From Streets and Squares to Radical Political Emancipation? Resistance Lessons from Athens during the Crisis

The current crisis with imposed austerity measures hit Greece in 2009. People in large cities such as Athens were the first victims. Resistance took various forms including mobilizations and fights in the streets and squares of Athens. Although to some extent spontaneous in the beginning, these mobilizations were not without political preparation (at least for some participants) and this partially explains both their intensity and stability and the violent police reaction. Resistance and anti-austerity mobilizations were outcomes of non-politicized people coming together with various more organized political forces, such as unions, non-unionized temporary workers, anti-racist and anti-global movements, members of the European Social Forum-Greek section, small leftist and anarchist groups, plus larger political parties of the left such as SYRIZA, which succeeded in forming a wider radical alliance.

In this alliance the role of radical social movements, including urban movements, has been decisive. During the past 10 to 15 years dozens of urban grass-roots movements emerged in the Athens metropolitan region. Partly as a response to projects related to the 2004 Olympic Games, and partly in response to chronic socio-spatial inequalities and injustices in various neighborhoods, these movements were radical in nature, multi-class in social base and quite militant in terms of tactics. And since 2009, the crisis acted as catalyst, and radical social movements made the crucial link between sectoral/local struggles and those arising from wider socio-spatial contradictions and injustices aiming at political change.

The paper critically evaluates these events, putting them in theoretical and comparative perspective, trying to understand the limits and the lessons-so-far from such an experience and asks whether they point to a wider radical political emancipation.