In broad daylight anarchists in Athens attacked an auction house known for selling off the homes of poor families in debt. Communique below.
The issue of auctions has become a taboo in public discourse. Theoretically, nobody likes auctions, apart maybe from the troika. The governments so far are supposedly giving ”negotiation battles” in order to prevent auctions. Banks are telling us they do not want auctions because they are recorded as loss. Notaries supposedly abstain from these procedures collectively, pretending they have some kind of social empathy.
Unfortunately this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Auctions take place in courts on a weekly basis, usually on Wednesdays from 16:00 to 17:00. We witnessed the home of an unemployed father of four who has 85% disability being auctioned four times within the space of two months. Another case was that of a 6 member family who had their home auctioned for a 3870 euro debt towards the company Perfect Clean that handles the building’s common expenses. In another instance, the same company attempted to auction a 49 sq.m. flat in order to cover a 2500 euro debt. These cases are only the tip of the iceberg. In a city like Athens, where there are over 100 000 empty houses while thousands of people are sleeping rough, it is enraging, to say the least, to have auctions forcing people to become homeless.
The only reason auctions have not become common practices is the social resistance in the form of…