The Women Café

Prosfigika neighborhood hosts people from the entire spectrum of the oppressed and our biggest bet is to succeed in terms of self-organization into everyday needs and issues of survival, education, medical care and legal support, working at the same time a social and political charter that won’t promote a model of offer – take. It is at stake to move forward together and to conquer a collective consignment in the struggle for land and freedom. A struggle in which the entire interdisciplinarity of the movement’s fights opens. We are poor, refugees/immigrants, workers, unemployed, aged, mentally ill, we are women, and we are alone with children.

Women café is a new structure in the Prosfigika neighborhood, which was created through the needs of the community. In the beginning, we needed to create a reference point for every woman in Prosfigika to know, that she can find us at any time, if she wants to talk. At first, we were fewer, in our last assembly though we reached 22 active members. Triggered by the second incident of abuse that we had to deal within a short period of time from our creation, all the women in the café, regardless of our different starting points or language, expressed their authentic and original experiences and for one more time the political words took flesh and bones through the community. For that we are a café and not a team or a collectivity. Because we did not want to submit a feminist theory in the gathering of the community’s women. Something like that would have come from above, we would not be able to understand in the same way our multicultural Babel and in simple terms, it would be a useless tool. On the contrary, we started from nothing, from a café. From our collective gatherings around an aspect of oppression, and that seems to work. From simple to complex, from down to up, from the collectivization of experience inside a fighting field. One step at the time, but it includes us all.

Specifically, it is a structure that was built upon the need, voice to be given to all subjects as to express themselves, to feel comfortable and free. It is true, that inside the limits of the freed land of Prosfigika, women immigrants/refugees have silent needs of socialization, politicization, education that fade out in the stream of events. However, whatever we do brings us closer. In a gathering for the registration in the public health system, three girls came to the café for the first time. And they will come again. Action brings unity and through our deeds, we will find the theory that express us. Women café as a gathering and as a ritual, beyond the fact that it helped open up subjects that were in the shadow, it also works as a bridge between women and the central process of SY.KA.PRO. It is a channel of communication and a representation that makes the neighborhood even stronger. In order for it to function correctly, all its members need to be in correspondence. Naturally, we face some alienation problems inside our house, but we need to learn to care for one another. One of our basic elements of a fighting community is to overcome these problems because even if there was no state, people would still have to find solutions concerning food, shelter, health, education, organizing their defense. We can’t create the society of tomorrow if we do not built the communities of today.

Women of Prosfygika live under very difficult circumstances. We organize collectively, and we show solidarity to one another without the help of the state. Against the constitutional bodies to the state’s and capital’s enforcement we chose self- organization and resistance. We share experiences; we find solutions to every-day problems. Most of us are immigrants/refugees and have suffered economical exploitation, sexual and psychological oppression, inside a constant and unsure reality. We fight for the asylum, we fight to reunite with our families and we fight so that our children get to live. We are in danger of getting arrested, beaten, die because of a lack of access to the health care system. We are in danger not to be able to be the mothers of our children. Our under-aged children don’t have access to free health care and can’t go to school because vaccines are obligatory but also not given without AMKA. And still, you have to wait, afterwards to worry that you can’t achieve all of the above.

Women of Prosfygika come across a hostile environment of the Greek territory and don´t go to the gynecologist, don´t learn how to read… don’t, don’t
This text is a call for solidarity, economical or any other kind of help. A call that will help us do surgeries that we need, vaccine our children, be strong and give power to this beautiful society.

They asked 3000 euros from K. in order to operate on her in a private clinic for multiple fibromyomas. The public hospital won’t assume.
F. and M. will give birth really soon
A. and R. don’t have papers and need to go to a lawyer. One of them has 4 kids and the other a baby that has only had its first vaccines.
S. has been kicked out of her country for not wearing a hijab.
B. and D. are raising up their children on their own.

And the list goes on and on. We gather every Friday at 19:00 at our “house” and try to bring coffee…

Intimidation attempt against Prosfigika Squat

This morning, August 5, four unknown men broke into a house in the first block of Alexandras Av. They tried to give the impression of undercover police officers and threatened migrant residents that they would have to leave the house. If not, they will be evicted. Greek residents with regular contracts would be allowed to stay.
After some back and forth and the vain request to identify themselves, the intruders were pushed out of the house by the now alarmed neighbourhood and fled. A cop from the local Ambelokipi police station told the neighbourhood that this was not an official police action. The night before, a DIAS patrol had already harassed a migrant living here in the settlement.
Via open channels, an assembly was mobilised for the early evening at Prosfigika to discuss the incident today, who is not alone. There has been speculation in the press about an upcoming eviction, the city is trying to determine the ownership of the apartment blocks and recently workers tried to drill test holes for an underground car park.
Shortly before today’s meeting started, several DIAS and DELTA units provocatively drove up in front of the buildings to intimidate those present.

Solidarity with the Uprising in the USA

Shopping Mall entrances are guarded by the tan fatigued soldiers of the national guard. Once you enter you can’t leave, you must shop forever. Parks that one couldn’t have imagined a demonstration in are now the gathering point for a riot, the slogan that rings above the crowd is a call of “Abolish the police!”.

Even though one is facing down an army there is a clear sense of hope, as if this fucked up murder had finally wiped away the fog of ignorance, inaction, and fear. Suddenly one can talk to anyone in the street. The society which had ignored this problem, despite the cries of a people institutionalized, murdered, and kept in ghettos, has finally allowed itself a mirror. Continue reading

Discussion and Info-Event with comrades from Anarchaqueerfeminist Squat Liebig34

In the next weeks, the police will try to evict the squat Liebig 34 in Berlin. The collective is resisting and preparing themselves to make the eviction a huge disaster for the Berlin authorities. Also, other autonomous spaces in Berlin are under threat. We want to show some videos about the squats and the eviction of Mainzer Straße 1990 (a squatted neighborhood similar to Prosfigika that got evicted November ’90 after 3 days of riots). We want to share experiences and discuss about different ways of resisting and defending our spaces.

*There will be a bar for support to the community

*THURSDAY 30/07/20 21:00 Community of Squatted Prosfygika, Xiniados street

3 attempts + 1 ultimatum = WE CARRY ON TOGETHER

After 3 attempts so far to seize the occupied Prosfygika of Alexandras Avenue, with various excuses covering up the cannibalistic destructive fury against the resisting social fabric that’s taken root in the area, as well as 1 ultimatum to evacuate, the Community of the neighbourhood is still going strong as it has for years, on the road of the collective struggle for survival, dignity, equality, freedom, solidarity, and comradeship among its poor and oppressed residents and not only them.

Continue reading

PUBLIC DENOUNCEMENT FOR MY ABDUCTION AND DETENTION BY THE ANTI-TERRORIST POLICE ON 9/11/2019

von Dimosthenis Karavoltsios:

“-Some of the incidents that happened on Saturday 9/11/2019, have already been known since the “wellwishers” of the media had shelled everybody with the news of the day for the arrest of the so-called by them Revolutionary Self Defence group. However, some other about the character of this opperation, that means about the hunting of commrades and the busting of tens of houses with a terroristic way, had been left aside, as “collateral losses”… Continue reading

Urgent Announcement of Assembly of Squatted Prosfygika Alexandras Avenue

— english version below —
— deutsche Version unter dem Text —


ΕΚΤΑΚΤΗ ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΗ της Συνέλευσης & της Κοινότητας Προσφυγικών Λ. Αλεξάνδρας

Τα Προσφυγικά Λ. Αλεξάνδρας αποτελούν ένα συγκρότημα 179 κατοικιών σε ένα χώρο 14 στρεμμάτων στο κέντρο της Αθήνας, ανάμεσα στη Γ.Α.Δ.Α., το εφετείο, το γήπεδο της Λεωφόρου και τα νοσοκομεία ΕΛΠΙΣ & Αγ. Σάββας και το μεγαλύτερο μέρος των οποίων είναι κατειλημμένο και κατοικείται. Continue reading