Children of the revolution (The Observer)

In Greece, the insurgents have been given a collective name, the koukouloforoi - the hooded ones, because they hide their faces with balaclavas, gas masks, crash helmets and Palestinian keffiyehs to conceal their identity, but also as protection against the regular soakings with tear gas. But what if the violence of the koukouloforoi is not "mindless", as Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis put it, but mindful? What if their contempt for society, politicians and consumerism has a lexicon that is not just revolutionary dogma? And, as the authorities in Bulgaria, Iceland and Latvia failed to ask before the riots came their way, and Britain has so far failed to ask: what if it happens here?

Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead at the corner of Messolongiou and Tzavela streets, but the signs above the shrine to the dead boy now call both thoroughfares Alexis Grigoropoulos Street. Football scarves, candles and flowers are laid at the spot, at which people linger in silence. There are thousands of messages and tributes. To quote a few of them is to articulate the mood: "Let beauty bloom from your blood"; "You hold your head up just enough to see the sky"; "And we go on, but we won't go slow, we'll put up such a fight. Keep your head high, kiss your fist, and touch the sky. It is not too late."

The corner is in an alleyway of a quarter of Athens called Exarchia, described by visiting reporters as a "ghetto" of "self-styled anarchists". As a neighbourhood, Exarchia is more complicated than that. It resembles the Lower East Side of Manhattan: a vortex of alternative culture, lifestyle and politics, but with more political edge, peppered by fancy bars and bistros, so that elegant, non-rioting couples might venture out for a daring date by crossing the triangular square - in which youths huddle around fires and where riot police patrol their quarry - in search of some nice gastro bar.

Από άρθρο των Ed Vulliamy & Helena Smith στον Observer (22.02.2009).

Μια εξαιρετική πολυσέλιδη ανταπόκριση που δημοσιεύτηκε στον mainstream (non-tabloid βέβαια) βρετανικό τύπο. Περιλαμβάνει δηλώσεις από πανεπιστημιακούς, ακτιβιστές και διαδηλωτές, από συζητήσεις στο Nosotros, αλλά και από μέλη της Original 21 (!), μαρτυρίες από διαδηλώσεις, αναφορές στο γενικότερο ιστορικό-πολιτικό πλαίσιο, στην υπόθεση της επίθεσης στην Κωνσταντίνα Κούνεβα, αλλά και στους αριστερούς “non-sympathetic to the December uprising” όπως o “1973 veteran, Dimitris Hadzisokratis” και το “powerful Communist Party”!

Κάποια μικρά λάθη δεν αποφεύγονται, αλλά αποτελεί μια από τις καλύτερες καλύψεις των γεγονότων του Δεκέμβρη από όσες έτυχε να διαβάσω στο διεθνή τύπο με εξαιρετικά εύστοχες παρατηρήσεις όπως αυτή: the destruction of CCTV cameras, which are not simply put out of action by the balaclava-clad activist climbing the pole like a lumberjack up a tree but, as icons of the enemy, trashed in the spirit of some Aztec sacrifice.