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‘Two, three, many Greeces’ raised in Frankfurt

Published Jun 3, 2012 9:03 PM

The G8 met in Camp David, Md., May 18-19. NATO met in Chicago May 20-21. Both drew protests. In Frankfurt, Germany, the same May weekend, European workers and unemployed shut down the European Central Bank and other financial institutions.

Just as in Chicago, the police in the European financial capital set up a massive presence, forbade many actions on May 17 and 18, and worked with the corporate media to falsely charge demonstrators with planning violence. Nevertheless, the May 19 march was 30,000 strong, say demonstrators, though it was surrounded by thousands of police.

A major issue of the protest was the massive assault by the “Troika” — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union — on the Greek working class and on Greece’s sovereignty. Speakers emphasized the need for solidarity with the Greek working class.

Sonia Mitralia, a member of the Greek Committee Against the Debt and the Women’s Initiative Against the Debt and Austerity, was one of those speakers. The following is excerpted from her speech.

Comrades, I come from Greece, a country destroyed and desperate, a country in ruins but still standing tall. From this Greece that resists and has shouted a huge, magnificent “No” to its torturers: the Troika and the [International Monetary Fund], the Brussels [European] Commission and their [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel and [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schäuble, their [European Commission President José Manuel] Barroso, [former French President Nicolas] Sarkozy and the bankers. In short, to those who govern us and impose inhuman, barbaric policies on us.

These policies are already causing child malnutrition and even hunger in major Greek cities. And where is all this happening? … Here in the heart of rich Europe. And when? Now, at the moment in history when humanity produces more wealth than it ever had before! …

Comrades, the results of the May 6 election leave no room for doubt: A huge majority of Greeks have rejected the politics of austerity. This is a true political earthquake! The country that was chosen to be the laboratory for an austerity program is now in open revolt against those who starve and humiliate it, against those who close its hospitals and schools, and against those who destroy this beautiful country to sell it for nothing, against its Greek and foreign torturers alike.

But take care: The Greeks in revolt should not be left alone at the moment they are transforming their anger into a conscious and liberating movement, now that the prospect of a Greek left government begins to rise on the horizon, to become possible and realistic. If Merkel and Sarkozy, the IMF and the European Commission in Brussels have made Greece a laboratory of their barbaric policies and made guinea pigs of the Greeks, it is up to us, people of Europe, to make Greece the front line of our common battles against those who destroy our lives and the environment. Because Greek resistance is our resistance, its struggles are our struggles. …

Comrades, I come from a country that turns its gaze toward you today, awaiting concrete acts of solidarity. Now and not tomorrow. For it is now more than ever that the Greeks in revolt are directly threatened with extinction by those who fear that their example will be copied and spread like an oil slick across Europe.

And I assure you, these Greeks in revolt are convinced that the best way to show solidarity with them is to imitate them. Imitate their example at home, in your country, while developing and coordinating resistance against the inhuman policies of austerity and destruction. Besides, this is exactly what our enemies fear most: Contagion! The contagion of struggles throughout Europe.

So, yes, let us do it, let’s make two, three, many Greeces! Let’s get networked, coordinate our struggles, organize step-by-step a united and radical, massive and democratic movement, above all in our old continent, across Europe, from Romania to Ireland and from Italy to Iceland. A long-term movement with great liberating goals, which combines the broadest unity with a liberating radicalism. Now is the time. Because … united we stand, divided we fall! Or in French struggle language: Tous ensemble, tous ensemble, oué oué oué [All together, all together, yeah yeah yeah]. …

Thank you, comrades.

Speech translated from the French by John Catalinotto.