"The message to us from Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Spain, and England  is simple: join in! Rise up! Our answer to them has to be yes. And it has to be yes to each other.

The follow piece first appeared in the Occupied Wallstreet Journal

photo credit: Jim Weill

by Eric Ribellarsi and Jim Weill

We arrived in Greece this summer just as street-fighting broke over Athens. For days the police rained tear gas on the people who occupied the capital’s main Syntagma Square.

People would disperse and reform right on the steps of the parliament. The subways were turned into medical centers for the wounded. There is a worldwide movement of rebellion and resistance building. What started in Tunisia and Egypt has shaken and overthrown governments, then jumped to Spain to Greece to England — and now to New York City and across the United States.

In Greece a generation is waking up. They call themselves the Indignant. They reject old politics and the old parties. They refuse to accept the cutbacks and austerity measures imposed by the global banks and the European Union. They are determined, angry and righteous.

They had challenges in Greece. Right-wing ultra-nationalists tried to infiltrate the movement. Police attacked. Some tired left parties condemned the movement saying it’s not focused on elections or minor reforms.

One popular symbol is the helicopter: the people want the Greek government to leave, resign, fly into exile. Or just get the hell out.

And why not here? If the people of Egypt can run out Mubarak, why can’t we run out the American politicians who serve the banks and brutalize us?

The banks are global. They have globalized their sweatshops and cutbacks. We are globalizing the rebellion.

A young woman who is active in this Greek movement of the squares told us:

The following is a resolution that was passed in the General Assembly of Syntagma Square. The resolution comes following a fight outside of parliament between activists associated with the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), a party widely considered to be shielding the government from the uprisings, and an unknown group (of perhaps some anarchists, and perhaps some agent provacateurs). KKE is said to have surrounded parliament to allow the parliamentary politicians to enter the parliament, and then were attacked with molotov cocktails by an unknown group.

"From yesterday on, definitively and irreversibly, the so-called “Communist Party” is no more than a barrier against the attempt to bury the parliamentary corpse. Any free human struggling for their dignity in these crucial days must politically target it [in return]. This proposition should not be read as a split in the movement. We might have common problems and common targets with the plain voters of the “Communist Party”, but the politics and the practice of the leadership to which they are glued follows by word the orders of the government and the envoys of the IMF, EU and the ECB. We never marched side-by-side with them, they will never be with us. We must all keep in mind that the “Communist Party” will act as a fifth column of the dictatorial regime, hoping once again to grab some crumbs off the parliamentary table, just like it did in 1990."

Via Occupied London and Casa Nosotros

After Varkiza [1], the Polytechnic [2], the Chemistry School (1979) [3], December [2008] [4] and a number of other instances, reality once again came to reveal the role of the Party that systematically betrays popular struggles. And if up to this point they strangled, with their political offices any generalised and determined strike during all these years, if they smeared all revolts as a “provocation”, henceforth history shows this was not “mere political errors” but a co-ordinated and conscious stance defending parliamentary dictatorship and the capitalist financial and social relationships. This is what they did yesterday (20/10), too, even if up to that point they would call the people to demonstrations for the overthrowing of the government. They guarded the smooth operation of Parliament and instead of surrounding it they acted even more barbarously than the police, cracking skulls open and handing over demonstrators to the forces of repression. The worst from all that they did was that they legitimised the state, which murdered one of their comrades, blaming the murder to some para-statist violence.

Here are some photos from a recent trip to a commune village in Thawang (Rolpa), the site of the beginning of Nepal's People's War. Soon we will be featuring reports from our investigations in Rolpa. Picture credits go to Zack & Thomas.

Full photo album after the break.

Photos and report by Jed Brandt.

The Thessaloniki Expo is Greece's equivalent of the US State of the Union speech. The Prime Minister retreated behind barricades for the first time, as he is universally despised for selling the country to European bankers and the International Monetary Fund, and imposing austerity. The current ruling party, PASOK, is nominally social-democratic, but just as Obama is imposing austerity in the US — the "left" face of the ruling class always knows who butters its bread.

These are the first significant protests since the Squares movement of the early summer. The traditional left parties, some unions, the Squares movement, and thousands of indignant Greeks showed up to convergence points around the city to challenge the Prime Minister. They were met with walls of police. Half the cops in Athens were trucked up to Thessaloniki, and the week leading up to the Expo saw the mainstream media hype fear of "violence." A 2.5 kilometer zone was put around the Expo, banning vehicle traffic. At least 5,000 riot police were deployed.