In Greece, Anarchists Step Up to Fill a Void

ATHENS — It may seem paradoxical, but Greece’s anarchists are organizing like never before.

Seven years of austerity policies and a more recent refugee crisis have left the government with few resources, offering citizens less and less. Many have lost faith. Some are taking matters into their own hands, to the chagrin of the authorities.

Tasos Sagris, 45, a leader with the anarchist group Void Network and of the Embros theater group, has pushed the social activism that is filling the void in governance.

“People trust us because we don’t use the people as customers or voters,” Mr. Sagris said. “Every failure of the system proves the idea of the anarchists to be true.”

These days that idea is not only about chaos and tearing down the institutions of the state and society — the country’s long, grinding economic crisis has taken care of much of that — but also about unfiltered self-help and citizen action.

Since 2008, scores of “self-managing social centers” have mushroomed across Greece, financed by private donations and the proceeds from regularly scheduled concerts, exhibitions and on-site bars, most of which are open to the public. There are now around 250 nationwide.

Some activists have focused on food and medicine handouts as poverty has deepened and public services have collapsed.

In recent months, anarchists and leftist groups have trained special energy on housing refugees who flooded into Greece in 2015 and who have been held up in the country since the European Union and Balkan nations tightened their borders. Some 3,000 of these refugees now live in 15 abandoned buildings that have been taken over by anarchists in the capital.

The police have raided squats occupied by anarchists in Athens, Thessaloniki and on Lesbos, a gateway for hundreds of thousands of migrants over the past two years. But the authorities have stopped short of a blanket crackdown, which would be difficult for the leftist Syriza party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to condone.

The anarchists say their squats are a humane alternative to the state- run camps now filled with more than 60,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Human rights groups have broadly condemned the camps as squalid and unsafe.

In Exarchia, one of the squats includes a former state second- ary school that was abandoned because of structural problems. Established last spring with the help of anarchists, the squat is now home to some 250 refugees, mostly from Syria, who have set up a chicken coop on the roof. Many more refugees are on a “waiting list” for other buildings.

The squats function as self- organized communities, independent from the state and nongovernmental organizations, said Lauren Lapidge, 28, a British activist who came to Greece in 2015 at the peak of the refugee crisis and is involved with occupied buildings.

“They are living organisms: Kids go to school, some were born in the squat, we’ve had weddings inside,” she said.