I was on the street because someone like me was put six feet under. Someone who walked the streets of Athens with his head held up high and his principles even higher. I knew that I would have to scream to be heard by Alexandros and to rattle his murderers. The state, police and the upstanding citizens who want no trouble.
It’s been six years. I finished school long ago but still attend marches, not all of them, just to the ones that my conscience won’t allow me to miss. To me, December 6 2008 feels like a prequel to the tragic irony that is this year’s anniversary.
Nikos Romanos, a friend of Alexander’s and mine, is slowly dying. We’re not friends in the sense that we spend time together or going out for coffee, but I support his decision to fight for his rights with every means.
How can I remain silent? I was screaming out loud six years ago about what had happened, how can I remain calm now that it can be stopped?
Is this a fair comparison? Isn’t it one and the same, in the end?
Death at the hands of the state either through the police or the justice system is the same. The violation we see unfolding is against something so important that it’s not even about democracy – not that I can claim we are living in one – that makes me wonder what you are being fed on TV to just ignore it and flippantly switch channels.
Tomorrow is December 6 again, 6 years from the day Grigoropoulos was murdered, but this year it weighs more than ever and I hope it does less next year.
Tomorrow we must raise our voices, not just over one kid’s death but for another one’s life as well. Unfortunately, the game is rigged against us. Marches have been banned so the police on the streets will be just looking for any pretext. I’m not saying that I’m not scared to go. I’m actually terrified. At the same time, however, if this kid also perishes, it would be as if I had given myself up to some kind of inertia that allows others to act with impunity; in the end, it’s you and me that’ll have to pay for it.
In the last few days, there has been a game of legal peek-a-boo. If the laws are not
working for the common good then we shouldn’t care if they are flouted. Illegality in this case, is as debatable as terrorism. You scare me even before I go to the march, you terrorize me on the 8 o clock news, making calls against anarchy because you are essentially terrified that, because of it, the badly written narrative of your history will change.
I’m not in favour of anarchy. It takes a lot of guts and I haven’t read that many books. But I respect the anarchists, in contrast to bankers, politicians,and authorities. I was never in favour of mindless destruction during riots, if for nothing else, to avoid giving a pretext to the state apparatus to clamp down on everything.
But I’m seething and the silence they are trying to impose on a day like this, with a hunger strike burdening it even more. It makes me sick to my stomach, it infuriates me. And the truth is, that I, at least, who, as we have said, am not a fountain of knowledge, cannot remember something substantial occurring in history without sparks flying.
I have not sacrificed my life for any ideology, and that’s why I feel too small to speak about people like Romanos, who the saggy and well-off like to criticise so offhandedly. Well-off, not because you have been appointed to the public sector or have some money in the bank, but because you feel that it’s ok to sit back and comment about everything from a distance. Doesn’t anything move you? Are you just frozen inside? Maybe that’s why fires are set, to warm up your icy indifference.
I don’t need my mom’s permission to go to the march anymore. I’ve grown up and I’m just like you now, I can make up my own mind whether to side with ideals or strings attached.
I still need you to sign, however, that you take the responsibility and are aware of what’s happened and whatever goes down during the march.
Don’t you want Democracy after all? If so, you and me, we’re all in this together.