Freedom reproduces a statement from Exarchia’s Arson Committee:

In the early morning of November 17, we attacked and set fire to 3 ATTIKO METRO machines at the construction site of line 4 in the area of Kaisariani at the junction of Ethniko Antistaseos and Filolaou streets.

Our act is the imaginary continuation of the slogan we shouted so many times with thousands of other demonstrators at the rallies and demonstrations against the destruction of Exarchia Square by cooperating with state-contractors-ATTIKO METRO-municipal authorities. Mobilisations have been sharpened recently after the invasion of the square by machinery to clear the area of trees, bushes, etc.

We took the risk of the above action to give courage to these mobilisations and hurt the prestige and economic interests of ATTIKO METRO and its contractors even a little. We believe such actions, alongside the diverse mobilisations of the residents of Exarchia and other areas, could create an open wound to the state plans and economic interests that impose this project. Let us not forget that the Metro Line 4, currently under construction, is swallowing up a series of squares of green and undeveloped spaces along the way: Kypseli Square, Potomaya Square, Kolonaki Square, Evangelismos Park, Gardenia Square, the grove within the University campus, etc.

The consequences of this project are not only limited to the destruction of any notion of public green space but also extend to the restructuring of the life of entire areas: commercialisation of neighbourhoods, a sharp increase in rents, displacement of poorer social strata, traffic congestion around the new stations, etc. All of the above are enough reasons for us to reject the METRO extension’s urban planning within the metropolis, even if we are sworn to faster mobility in our daily extortions.

Moreover, the ridiculous political dialogue opened by the current municipal authority around the transplantation and “rescue” of the trees of Exarchia Square to other squares and parks reveals most pathetically the new green ideology that occupies and degenerates any dialogue around nature and man into a debate about budgets, funds and logistics. An ideology that allows the current municipal authority, on the one hand, to ally itself with ATTIKO METRO in the levelling of Exarchia Square and, on the other hand, to ally itself with the businessman Patera and to go to court ostensibly for the ‘protection of the Evangelismos Park’. As has been aptly put before, their ideology is as green as their dollars.

Finally, we chose our incendiary attack to take place at a time and day (dawn of November 17, 2023) when, according to the media’s tremendous media reports, the streets of Athens were guarded by 5000 thousand cops given the mobilisations for the 50th anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising. Our incendiary attack took place a stone’s throw away between the Kaisariani police station and the YMET headquarters in Ulof Palme, proving that the city belongs to those who wish to disrupt order and not to those who are paid to enforce it. And now and always.

SABOTAGE DEVELOPMENT! FIRE ON THEIR CONSTRUCTION SITES!

~ “Haste Slowly” Arson Committee

Image: Badseed / CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed / Exarchia square in Central Athens