The following speech was read at a demonstration at Potsdamer Platz on June 25th, 2026, after Prosfygika’s announcement of victory in the struggle to defend their space against a “redevelopment project” that was being used as a pretext to evict the community. You can read Prosfygika’s statement here.
Dear Comrades and Friends,
It is beautiful to see you all here today. We have gathered in solidarity with the Squatted Community of Prosfygika and to share their joy. The hunger strikes of our comrades Aristotelis Chantzis and Suzon Doppagne have come to an end. We wish them both a quick recovery.
The municipal council of Athens has asked the region of Attica to terminate the development program which would have led to the eviction of Prosfygika. But we do not celebrate this step taken by the state.
Over months, thousands took to the streets during demonstrations, there were attacks in solidarity with the community and the hunger strikers, and the proposal of self-organised community spread far and wide. We celebrate the power that we have created together[1]. We celebrate that our struggle has strengthened the solidarity between us and created new complicities. Our victory is not defined by the actions of the state, it is defined by our own actions: everything that we do to fight against domination, to live our revolutionary ideas is a victory. This is how we understand the slogan “we will win or we will win”.
Make no mistake, this is not a gesture of good will by the state. When the municipal council of Athens asked the district of Attica to cancel their plans, they also asked Prosfygika to end the hunger strike, and to enter into dialogue with the district, “to put a definitive end to the tension”, to repeat their own words[2].
Negotiations are a tool of soft repression. Right at the point that struggles begin to become threatening to Power, the state steps in with offers to “talk”, to lull us into a false sense of security, to get us to think that they’re on our side. Through negotiations, the state attempts to pacify and divide us by pushing us to redefine the struggle on terms acceptable to it, one that maintains its power. It uses them to manage us, and to get people to distance themselves from those who it believes are the biggest threat.
They hope that by giving something to us, the struggle will stop, and we’ll become silent. Unfortunately this has happened many times in the past. In Berlin the early 90’s, after intense battles for the defense of squats threatened with eviction, the city sought to reestablish control by entering into negotiations with many of the remaining squats, which led to their legalisation. Most became depoliticised and pacified.
Here at Rigaer94, for years we have refused anything that would lead to our pacification. We do not say this to put ourselves above those who took this path, but to say that we are one of many examples that show that it’s possible to resist attempts of recuperation and to keep fighting. We remain in solidarity with Prosfygika, and affirm that solidarity to us always means being in active struggle against Power.
Society here has been so destroyed through the attacks of the state and bosses, that many cannot imagine another world as possible. We have to defend our imagination and build up our communities of struggle. Our house has always been a place for those whose hearts burn with rage, who refuse to resign themselves to the misery of life under state-capitalist power, and who know that it’s possible to build life on our own terms. This is why we choose to defend it, and this is why we continue to fight with Prosfygika.
Because what exists in Prosfygika,
We find it wherever people come together to defend life.
We find it wherever people organize to care for one another.
We find it wherever people refuse to leave each other behind. It is simple.
It is perhaps the most human thing there is.To come together.
To share.
To care.
To defend one another.
We are told that competition is natural and solidarity is difficult.
But Collectivity and autonomy are not things we must invent.
They are things we have been taught to forget.
Prosfygika, our house, and many other self-organised spaces, are under attack.
This attack does not come in isolation.
It comes at a time when every aspect of life is being privatized, commodified, and placed under attack.
Everywhere around us, people are being pushed into poverty, exclusion, isolation, and social death.
Public healthcare is collapsing.
Education is being privatized.
Housing is becoming unaffordable.
Communities are being displaced.
Public spaces are disappearing.
Resistance is criminalized.
It is simple: pacify those who resist, liberalize those who struggle, and divide the oppressed among themselves.
The state does not want collective life to exist.
That is why they attack Prosfygika. This is why they’re trying to quell the struggle around it now.
Not simply because the community occupies buildings,
but because it occupies the imagination.
Because it proves, every single day, that people can come together, organize themselves, and create life on their own terms.
And because our hope, in what we are capable of together, without them and against them, and our will to realise it,
is dangerous to those in power.
To defend Prosfygika is to defend the possibility of community itself.
It is to defend hope, in repressive political times.
Everything we do, we do with the mentality that we will win.
Not because the enemy is weak. But because every struggle must already contain in itself the world it fights for.
This is how we understand victory,
Not as a distant event waiting in the future,
Not a final moment after which the struggle ends.
It is the courage to continue, when they tell us to surrender.
It is the solidarity that survives the repression.
It is every community that refuses displacement,
It is every space of autonomy we defend, create and expand.
We carry a different way of life in our hearts
And that life is growing in every crack of a breaking system, wherever people choose solidarity over isolation and struggle over resignation.
And we will do so with a clear line between us and the enemy.
Between those who foster life and those who profit from death.
Between those who build solidarity, and the bosses and imperialists who rule through exploitation, war and fear.
And we will fight with the conviction that carries our movement forward.
WE WILL WIN, OR WE WILL WIN!
[1] By this we mean that through struggling together, we build trust and confidence in one another, and share knowledge and skills, which increases our agency and strengthens our relationships.
[2] https://thepressproject.gr/prosfygika-hunger-strike-ends-after-athens-council-resolution/