Major Rioting in Greece (12/21/08)

• Here's a report on the day's events in Greece, focusing on Athens.
  

• A band of demonstrators, many wearing black masks, stormed a bustling San Francisco mall Saturday evening, upending garbage cans and foliage and damaging crystal merchandise at one kiosk. An estimated 50 to 75 people were involved in the disruption at Westfield San Francisco Centre, police said.

  The disruption began around 6:30 p.m. as holiday shoppers crowded the mall on the last Saturday before Christmas. Some protesters threw food, police said. Others tried to toss a large planter onto the food court below.

  According to mall management, the protesters were part of a "Solidarity with Greek Uprising" demonstration, which began in the Mission District earlier in the afternoon. An international day of action was called on Saturday to protest the death of a young man in Greece in early December.
  

  A police source said five or six protesters were arrested for misdemeanor vandalism.

• Newspaper headlines in Athens focused on speculation that the current government might fall or be forced to reorganize.
  

• Six police vehicles were torched by unidentified hood-wearing assailants wielding petrol bombs in the west Athens district of Nea Philadelphia in the early hours of Sunday morning. The vehicles were parked outside the building of the police accounting department at Patriarchou Constantinou street, which also suffered damage in the attack.

  At around the same time, rioting and clashes with riot police continued in the area around the Athens Polytechnic (National Technical University of Athens), with protestors again lobbing petrol bombs at police.

  Earlier, a anti-racism rally in Syntagma Square had led to another violent confrontation between protestors and riot police when a group tried to deposit bags of rubbish at the foot of the new Christmas Tree set up in the square by the Athens municipality, replacing the tree torched on the first day of rioting triggered by the death of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos at the hands of police. Police used tear gas to disperse the protestors.

  Protests over the events in Greece were also reported from abroad. Dozens were arrested and four police officers were injured in Hamburg on Saturday during clashes that broke out on the margins of a rally in support of the protest movement in Greek high schools.

  There was also a small protest by some 15 demonstrators who picketed the Greek Consulate in New York to protest against police brutality worldwide.

• Occupied London is reporting that the administration of Athens Polytechnic has bypassed the usual process and given the police indirect authority to enter the campus:
  

  A few moments ago one of the pro-vice-chancellors of the Athens Polytechnic announced to the people inside the occupied building that the control of the building is no longer with the university senate and that it has been passed on to an attorney general instead. Anarchist radio 98 FM reports that the senate has ordered the university guards to leave their positions.

  There is a general assembly happening right now at the Athens Polytechnic, with people deciding whether they should leave the building or not.

  What the pro-vice-chancellor claimed to have happened is absurd and 100% illegal even by the state’s own laws. What we are all fearing is that a police operation inside the Polytechnic is imminent. This would be the first time in over a decade that such an operation takes place - and the first time ever that police enter university grounds with a mass operation without prior permission by the senate.

  If the occupiers remain and the police do attempt to clear the campus, the backlash from such an action could be intense. A defiant statement has now been issued calling for a mass convergence on the campus.
  

• Four gas stations were vandalized yesterday in Tacoma, Washington in solidarity with the Greek riots: "Early on the morning of the 20th, in memory of the 15 year old hero Alexandros Grigoropoulos and all those murdered by the police and other defenders of this false and rotting order, and in memory of our own lives, fuel hoses were slashed, pump consoles were destroyed, and the message 'walk to work and murder your boss' was left at two Shell stations and two Chevron stations in Tacoma."

• Here's a TV news report, containing some misinformation, on a solidarity protest in Turkey.