on the eastern Aegean islands, that is, before humanitarian aid arrived on the scene, local inhabitants had already rolled up their sleeves and rescued hundreds of people coming by sea from the clutches of death.

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Their support and assistance was so precious that in January 2016 an international group of academics launched an online appeal asking them to be collectively awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Weary and battered after six years of harsh austerity policies, showing a great sense of goodwill, this community has begun once again to move towards an idea of society based on social bonds and bottom-up solidarity, as only those whose dignity has been abused are able to do. Whereas, under the weight of the debt and migrant crises, the constitutive sense of the Union, bearing on its founding principles of political and social cohe-sion, collapsed in no other than Greece, the latter has given Europe a solid lesson in humanity, equally worthy of being handed down to history.

Rome, Italy Monia Cappuccini January 2017

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This book took shape between Rome and Athens, and so my thanks will follow this axis. First of all, I am enormously grateful to all Exarchia’s resi-dents, its activists and people, and to everyone who participated person-ally by lending their own “voice” to this research and thus giving it its heart and soul. My special thanks go to Piso Thrania’s teachers and my classmates, who transformed an academic “case study” into a tremen-dously enriching experience.

Writing this ethnography would not have been possible without the backing of the Department of Civil Engineering, Constructional and Enviromental (DICEA, University of Rome La Sapienza) and the concrete support provided in particular by Roberto De Angelis, Massimo Ilardi, Enzo Scandurra and my PhD colleagues in Engineering, Architecture and Urban Planning. I must also acknowledge the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) for offering me a fundamental and most welcoming base for my work in Athens, and I express my immense gratitude to Alex Afouxenidis, whose expertise and knowledge contributed considerably to this book. My thanks also go to Jonathan Davies (DeMonfort University, Leicester) for his valuable comments and encouragement, and to Lila Leontidou (Hellenic Open University) for passing on to me her joie de vivre.

I am also grateful to my friends Brent Waterhouse, whose attention towards the English revisions went beyond his initial commitment, as well as to Maysa Moroni, who kindly offered her professionalism in

Acknowledgements

xvi Acknowledgements

elaborating the visual aspects of the book. Above all, however, I’d like to lovingly thank my father, Marcello, my aunt Giuliana and the rest of my family, along with all my good friends, both the “old” ones, the Italians, and the “new”, the Greeks (a simple list couldn’t begin to include you all!). Finally, I dedicate this book to my son Claudio, who tolerated my time away from Rome with a great sense of responsibility, making me feel even more proud and lucky to be his mum.

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Contents

1 Introduction 1 1.1 Urban Communities in Movement: A Global

Insurgency in Times of Crisis 1 1.2 Europe, the Shock Must Go On. The Age of Austerity

and Resistance in Greece 4 1.3 Constructing an Ethnography 7

References 10

2 Stepping into Exarchia 13 2.1 Social Composition, Dimensions and Spatial Features 13 2.2 A Clash of City Identities 18

References 23

3 The Dictatorship Did Not End in 1973 25 3.1 Epomeni Stasi: Politechneio 25 3.2 Athens, Between Rethink and Encounter 28

3.2.1 Contesting Privatisation: The Cases of  Akadimia Platonos and Ellinikò 32

3.3 On My Way to Exarchia Square 34References 36

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4 This Is Not a Myth 39 4.1 In Athens There Is a Square 40 4.2 When There Was Only One Kafenion on the Corner… 44 4.3 The Wings of Exarchia 48

References 53

5 Number Thirteen 55 5.1 Steki Metanaston, in the Migrants’ House 55

5.1.1 Participation in the Syntagma Square Movement 58

5.1.2 Activities, Initiatives and Internal Group Dynamics 61

5.1.3 Platia Exarchion, a Square Out of Control 65 5.1.4 The Day of Marfin Bank and the Issue of 

Violence in the Movement 66 5.2 Δεν μιλἀω ελληνικἀ αλλἀ… 69

5.2.1 Lost in Translation, Experiencing Piso Thrania 71 5.2.2 “Racism kills”: Tears and Fears for Shehzad

and Babakar 74 5.2.3 A Day Spent Marching with My Classmates 76 5.2.4 National Racist Discourse and Urban

Narratives of Insecurity: The Rise of Golden Dawn in Aghios Panteleimonas 82

5.2.5 Welcome to Athens, No Exit Strategy 85 5.2.6 Manolada: A Chronicle of the Greece’s

Modern Slavery and Injustice 89 5.2.7 El Chef: “We Serve Solidarity” 91 5.2.8 The Final Lesson 95 5.2.9 Epilogue 98

References 102

6 Number Fifteen 107 6.1 The Residents’ Initiative 108

6.1.1 We’re Taking the Neighbourhood Back into  Our Own Hands! 110

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6.1.2 Time-Banking, New Ideas in Motion 113 6.1.3 When Human Relations Make the Difference 116

6.2 The Social Solidarity Network 118 6.2.1 The Point Zero of the Movement and “the

Theory of Opposing Extremisms” 119 6.2.2 A Network for Solidarity, Not Charity 123

6.3 A Garden and a Park for Exarchia 126 6.3.1 Navarinou, Hope Born Out of the Cement 127 6.3.2 Relational Dynamics During the Occupation 129 6.3.3 Mimosa Trees Still Blossom in Exarchia 132

References 135

7 Number Ten/a 137References 143

8 The Walls of Exarchia 145References 154

9 Greek Fire 155 9.1 The Days of Alexis 156 9.2 Tracking the Ruptures 157 9.3 Remember, Remember the 6th of December 162

References 165

10 Revisiting Urban Space: Auste-City Politics Amidst the Crisis 167

10.1 December 2008: The Origin of a Conflict 167 10.2 Urban and Social Polarisation as a Prelude to a New

Spatial Order 169 10.3 Implementing Auste-City: Athens as a Laboratory

for Urban Bio-politics 172 10.4 Experiencing Democracy: joie de vivre as a Counter-

Discourse of the Crisis in Southern Europe 176References 182

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11 Conclusions 185 11.1 Exarchia: Fieldwork Results 185 11.2 Eros in the City of Athens 187 11.3 In the Midst of the New Global (Dis)order 189

References 191

Index 193

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AAL Academic Asylum LawADEDY (Ανώτατη Διοίκηση Ενώσεων Δημοσίων Υπαλλήλων)

Supreme Administration of Greek Civil Servants’ Trade Unions

AK (Αντιεξουσιαστική Κίνηση) Anti-authoritarian MovementANTARSYA (Αντικαπιταλιστική Αριστερή Συνεργασία για την

Ανατροπή) Front Anti-Capitalist Left for SubversionASOEE (Οικονομικό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών) Athens University

of Economics and BusinessDEA (Διεθνιστική Εργατική Αριστερά) Internationalist

Workers LeftDEI (Δημόσια Επιχείρηση Ηλεκτρισμού) Public Electricity

CompanyDELTA (Δύναμη Ελέγχου Ταχείας Επέμβασης) Control Force

for Immediate InterventionDIAS (Ομάδες Δίκυκλης Αστυνόμευσης) Motorized Police

UnitsDIMAR (Δημοκρατική Αριστερά) Democratic LeftECB European Central BankEEK (Εργατικό Επαναστατικό Κόμμα) Revolutionary Workers’

Party

List of Acronyms

xxii List of Acronyms

EETT (Εθνικἠ Επιτροπἠ Τηλεπικοινωνιὠν Ταχυδρομειὠν) Hellenic Telecommunication and Post Commission

ELAS (Ελληνικἠ Αστυνομἰα) Greek PoliceERT (Ελληνική Ραδιοφωνία Τηλεόραση) Hellenic Broadcasting

CorporationEU European UnionGADA (Γενικἠ Αστυνομικἰ Διεὐθυνση Αττικἠς) Central

Police Headquarters of AtticaGD (Χρυσἠ Αυγἠ) Golden DawnGSEE (Γενικἠ Συνομοσπονδἰα Εργατὠν Ελλἀδο) General

Confederation of Workers of GreeceHRADF Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund. In Greek:

TAIPED (Ταμείο Αξιοποίησης Ιδιωτικής Περιουσίας του Δημοσίου).

IMF International Monetary FundKKE (Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας) Communist Party

of GreeceLAOS (Λαικός Ορθόδοξος Συναγερμός) Popular Orthodox

RallyMAT (Μονάδες Αποκαταστάσεως Τάξης) Public Order

Reinstatement UnitsND (Νέα Δημοκρατία) New DemocracyNTUA (Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο) National Technical

University of AthensPAME (Πανεργατικό Αγωνιστικό Μέτωπο) All-Workers

Militant FrontPASOK (Πανελλήνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα) Panhellenic Socialist

MovementSYRIZA (Συνασπισμός Ριζοσπαστικής Αριστεράς) Coalition

of the Radical LeftTEE (Τεχνικό Επιμελητήριο Ελλάδας) Technical Chamber

of Greece

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Image 2.1 On top of Strefi Hill 18Image 3.1 Inside the Polytechnic 28Image 4.1 Memorial for Alexis in the corner of Tzavela and Mesologgiou 44Image 4.2 Exarchia Square 47Image 4.3 “House is not a home” 50Image 5.1 At the entrance of the Steki Metanaston 58Image 5.2 Piso Thrania lesson 73Image 5.3 Odos Tsamadou 92Image 6.1 The Exarchia Choir at Navarinou Park 115Image 6.2 Lesbian happening at the kipaki 126Image 6.3 Navarinou, from a parking lot to a park 129Image 7.1 Asteras celebrations in Exarchia Square 140Image 8.1 Welcome to Athens (WD artwork and photo) 146Image 8.2 Graffiti by NDA 149Image 9.1 Clashes in Exarchia (credit Vasileios Mathioudakis) 162

List of Figures