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Anarchy Works
stations throughout Denmark helped mobUize support, including
food and supplies. Finally, the government announced it would
bring in the military to clear the barricades. The youth at the
barricades announced a press conference, but when the appointed
morning carne, they had all disappeared.
Two city negotiators wondered,
Where did the BZers [Occupation Brigaders] go when
they left? What did the town hall learn? It seems the
act can start all over again, anywhere, at any time.
Even bigger. With the same participants.93
In 2002, Barcelona police attempted to evict Can Masdeu, a
large squatted social center on a mountainside just outside the
city. Can Masdeu was connected to the squatters' movement, the
environmental movement, and the local tradition of resistance.
The surrounding hillside was covered in gardens, many of them
used by older neighbors who remembered the dictatorship and the
struggle against it, and understood that this struggle still continued
in the present day despite the veneer of democracy. Accordingly,
the center received support from many corners of society. When
the police carne, the residents barricaded and locked down, and for
days eleven people hung in harnesses on the outside of the building,
dangling over the hillside, high above the ground. Supporters
streamed in and challenged the police; others took action
throughout the city, blocking traffic and attacking banks, real estate
offices, a McDonalds, and other stores. Police tried to starve out
the ones hanging from the building and used psychological torture
tactics against them. but ultimately failed. The resistance defeated
93 George Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous
Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life . Oakland: AK
Press, 2006, p. 123
the eviction attempt and the autonomous zone survives to this day,
with active community gardens and a social center.
On December 6, 2008, Greek police shot to death the fifteenyear-old
anarchist Alexis Grigoropoulos in the middle of Exarchia,
the anarchist and autonomous stronghold in downtown Athens.
Within minutes, anarchist affinity groups communicating by
internet and cell phone sprang into action across the country. These
affinity groups, in their hundreds, had developed relationships of
trust and security and the capacity for taking offensive action over
the previous years as they organized and carried out numerous
small-scale attacks on state and capital. These attacks included
simple graffiti actions, popular expropriations from supermarkets,
molotov attacks on police, police cars, and commissaries, and
bomb attacks against the vehicles and offices of political parties,
institutions, and corporations that had led the reaction against
social movements, immigrants, workers, prisoners, and others. The
continuity of actions created a background of fierce resistance that
could corne to the fore when Greek society was ready.
Their rage over the murder of Alexis provided a rallying point
for the anarchists, and they began attacking police all over the
country, before the police in many cities even knew what was
happening. The force of the attack broke the illusion of social
peace, and in subsequent days hundreds of thousands of other
people came out into the streets to vent the rage they too harbored
against the system. Immigrants, students, high school kids, workers,
revolutionaries from the previous generation, old folks-all of Greek
society carne out and participated in a diversity of actions. They
fought against the police and won, winning the power to transform
their cities. Luxury shops and government bUildings were smashed
and burned to the ground. schools, radio stations, theaters, and
other buildings were occupied. Their mourning turned into
celebration as people set fires and commemorated the burning away
of the old world with parties in the streets. The police responded
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