(Greece) October is a month of remembrance and action for the anarchist revolutionary Kyriakos Xymitiris.
As long as there are those who die in combat, we will exist to continue the war.
And when we die, we die like stars that scatter light. Like that light that shone a year before the explosion in the Ampelokipi apartment on October 31, when the anarchist armed fighter Kyriakos Xymitiris was going through the last part of his journey, where everything is condensed in an instant, where his revolutionary consciousness is aligned with the desire to put an end to this aging world that feeds on his flesh.
Filled with immense camaraderie, determination, and no inclination to back down, he pledged to fight with a vision of freedom. With clear eyes, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris made no concessions to emotion, he loved life and honored it with every breath he took. Both in Berlin and in Athens, he participated indistinctly in all fields of struggle. In demonstrations and marches against gentrification, in anti-fascist and anti-patriarchal patrols, in massive poster pastings, in militant defenses of occupations, in struggles against colonialism and prisons.
He remained firm in his anarchist convictions. In this suffocating world built on powers that strangle the savage beauty of uncontrolled freedom, on predatory policies, on policies of death and wars that the Western powers established in the countries of the “third world” by trampling on corpses, on cynical confessions of the type “he who does not adapt, dies”, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris did not look away. In this world of manufactured emotions, standardized behaviors, social contracts, mass apathy, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris lived relentlessly in the here and now. In a context of intensifying authoritarianism and militarization, of growing insecurity and widespread impoverishment, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris achieved his own transcendence, renounced his social privileges and assumed his responsibility. At a time when relationships are criminalized by filling pages and pages of long accusations, when systematic imprisonments try to send a strong message of criminal terrorism, when the judicial mechanism shows its claws to the poor devils and turns its gaze to the crimes of state capitalism, comrade Kyriakos demonstrated that the strategy of repression does not intimidate revolutionary consciences. At a time when the movement is suffering a setback, due to the internalization of repression, adaptability and integration, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris decided not to give in and to contribute to the historical configuration of subversive events. Defying the times, he opted for the path of political and revolutionary responsibilities. Armed with courage and determination, he chose to respond to the violence of domination.
His priority was to preserve the revolutionary tradition of specific means of struggle, which over time had become inactive. Faced with the monopoly of violence of power, he responded by choosing liberating violence as a means to end the suffering suffered by the majority of humanity. Comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris sharpened the dialectic and refused to accept that those who hold power are the only legitimate exponents of violence. He fought without guarantees, without safe and infallible conditions, with soul, faith and determination.
Because it is a war. A class and social war. And for comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris, inaction did not even exist as a possibility.
In this war, by choosing life, he fell fighting. His death is therefore an affirmation of life, and the preservation of his revolutionary memory is anything but a neutral process. It is a thorn in the side of oblivion and a crack in history imposed by the rulers. It is part of our own struggle, our present and our future. It is living history. A history that was built on the smiles and complicit looks of our own people, our own friends, our own comrades.
And if some did not return, they live among us in every breath of freedom. And if some of them fell in combat, they accompany us in every action we undertake. And if some of them left early, they walk in front of us and pave the way for us. And they are all the ones who filled the inkwell of revolutionary history with their blood. We may not have walked alongside them, but we walked beside them. We may not have chosen the same path, but we were looking at the same sky. Because we had chosen resistance, revolutionary vision, hatred for this world and love for life. And their subversive memory acts as fuel in our fires, as ink in our texts, as slogans in our marches and as stones in our pockets, giving meaning to their death, calling them to another battle. Over and over again…
It is we who must preserve his memory, remember his explosive action and his sharp determination. It is we who must transform common grief into anger and aggressive formation. It is we who must give something for those who gave everything.
Let’s turn October into a month of memory and insurrectional struggle. Let us proudly stand by our comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris through actions and interventions, through posters and barricades, through activities and conspiracies. Let’s keep his memory alive, defend his decisions, make sure he is still PRESENT.
We create, therefore, moments of anarchist expression breaking the norm. Let us question the myth of the omnipotence of the State and social peace by proposing solidarity, equality and freedom, let us overcome our limits, deploying our subversive dispositions in a militant way in the streets. We collide with the cannibalistic system by experiencing moments that take our breath away. Let us defend our ideas in practice, claiming life instead of survival, companionship instead of alienation, freedom instead of submission, conflict instead of integration.
It is up to those who feel part of themselves to support Kyriakos and manifest in every possible and unlikely way the break with the world of power. And our own hearts, from our own hearts, will accompany you in every battle. Over and over again…
We will never be ourselves again.
We must profoundly change
The way things happened.
When our comrades die,
we mourn them.
When our comrades die,
Let’s take revenge.
When our comrades die,
We wonder why.
We must profoundly change
the way things happened.
*Weather Underground’s poem after an explosion at a New York residence that killed Diana, Ted and Terry, members of Weather.
Dimitra Zarafeta,
Marianna Manoura,
Korydallos Women’s Prison
extracted from Indymedia Athens and translated to Spanish by Informativo Anarquista