My speech at the Athens solidarity rally in Boston

On Tuesday, December 16th, there was a rally held in Boston in solidarity with the uprisings all over Greece. We protested outside the Greek consulate in a show of solidarity with all vicitims of state violence. This is the speech that I gave. (If you’ve been reading my posts you might notice that some of it was lifted from my speech at the Transgender Day of Remembrance.)

Dear comrades, it’s incredible to be here today! My name is Saffo, and I am a radical queer tranny from Providence, Rhode Island. I am part of the upcoming What Queer? radical queer collective in Providence. As I’m sure you all know, on Saturday, December 6th, 2008, the cops in Athens shot and killed a 15-year-old boy named Alexandros Grigoropoulos. I want to start by offering a moment of silence for the memory of Alexandros. (Thank you). To many of us, the violence of the Greek police is something that rings true to our own lives and experiences with the police in the United States and elsewhere. It is, in part, this commonality that brings us here today. This solidarity that we feel for those who are brutalized by the state, by any state, anywhere. We know that this kind of violence happens every day. But this time, the people struck back! These are incredible times we are living in. For instance, if you had asked me 2 years ago if I thought that today we’d see a union successfully occupying a factory in the United States, I would have said no way. I would have said, things like that happened in Argentina, but they would never happen here. But they did it! If you had asked me a year ago, would a group of queers ever dare to take direct action against a right-wing churhch, I would have said no. But they did! So here’s to the workers in Chicago. Here’s to Queers Bash Back! And here’s to the masses of anarchists, university students, high school students, and youth who have taken to the streets in Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Crete, and all over Greece. It’s looking more and more every day that a revolution may really be just around the corner.

I’m not really sure where to begin with explaining what today means to me and why I am here. Let me start by saying that I am half Greek. My mother comes from Athens, and although I have lived in the United States my whole life, I have been to Greece many times. I have many friends and family members there. I spoke online to a friend of mine in Thessaloniki the other day. I told him I was there in spirit, and he said I know. On the other hand, I spoke to one of my cousins in Athens the other day. She could speak of nothing but the darkness, the chaos. I felt conflicted about even coming here today in the first place. On one hand, the strength of the youth to rise up against their oppressor is tremendously inspiring. They have also attacked the large international banks that have ransacked the Greek economy. On the other hand, peoples’ houses have been destroyed, and small store owners have seen their shops attacked. These are not rich people. These are hard working people whose livelihoods have been demolished in the riots.

Within radical circles, there is often a strong emphasis on action, on striking back, on standing up against the state. That is only half the battle, however. The cops are inside us, inside our heads, just as much as out there on the streets. That’s why the work of education, of healing, of dealing with our own internalized shit— racism, heterosexism, transphobia, sexism, classism— is just as important as organizing. The work of healing, of mourning those who have fallen, of caring for and supporting each other, is just as important as striking back.

In order to understand the political situation of Greek students, it is necessary to know a little history. In 1967, the United States, as part of the Cold War, overthrew the Greek government and installed a repressive right-wing dictatorship. In 1973, students at the Athens Polytechnic Institute went on strike and occupied their school. On November 17th, the government responded by crushing the front gate of the school with a tank, and slaughtering the students. This would be known as the Athens Polytechnic Massacre. The actions of the United States on November 17th were, of course, nothing unique. The United States has covertly and overtly enacted tremendous violence all over the world from Manifest Destiny, to the Vietnam War, to Pinochet, to the war in Iraq, to the Spanish-American war, to the occupation of Palestine, to Free Trade… and that’s just the beginning. We are living here in the belly of the beast, the center of the largest force of death and destruction in the history of the world— the United States Empire. In Greece, The date of November 17th is one that would be remembered for generations to come. Although the front gate of the Athens Polytechnic would be replaced, the old gate, the one that had been crushed by the tank, would be left on display for years to come as a powerful reminder of outrage, of state violence, and of US imperialism. Since then, Greece’s college campuses have been maintained as a safe haven for activists and radicals. The police are forbidden to enter.

While the international spotlight has been placed on Greek students and youth, there are many others who have been fighting back during these uprisings. For one, the city of Athens responded in part by orchestrating a days-long general strike. Another group that has mobilized have been Albanian Immigrants. During a picket outside the police headquarters in Athens, a group known as the Athens’ Haunt of Albanian Migrants distributed a flier titled “These days are ours, too.” I want to read a couple excerpts from the flier, which you can read the full text of at occupiedlondon.org/blog:

“These days are for the hundreds of migrants and refugees who were murdered at the borders, in police stations, workplaces. They are for those murdered by cops or “concerned citizens.” They are for those murdered for daring to cross the border, working to death, for not bowing their head, or for nothing. They are for Gramos Palusi, Luan Bertelina, Edison Yahai, Tony Onuoha, Abdurahim Edriz, Modaser Mohamed Ashtraf and so many others that we haven’t forgotten.”

“These days are for the exploitation continuing unabatedly for 18 years now. They are for the struggles that are not forgotten: in the downs of Volos, the olympic works, the town of Amaliada. They are for the toil and the blood of our parents, for informal labour, for the endless shifts. They are for the deposits and the adhesive stamps, the welfare contributions we paid and will never have recognised. It is for the papers we will be chasing for the rest of our lives like a lottery ticket.”

“These days belong to all the marginalised, the excluded, the people with the difficult names and the unknown stories. They belong to all those who die every day in the Aegean sea and Evros river, to all those murdered at the border or at a central Athens street; the belong to the Roma in Zefyri, to the drug addicts in Eksarhia. These days belong to the kids of Mesollogiou street, to the unintegrated, the uncontrollable students. Thanks to Alexis, these days belong to us all.”

These days belong to all of us. I want to speak, then, about another reason why I am here. Last month, was the 35th anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic Massacre. By a strange coincidence, it also happened to be the same day that Providence held the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day created to commemorate the lives of transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals who have been killed for being themselves. It was an incredible occasion for me, as a Greek tranny, to bring together two important aspects of myself— my queerness and my Greekness— in celebration of the struggle.

Some people might say, “but those are separate issues.” And I would respond, when you’re rising up to fight for your life, there are no “separate issues.” This touches on something all-too-often left out in straight-dominated radical communities— the connection between state violence and violence against queer and trans people. While outside our borders the United States asserts its violent hegemony through war, espionage, secret prisons, the so-called drug war, and the World Bank and IMF; inside our borders we have the largest prison population in the history of the world. There is an enormously profitable industry built around imprisoning people in the US. This is the prison industrial complex. One manifestation of the prison industrial complex is police brutality, especially against people of color in the US. Immigrants, communities of color, queer, trans and gender non-conforming people are favorite targets of the prison industrial complex.

Within prison walls, queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people are routinely subject to rape, humiliation, and other forms of brutality— far more so than our straight and cisgender peers. Furthermore, trans people are often placed in the wrong-gender section, or are kept in solitary confinement, and are frequently denied access to medical treatment. This is state violence against queer people. It is important to recognize that the mechanisms of state violence that terrorize queer and trans people are some of the same that terrorize immigrants and communities of color. We must recognize that different oppressions function differently, as our identities function differently, but ultimately we have more to gain from building solidarity between our various movements.

One aspect, however, in which I find myself both at odds with the larger queer community and with the larger straight-dominated radical community, is with the issue of hate crimes and domestic violence. Not all violence comes from the state. As I said earlier, the cops are in our heads. Radical communities have just as many problems within them as the rest of society. We see sexual assault, and queerbashing just as much within supposedly liberatory movements as anywhere else. Just as we see rioters in Greece attacking stores owned by poor working people. Many trans people live in communities or neighborhoods that are not supportive. We live with the knowledge that, were we to be attacked, our neighbors may not give a shit about us. This is, in part, a result of the isolated capitalist system in which we live. Many people don’t notice their neighbors, don’t feel supported by any sort of community, and hence, when violence happens, the only recourse we have is the police. The same police force that raided stonewall. The same police force that doesn’t give two shits about queers. Building meaningful community policing that doesn’t rely on the violence of the state is the only way forward. This solution can only come when straight and cisgender radicals begin to take responsibility to confront queerphobic violence, and to deal with their own internalized heterosexism and transphobia.

Queer people are everwhere. We are part of your movements. We struggle with you. But we face tremendous obstacles and are seldom recognized as queers for the work we do. But, as the Athens Haunts’ of Albanian Migrants proclaimed, “These days are ours, too.” Whether it be working against US empire, defending the rights of immigrants, working to abolish prisons, or demanding the right to walk safely down the street, we all fight every day in our own ways. It is only when we begin to see the connections between our various struggles, and recognize the ways in which we are privileged, that real change will come.

Thank you very much.