lesvos, days 31-33
Ever since I arrived at No Border Kitchen, we were faced with the coming eviction of the Social Center. First, the cops gave us one week, after that, we talked them into 10 more days.
Finally, the last day had come closer, we started cleaning up and moving our stuff (cookers, food etc.) into one of the factory buildings on the way to the Social Center, where refugees had already been sleeping in before.
I must admit, to some extent the eviction came in handy. You know, sleeping in tents at this rather exposed location at the beach… It was getting colder every day, especially on the windy ones, of which there were quite a few. The cops basically gave us the shove we needed to get away from there and move into a warmer location.
Inside a squatted building. No electricity, no water. Being quiet and keeping the windows shut during the night so nobody notices us.
To find more place for housing, we squated a building near the kitchen, in the middle of town. For everybody new to the world of squatting - What should this mean, squatting a building?
Basically, we just stayed up late – we didn’t want to be seen. We, that is mostly Europeans, about ten of us, were all a bit nervous (ok, I was). And we had no idea what was going to happen on this portentous evening…
A short interlude after this dramatic cliffhanger:
To pass the time till 2 in the morning, I went to a take-away to skype with my family. So there I was, skyped a bit, drinking wine I had mistaken for beer (the shape of the bottle!), later ending up talking to a 50-year old volunteer from Russia that had a rather pessimistic (and a bit racist) perspective on the whole refugee thing – but he was still moved enough by the people’s fates to come and help. His friend, a 60-year old South African, had an even more pessimistic and sometimes openly racist world view (i.e. strong prejudices about those backward muslims). He elaborated on the economic crisis that Greece was in - I listened. I got a better understanding of why the Greek are so frustrated. Unemployment has strongly risen during the crisis, being at 23% in average and a fucking 46% for 15-24-year olds. The European Union ‚grants’ them more credits to pay their debts and in return demands a pretty fucked-up neoliberal austerity policy combined with privatisation of state business. An example: The whole harbour of Pyraeus, Europe’s third biggest port, has been leased to China.
Alexis Tsipras, the ‚leftist’ prime minister had initially opposed the EU’s demands but changed ‚from revolutionary to realist’ and recently restructure his government, clearing it of critics opposing for example the privatisation of Pyraeus.
So don’t be astonished if people are desperate for change – and that they’re abandoning the leftists while looking for it somewhere else.
Want an overview of the economic crisis? I highly recommend watching ‚Kapitalismuserklärung’ by Volker Pispers. (speaking or learning German is recommended)
The squatting then happened a bit fast for my tippsy-drowsy head. We just went to this old mansion, broke the chain at the entrance, entered and stayed in there for the night. Tada.
No. It’s a cigarette.
The next days, the others started cleaning the house as I went to get my volunteer pass - I started to work again with LATRA, the organisation I helped on my first day here. More about that soon.