Living the Revolution

Solidarity4All (S4A) co-founder Christos Giovanopoulos is presently touring the US in his effort to grow the international solidarity movement supporting Greek workers. S4A is a collective that facilitates the development of grassroots solidarity structures emerging in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by Greece’s deep austerity cuts. It grew out of the Greek Indignados movement that formed alongside the Spanish Indignados* movement in July 2011. Both would serve to inspire the international Occupy movement that first formed on Wall Street in September 2011.

As of January 2015, there were self-governing 360 solidarity structures, representing 30% of the Greek population. The list includes social pharmacies, social medical clinics, social kitchens, social grocery stores, time banks,* a social collective of mental professionals, olive oil producers who share olive oil and the “potato movement,” where farmers cut out supermarkets and middlemen by trading directly with consumers.

All initiatives are non-hierarchical and hold weekly assemblies where decisions are made. The role of S4A is to serve as a centralized network for information, tools, and skills sharing and to build an international solidarity movement to support Greek workers and to inspire similar grassroots self-governing structures in other countries.

Although most S4A members support the left-wing party Syriza, the two are totally separate organizations. S4A chiefly derives its power from its ability to provide humanitarian services can’t deliver due to the Greek financial crisis. Nevertheless Syriza directly supports S4A by requiring each of their MPs (members of parliament) to donate 10% of their salary.

An International Movement

Already hundreds of international trade unions, community, environmental and immigration groups have signed on to the Solidarity4All movement. Ironically most are in Germany, whose government has been the most staunch in forcing debt repayments and austerity cuts on the Greek people. At present Giovanopoulos is seeking to build S4A chapters in New York, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland and Baltimore.

In the following video, Giovanopoulos speaks to the importance of a strong grassroots movement to counteract the pressure the EU and IMF are putting on Syriza. This is especially urgent owing to the inability of the current Greek government to address the humanitarian crisis. Thanks to Solidarity4All, the immediate needs of workers continue to be addressed. If a Grexit does occur, this will also provide a framework for Greece to look after itself – instead of relying on foreign funders.

For more information, check out the English S4A website at Greece Solidarity

Individuals and groups can join S4A at Join us

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*Los Indignados is a grassroots Spanish anti-austerity movement that first captured public attention in July 2011 through massive demonstrations in which they occupied public squares and spaces. An estimated 6.5– 8 million Spaniards have participated in these events.
**A time bank is a mutual credit system in which members earn credits for helping other members and spend them for other services.
***Syriza is a left wing political party that came to power in January 2015 based on a pledge to end the austerity cuts forced on Greece (as a condition of further bailout funds) by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
****Grexit refers to the potential exit of Greece from the eurozone monetary union, owing to its inability to repay its public debt.

Spain’s Modern Day Robin Hood

Come Back: A Story We Wrote Together

Radi.ms (2014)

Film Review

Come Back describes how a coalition of Spanish activists used 492,000 euros expropriated from 39 banks to build a large anti-capitalist coalition that would form the basis for the Los Indignados occupation in 2011. The latter would inspire the international Occupy movement in September and October 2011.

Enric Duran, the individual responsible for the 492,000 euros in unpaid bank and credit card loans, first began planning his “financial civil disobedience” in 2002. The funds were used to finance a network of anarchist collectives and cooperatives which coalesced as the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC) in 2010. The CIC’s objective is to generate a self-managed free society outside the law, state control and the rules of the capitalist market. Over the past five years, the CIC has allowed member collectives to progressively construct practices that move them away from the capitalist system towards the world they want to live in.

Creating the Finance Network for Social Projects

In 2005, when Duran began his aggressively borrowing, he and others formed the Finance Network for Social Projects, which allowed self-organized collectives to bid for funding for their local projects through a centralized website. One project highlighted in the film was the 2006 Anti-Growth March. More a tour than a march, the project traveled to more than 20 communities throughout Spain, promoting the development local farming cooperatives, self-organized clinics and schools and other alternatives to capitalism.

The direct outcome of the Anti-Growth March was the Cooperative for Local Assemblies, a network linking local initiatives. In 2010, this would morph into the CIC.

The latter, involving roughly four to five thousand participants, is made up of 300 productive projects, 30 local nodes and econetworks, 15 or so communal living projects and 1700 collectives. CIC governance involves general assemblies and is based on a decentralized direct democracy model that supports the self-governance of autonomous projects.

Political Goals of CIC

Rather than trying to destroy the state, the goal of the CIC is to practice civil disobedience in ways that are consistent with the self-organizing projects their collectives are trying to build. According to a 2014 interview with Duran (see Spanish Robin Hood Enric Duran on Capitalism and Integral Revolution), any action they take towards pressuring the state will be strategically chosen to protect constructive projects and the people involved in them or to generate consciousness and vision among people and groups involved in the change-making process.

Some examples of CIC projects include

• Development and promotion of approximately twenty community currencies, in addition to the Local Exchange Trading System (LETS), a mutual credit network that operates on South African CES software.
• Local food pantries linked to the Catalan Provisioning Centre.
• Activist-run health clinics, schools and housing cooperatives.
• Radi.ms, a digital collective focused on promoting the creation of self-organized co-ops worldwide.

Duran’s Legal Status

On September 17, 2008, in the midst of the global banking collapse, the network (which would become the CIC in 2010), made public, through their own CRISIS newspaper, that Duran had distributed 492,000 in bank loans to Spanish anti-capitalist groups. In March 2009, he was arrested, as six of the 39 banks had laid charges against him. He spent two months in prison before being released on 50,000 euros bail. Although he gone underground, he continues to be an active participant in the CIC.