STATE AND CAPITAL ARE KILLING OUR CLASS ON THE TRAINS, IN THE HOSPITALS, IN THE AEGEAN
Statement from Anarchist collective On the Road
Two years ago, on 28/02/2023, in Tempi, 57 people were murdered by the state and capital. The collision of a passenger train with a freight train and the subsequent explosions caused deaths that were forever etched in our memory. It was confirmed once again how insignificant our lives are for the powerful of this world. We, those from below, we who could have been the dead, the injured or the relatives and in this murder, we who use public transport every day to go to our work, to our schools and to our homes, do not harbor any illusions. We are all expendable for the political and economic bosses and our lives have absolutely no value in front of their profits and interests.
People of our class, locals and immigrants, risk their physical integrity or are murdered in the labor camps of wage slavery (114 dead workers in 2024 alone), at fences, borders and shipwrecks in their attempt to escape war zones and survive (thousands of dead immigrants in recent years in the Aegean), in the understaffed and lacking basic medical and pharmaceutical materials hospitals of the territory, in fires and floods (in Mati, in Mandra, in Thessaly).
Today, two years after the state-capitalist murder of 57 people in Tempe, the attempt to cover up the evidence that reveals the responsibilities of the rulers is now a given: from the hasty clearing of the area, the concealment of documents regarding the cargo of the commercial train and the “lost” audiovisual material to the denial of responsibility, both by Hellenic Trains and OSE, as well as by all the politicians directly and indirectly involved. They are the ones who, for years, with the policies they implement, have been discrediting the safety of the transportation system (despite the warnings of the workers that a serious railway accident was imminent) in order to increase their profits, putting the lives of all passengers in immediate danger. They are the same ones who are also quick to disavow any political and moral responsibility, shifting it either to persons who act as scapegoats for the murder or to “unstable factors.”
We talk about murder because the state knows that when mass transit is devalued, some of us will die on the tracks, when hospitals are closed or understaffed, some of us will die from lack or delayed access, when safety measures are minimised and labour is intensified to increase profit, some of us will die on construction sites. And because the rich and powerful do not work on construction sites, do not visit public hospitals, do not travel by mass transit, these deaths concern exclusively our own class.
As for the demand for “justice” and “justice”, our position is that there is no way to truly justify all those who lost their loved ones, those who were forever scarred by this tragedy. Nor do we consider it morally justified to punish anyone who is personally “responsible” for it. The main culprit is the system of oppression and exploitation itself, and bourgeois justice is one of its main pillars. The one that was created from the beginning and exists to legitimise and defend only the interests of those from above and to exacerbate our own misery and destitution.
Unlike party representatives of all kinds and shades who use this tragedy as a tool (albeit with different rhetoric) to gain political and economic benefits, we are not concerned with the punishment of those responsible nor with the pretentious announcements that “abundant light will be shed”. We expect nothing from the laws, the courts and their “justice”. As long as the statists and capitalists as a whole remain in the crosshairs of our struggles, these and subsequent murders will not only be hidden but will continue to be our condition of life.
The tearful speeches of party officials and political professionals aim to capitalise on and manipulate social reactions, directing and venting them into protests and party exploitation that are painless for the system. The privatisation-nationalisation dilemma they present is fabricated (the same problems were emphasised by workers for years both before and after privatisation), because as long as the affairs that concern us are not in the hands of society itself, our lives will remain precarious and undervalued.
Despite the various attempts to disorient society by the media mouthpieces of power, social anger is overflowing. Not only for the specific dead but for all the dead of our class and our living conditions. Our anger does not make motions of censure, does not call for the resignations of governments, nor for elections. We are not aspiring administrators of the state, we do not expect anything from those who have been responsible for the impoverishment of our lives over time.
We are not prepared to become accustomed to death. We are not fighting to lighten our economic and political shackles but to break them. We are not fighting for a more humane state or a “softer” capitalism but for their total destruction. For us, this is the only way that can ensure that this murder will not be followed by another.
We fight unguarded, anti-institutional, unmediated in every area of our lives, from schools and colleges to our neighborhoods and workplaces. We fight so that our lives do not become mere survival and a death statistic in state records.
STRUGGLE AGAINST STATE, CAPITAL AND EVERY FORM OF POWER
STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM EQUALITY SOLIDARITY
STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL REVOLUTION
STRUGGLE FOR ANARCHY
Note from ACG: Hundreds of thousands came out on the strrets in Greece on March 4th, the second anniverary of the Tempi tragedy.Demonstrations took place in over 300 cities and towns. A general strike took place at the same time. The riot police reacted with their usual brutality. At least 120 people have been arrested so far, mainly as a result of an attack on the offices of Hellenic Trains, one of the organisations responsible for the 57 deaths.