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[…] The lake is the blood of times,
drops of sweat and blood of others.
Your only offer was innocence
Bargained away through time,
in everyday expressions,
Filipino, negro, whore…
Are you shocked?
Please…
Yes, yes, I know, not you.
You would never.
You’re a philanthropist, by definition superior. […]
a quote from the poem: “Why are you shocked?” by Giorgos Pericleous.
Mary Rose Tiburcio, Sierra Graze Seucalliuc, Arian Palanas Lozano, Maricar Valtez Arquiola, Livia Florentina Bunea, Elena Natalia Bunea. Bodies of women and girls,immigrant and insignificant lives for both the cypriot state and the cypriot society. Murdered bodies, thrown into wells, in ponds, in suitcases, that heavy rain and accidental reports from tourists brought recently to the surface. The fact that so far seven women and girls have been murdered indicates something far more abhorrent: the deep racism and misogyny of the Cypriot institutions and the Cypriot society itself.
The invisibility of the immigrant women living and working in Cyprus has transformed into a horrifying spectacle, reminding us of the daily violence to which these women are exposed due to racism, unjust working conditions and patriarchy; conditions established -not only- in cypriot society and consciousness.
The marginalization of the immigrant female workers from the realm of the “political” and their social position as abjects -not subjects- of the institutions of the Cypriot State were revealed by the total indifference of the State to their existence/luck. Once again, the “occupied part of Cyprus”, the “black hole”, functioned as an excuse to the reluctance of the State to deal with such matters. However, the failure to deal with the disappearances is at the same time a failure to recognize the social oppression of immigrant female domestic workers in Cypriot reality; a failure to recognize the violence of gender and power relations.
Behind the distinct story of each murdered woman, there is a structure which is no exception but the common ground of all femicides around the world: patriarchy. From America to Saudi Arabia, from Argentina to Spain, and from Turkey to Cyprus, the basic tool of patriarchal societies is gendered violence. Psychological and physical violence against women is one of the basic methods of their obedience. This type of violence has different manifestations and a different degree of brutality: it starts with words that afflict the bodies of women and objectify their bodies and their sexuality, it becomes systemic and subordinates on the basis of origin, color, class, salary, labor, sexuality and desire, while in its outburst it could result to physical abuse and murderous mania.
Patriarchy has for centuries sowed poison in the minds of men perpetuating a culture of sexism, deeply rooted in inequality and gender discrimination, the economic weakening of women, and the acceptance of toxic masculinity with its nationalistic and militaristic impacts. It is no coincidence that so many centuries of systematic violence create repeated expressions of sexist enforcement: in communication, in contact, in the workplace, in public space. Sexism is the daily expression of patriarchy in our lives. Because in the bipolar concept of power-domination one finds a whole range of sexist violence; from vulgarity to speech, to physical violation, and from rape to death.
The scariest thing of all though, is that we are progressively led to the normalization of this sexist culture and, without reducing the severity and tragedy of the femicides, we must recognize that they are only the tip of the iceberg from the surface of which are emerging cycles of gender violence and hatred that patriarchal societies have imposed in the form of physical, psychological, sexual, economic, institutional and symbolic subordination. Nikos Metaxas is flesh from the flesh of patriarchy in Cyprus, that sees the bodies of immigrant women as temporary, consumable, worthless.
Today, we stand in solidarity with the marginalized communities of immigrant domestic workers and their struggle for visibility and (social) justice. We recognize the privileges we have in making our voices heard more. That’s why we are walking side by side, shouting to uncover institutional violence.
It is our duty to create collective structures that will fight against sexism, patriarchy, racism and nationalism. Our debt is to change the public discourse and the public space so that it shows zero tolerance to cases of sexism.
SILENCE SHALL NOT BE OUR DOMAIN OF ABJECTION.
FEMINIST SELF-DEFENSE EVERYWHERE!
Syspirosi Atakton
10th May 2019
Ecopolis is a 3-day anti-commercial festival with no sponsors. All events will be free. This year’s festival schedule is as follows (more info soon):
25/07 – Talks, presentations, and discussions
26/07 – Art exhibitions and performances
27/07 – Concert
Donations help us maintain the festival’s independent and self-funded character, so they are more than welcome.
The city as the main field of social activity and action reflects the wider social environment. Ecopolis festival aims to reveal, challenge, and renegotiate the social tensions of everyday life in the streets, squares and benches of Nicosia. A city that is drowning in coffee shops, street-side tables and fashionable bars. The old city of Nicosia has changed face: from sub-developed historical center it has now fulfilled its potential as an ideal city-commodity, maintaining the advertisable image of the “last divided capital”, while the accelerated gentrification of the last years has constituted it as an urban jewel “clean” from social relations and situations that oppose commodity relations mediated by spectacle.
Skyscrapers for high-class apartments and businesses, pedestrian zones occupied by the tables of countless interchangeable shops, the lack of public benches, fences around Faneromeni church that get taller every year, sidewalks full of parked cars, sky-rocketing rents that become prohibitive for migrant residents –all a result of gentrification and the consumerist influx which followed, creating a city where the only acceptable social / political activity is consumption. Meanwhile, barbed wire, barrels and armies force us us to live our geographical and historic site as half, mediated by the symbols of hatred and tedious queues at the checkpoints to walk a distance of 100 meters.
For us, these are factors composing a challenging landscape of action, in which we intervene creatively by expressing and making proposals for societies organized outside hierarchical, capitalist and sexist mentalities and institutions, on the basis of self-organization, solidarity and companionship. The Ecopolis festival is being held this year for the first time by the Ecopolis working group on ecology and the city. Ecopolis festival aims to put forth the claim to the city as a Common, as a field of resistance to the social and environmental endeavors of neoliberalism. We want to create the conditions in which the city is experienced as a point of reference and socialization, action and experimentation, rather than as a polished real estate commodity bought and sold according to the laws of the market and current trends.
Short-statement on the gathering of Beyond Europe – Antiauthoritarian Platform Against Capitalism in Nicosia (Cyprus) from the second to the fourth of March 2018
Last weekend antiauthoritarian groups from all over Europe came together in the divided town of Nicosia on the Island of Cyprus, located in the eastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea. Some of us hadn’t seen each other since the riotous nights of the G20 summit in Hamburg in July of last year, while many met for the first time. In 2013, when the platform Beyond Europe was formed, we were riding a wave of emancipatory unrest all over Europe, the United States of America and Northern Africa. This unrest was reacting to the economic crisis of 2008 and how it was handled politically. Today we are facing a different beast. It has risen out of the crackdown of this wave of unrest by the cooperation of neoliberal and authoritarian regimes. What we find as a result of the normalisation of the crisis through the policing of the social and militarization of the police-force is this: A massive resurgence of nationalism and populism in their many intersections with the various guises of authoritarianism and patriarchy. Going back to the recipes of the past, their promise is the promise of an easy solution. Politicians of all colors keep telling us that what separates us are the irreconcilable ‘natures’ of our ethnicities, nationalities, identity cards and genders, of our belonging. But if three days of discussions with fifty people from five countries and eleven cities has proven one thing, it is that this is a lie.
Under global capitalism, more connects us than it separates us. The culturalisation and naturalisation of bourgeois politics and capitalist economy does not solve one single contradiction arising from them. It simply displaces and externalises them. In this way it hinders progressive politics. Its discursive and material prominence is a danger for the safety and livelihood of everything different. The changed situation thus demands of us to take critical stock of our previous attempts. We are still few, weak and isolated. Our own reproduction often depends on the system and the mechanisms we seek to overcome. And we struggle to make our different histories as movements and the circumstances under which they were formed productive. But in a world divided by borders and classes, brutalized and depraved, we are far more surprised by how much common ground there is among us – how similar our desires for a different world are, and how careful we sometimes can be with each other. In several working groups this weekend – on labour and digitalisation, eco-social-struggles, feminist politics, the authoritarian formation and the rise of new fascisms – it became clear that our answer cannot be retreating into a position of self-defense. Even though they were won only by and after hard-fought battles of social movements, liberal rights or the social-democratic welfare state would not be able to counter Nationalism and Capitals even if they were tenable in the current situation. Nationalism and Capitalism are implicated in liberalism and social democracy, managing their on-going proceedings and enacting their exclusions. Instead, we need to expand and proliferate our struggles over the collective self-organisation of our lives: In the household and the neighborhood, the factory, the call-center, cyberspace, on the school-yard or the lecture hall, the fruit plantation, the coal mine or the hospital. The social and democratic experiment of Rojava, erected and defended admit the horrors of the Syrian war, surely is one example. The movement of #blacklivesmatter is another.
Together we will have to figure out what is to be done with so many issues and only very limited resources on our hands. This will take some time and we warmly invite you to join the discussion. This much is clear: It is only together that we can overcome the obstacles erected between us and the construction of a better life – be it the exploitation of our work, of our life or of our environment for the sake of profit and power. Whatever its form, Capitalism will continue to produce misery, surplus populations, war and the destruction of the Earth. So antiauthoritarian politics will have to change, but our goal remains the same: To move beyond state, nation and capital, be it in their national or supernational European incarnations. We won’t accept anything less. – Beyond Europe, Nicosia, 4.3.2018.
One Radical Planet