Homeless arrested, as dictated by Mayor G. Kaminis

* by Yiannis Kaplanis greekleftreview.wordpress.com/

On 1st February homeless people together with solidarity activists occupied an empty unused building belonging to the Athens Local Authority in order to use it as a shelter for homeless people. This was one of the coldest days in Athens with freezing temperatures. The Mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, called the police that arrested eleven homeless and four activists.
Kaminis has been elected with the support of a centre-left coalition (Socialist Party- PASOK- and Democratic Left – Dim.Ar.) called “The Right to the City” under a banner for a more socially aware, human and environmentally friendly city that cares for all Athenians. Given the Mayor’s actions in the last year and this recent example, it seems that the sensitivities of Kaminis and his coalition exclude those most affected from the Greek economic crisis: the ‘new homeless’, the ‘new poor’, the migrants.
Rather, the main concern of the Mayor has been to support the ‘government of the memorandum’ which in collaboration with the Troika (EU, ECB, IMF) has imposed harsh austerity measures to the Greek public, that generate poverty, unemployment, homelessness and social degradation. In the last year, Mr Kaminis ordered the eviction of the occupation at the syntagma square, called for an halt to the demonstrations in central Athens, had a hostile stance to the 300 migrant hunger strikers, fired temporary contract local authority workers. At the same time the police, with the approval of the Mayor, performs daily mass operations against undocumented migrants and drug addicts. But why Mr Kaminis has been so eager to get the homeless evicted when all agree that the local authority facilities have been insufficient to support the rising numbers of new-homeless? Is it for the same reason that might underlie the law passed last week that only officially approved organisations can distribute food to the poor? Are they afraid of the rise of popular forms of self-organisation and social solidarity that circumvent the state ones and can gain mass support?

And relevant coverage from the Red NoteBook:

http://www.rednotebook.gr/details.php?id=4684

http://greekleftreview.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/homeless-arrested-as-dictated-by-mayor-g-kaminis/