Interview with Stavros Stavrides on Greece's Tempi train crash

On the second anniversary of the Tempi train crash, Greece was shaken by the rising public anger against the deep injustices caused by neoliberal policies and austerity measures. General strikes and mass street protests turned into one of the most significant waves of resistance in recent years.

To better understand the background of this unfolding process right next to us, we spoke with architect and academic Stavros Stavrides, who works on emancipatory and common spatial practices and whose books Common Space and Towards the City of Thresholds have been translated into Turkish.

Stavrides emphasizes that this mass movement is a crucial moment for reclaiming public space and creating room for alternative forms of organization. In our interview, we discuss the key dynamics behind the protests, the impacts of security policies and privatization, and how these emerging forms of resistance might shape Greece’s political landscape.

How do you interpret the massive protests in Greece marking the second anniversary of the Tempi train crash? Considering the main motivations and demands behind these protests, what is the societal significance of the slogan “enough is enough”?

I believe that these massive protests actually showed a kind of distrust to the conditions of justice and governance in Greece. I think most demands were not simply targeted in the ensuring of a fair trial regarding what has happened in Tempi. It was a kind of collective condemnation of harsh and unjust ongoing policies coming from a government which is actually working for the profits of the elite. Following the period of cruel austerity measures this incident somehow became a condenser of anger: people indeed seem to say enough is enough as salaries have diminished, basic goods are becoming more and more expensive, and an arrogant politico-economic elite totally ignores the needs of the many. I believe these mobilizations carry a promise and a hope for Greece.

The Syriza experience

Following the social movements that emerged after the 2008 crisis and the experience of Syriza, street mobilizations seem to have declined in recent years. How do you evaluate this shift? In what ways has this political transformation affected the use and meaning of public spaces?

Indeed, street mobilizations were very active during the period of 2008 when we had the December youth uprising. After these mobilizations declined mostly because they had to face harsh suppression. Around 2015 we had new mobilizations and popular initiatives in support of the refugees coming to Greece en masse due mainly to wars and poverty in Asia and Africa. Then mobilizations declined once more due to the promises of change invested in the rise of SYRIZA to power. After the disillusionment that followed, street mobilizations diminished. And thus, the importance of public space as a place on which opinions and demands were being shaped had become lost its momentum. 

Of course, the pandemic crisis that followed also affected the uses of public space. We had to face many restrictions; we had the forced obligation to stay at home in order to prevent the spread of the disease although lots of workplaces were still not shut down. However we also had the interesting experiences of informal uses of public space in which people actually were starting to rediscover the importance of being in the presence of others and the value of mutual support. 

Did the Tempi train crash make more visible the destructive impact of long-term austerity policies on infrastructure and public services in Greece? Has this incident undermined the legitimacy and public acceptance of neoliberal discourse around “safety,” “efficiency,” and “profit”?

As you know during the so-called public debt crisis most of public goods and public services were sold allegedly for the states to gather money to pay the debt. As we also know, of course, this debt is immense. It approaches the conditions of usury and it’s like almost a bottomless bin on which no matter how much money you pour in, it's never full. Ports were sold to foreign investors. Trains. Airports. State owned buildings, usually and just before this period we had the privatization of telecommunications and electricity production. So we are in a condition in which most publicly owned infrastructures have been sold to private enterprises (in some cases indirectly owned by other European states as in the case of trains). And of course, the incident in Tempi. in a very dramatic way, showed the results.

Privatization means profits above human lives, profits above social needs, profits above any kind of social support especially for those who mostly need it, the most vulnerable.  Security measures of course don't bring any extra money. They just cost. The neoliberal discourse on efficiency may be summed up in the scope of making any service profitable enough so that it can stay as a service managed by private interests. And of course, when in this neoliberal discourse they talk about safety, they talk about the safety of investment and not about the safety of human lives.

Alternative forms of organizing

Do you think the decreasing effectiveness of contemporary protest movements in influencing governments is solely due to increased state repression, or is it also related to the weakening of working-class organization and the inability of movements to develop alternative forms of organizing?

I believe it is important to observe the ways contemporary protest movements have developed because they do not simply follow the well-known forms of organization based on union participation or on political party affiliations. What we saw in the streets these days was huge amounts of people with no obvious political identities declared. With no banners, (or at least with very few banners with signatures coming from recognizable and well-known political parties).

Most of those people would have small self-made placards with improvised slogans. We don't know yet if these movements will have a major result in the conditions of government and on possible next elections, but I'm sure those movements will show that new forms of organization and new forms of participation are needed based on equality and on the confluence of various forms of understanding and struggling against dominant ideologies. 

How does governmental seizure of public spaces through securitization and commercialization impact the culture of protest? How do practices such as equipping squares with surveillance technologies or commercializing parks reshape the future of collective resistance?

Indeed there is a shrinking of public space’s public character because of the policies of securitization and commercialization. And of course, protests or the mere presence of people in public space in periods such as the one that we are experiencing, directly or indirectly challenge this kind of control of public space. Obviously, surveillance and commercialization tend to exclude to control and of course, to stigmatize. We are not yet in Greece, though, in a kind of urban setting similar to other European cities or to cities of Asia and Americas which have developed very aggressively advanced kinds of securitization.

And there is an explicit struggle against these efforts that usually happens during protests when people attack sometimes attack surveillance cameras. But also through explicit learning reactions or struggles, for example, Also University movement stopped in many cases efforts to extend and expand this policy of surveillance. I think this is not a battle of totally lost. But of course, it is important to keep alive the awareness that this kind of surveillance is not for the good of people, but for the good of those who govern and want to control the population. 

How has the expansion of digital spaces altered the role of physical public spaces in protests? How do social media and independent digital platforms influence the visibility, organization, and sustainability of contemporary protest movements?

Obviously, there’s a lot of talk about the role of social media and independent digital platforms in supporting, expanding and sustaining protests. True, they have played a major role but let us not reduce information circulation and communication to what is transmitted and mediated by these new media. Communication is also spreading through many other forms, some of them based on face-to-face encounters. And what we have witnessed during these days is a resurfacing of actual bodily presence in public space. It is when bodies interact that discussions unfold, and encounters take place. And it is through this experience, this experience of being in public, that most people have acquired the knowledge, but also the courage to resist and to keep on resisting. 

What potential does the collective mourning and anger following the Tempi train crash hold for democratizing public spaces? Could alternative practices of publicness play an effective role in confronting state violence and sustaining collective memory?

Collective memories and the practices of mourning have always been crucial in shaping public space experiences In the shaping of public spaces.  Authorities in many periods of history have used this potentiality in order to create monuments, ceremonies, official forms of supporting collective memory, through which memory was manipulated and shaped according to the interests of the ruling elites. When young student protesters wrote the names of the victims of the Tempi disaster, (or, rather, of the Tempi crime as we call it) on the floor of the central square of Athens the first official gesture was to clean the square and to erase them. There was a great reaction to that. Even the mayor of Athens declared that this was an improper insult and promised to preserve the names in this place. The names were written again by the protesters and are still there. This kind of mourning established and maintained by the movement directly challenges official rhetoric and abundant expressions of hypocritical sorrow by government ministers. A huge victory, I think, of public mourning against the official ceremonial approach to the death of “heroes”. And those names are painted on the floor in front of the Monument to the Unknown Soldier! This act has played a great role in confronting state violence including the violence against collective memory. 

Could contemporary protest movements achieve more lasting outcomes by developing collective practices of commoning, such as workers’ cooperatives or urban-right struggles? What role could these alternative models play in ensuring more enduring impacts beyond immediate street protests?

I’m not sure that these protests will open possibilities for advancing commoning practices. However, such practices already develop in certain parts of the city of Athens and also in other cities in Greece. Workers’ cooperatives and struggles that have to do with reclaiming free spaces and opposing gentrification have been developing these days. They are quite diverse practices. Surely many of them are not connected but there is a rising awareness that synergies and collaborations need to be developed. An interesting example is the case of a kind of coordination of neighborhood movements that focuses on the protection of open spaces and the right to housing (against touristification and gentrification) and which is being developed these last months. And it has acquired a renewed momentum after the recent massive mobilizations. 

On the 28th of February, the most significant, important demonstration was the result of a general strike that for the first time was such a successful general strike. And it showed people, I think, that they have the power to stop the urban and production engine, the power to freeze urban life. The power to stop the urban machine that produces profit and is based on exploitation. Workers, people employed either in the public or in the private sector have realized that they have this power and perhaps for the first time this power was expressed even beyond party boundaries and dividing lines. And I believe this is a huge legacy. The Tempi crime will still remain as a turning point in contemporary political history of Greece. And the lessons to be learnt and to be studied are there for everybody.  We are not at the end of a period. We are at the beginning of a period which shows people that they may have the power to change things. (DS/VC/VK)