Lawrence.com

Posted by Dave Strano January 9, 2009 at 3:03 p.m.

The Empire is burning...

It started as an incident of police violence on a cold December night in the neighborhood of Exarchia in Athens, Greece. It soon became clear, however, that as the police officer pulled the trigger of his handgun, he set off a series of events that would change the entire social reality of Greece.The murder of 15 year old Alex Grigoropoulos in the streets of Athens acted as the spark that was to finally ignite the powderkeg of anger and fury felt by many Greek youth and others against the Greek police and the Greek state in general. Since Alex's murder on December 6th, Greece has been ungovernable. Billions of dollars of damage have been inflicted in the now daily street clashes between police and the Greek people leaving banks, schools, corporate stores, police stations, and cars burning in their wake.The ungovernability of Greece has spread to other areas of Europe throughout recent weeks. Solidarity demonstrations turned riotous in Spain, Denmark, Germany, France, and other countries. On December 20th, hundreds of cities across the world held events and actions in solidarity with the Greek Uprising. Banner drops, building occupations, street demonstrations, and direct action marked the day in cities in every populated continent.But the rage felt in the streets of Athens, that has been felt for weeks with no end in sight, is the same rage that people here in the United States have been feeling. Economic crisis. Police violence. Prison overcrowding. Growing unemployment. Ballooning military budgets. War without end. Sound familiar?In the last five weeks, several points of conflict erupted in the United States in interesting, but not necessarily surprising ways. Chicago: On December 5th, 250 workers for Republic Doors and Windows occupy their closed factory and demand severance pay and other concessions. They win their struggle in what may be the first factory occupation in several decades in the U.S.Augusta, Georgia: On December 16th, residents of an Augusta neighborhood rebel against the police after the death of local resident Justin Elmore during a police chase. A night of unrest follows the killing, and on December 22nd, over 200 local residents march against the police. Some of the members of the march are armed, and display rifles and shotguns to the watchful police. New York: On December 17th, students at the New School University occupy their school, issuing a list of demands that includes the resignation of the school's president. After several days of occupation, including physically defending the occupation from police, they do not win this major demand, though nearly all their other demands are met. A solidarity demonstration outside the New School leads to violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators.Oakland: On January 1st, Bay Area Rapid Transit police shoot and kill an unarmed rider of the BART, Oscar Grant. Video emerges of the shooting, clearly showing Grant laying on his stomach, restrained by police officers, as an officer pulls his gun and shoots Grant in the neck. Grant died from this wounds. On Wednesday January 7th, hundreds of protesters fill the streets and the situation turns into rebellion. Police vehicles and officers are attacked, storefronts of the business district destroyed, and street fighting lasts into the night. On Thursday the 8th, another night of rebellion continued, with one police substation being nearly destroyed.These incidents may seem disparate and isolated from each other. However, coupled with recent events in Iceland, India, China, and other places across the globe, the situation starts to become clear of the escalation of attacks against capital, the state, and an entire economic and social situation that has left the majority of us in misery. The major media in the United States sure won't work on connecting the dots and making the links between social conditions that are affecting the majority of the world's populace. While economic and political crises continue to mount, and while there seems to be no end in sight to state sponsored terrorism and repression, one can only expect that people across the United States and the rest of the world will continue to attack the mechanisms of domination that have destroyed their lives.However, far too many people in the United States will continue to watch as their paychecks disappear, their sons and daughters return home in flag-draped coffins, the food pantries empty, the homeless shelters turn people away for lack of beds, the prisons and jails fill far past capacity, our natural world is destroyed and gutted, and life itself becomes a commodity to be bought and sold... all the while reading blogs, watching youtube, checking their facebooks, and hoping that this is all a dream... If it's a dream, it's time to wake up, as the people of Athens, Augusta, Oakland, and cities around the world are doing now. Or as the saying goes "you're going to get woke up."There isn't any pretty solution to this mess we now find ourselves in. And it's not going to go away on its own. Too many people in this country think things will always be fine. The very foundations of this uniquely American notion of stability are being destroyed. Let's not be in that house when it collapses around us.