WATCH: Seizing the Means of Production
A Spotlight on Greece’s Occupied Worker-Run Factory
Unicorn Riot, via Economic Grassroots Organizing
[CC – Greek, English] Workers have successfully self-managed the production of environmentally-friendly cleaning products for the last six years in the occupied factory Vio.Me. There are no bosses in this factory on the east side of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city. Workers have been in full control since occupying the factory in 2013, two years after the workers had stopped receiving paychecks from the business due to the parent company having filed for bankruptcy.
Unicorn Riot brings you inside the worker-run Vio.Me. facility for one in our three part video series. We spoke with five of the workers, and gained a deeper perspective and history of Vio.Me.
For more info click here.
[CC – Greek, English] A radical new approach to healthcare is reclaiming equal relations between specialists and patients while building a community of health from inside an occupied factory in an industrial Greek metro. The Workers’ Healthcare Center of the self-managed occupied factory Vio.Me. has provided free holistic healthcare services to the broader community for the last three years in Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki.
Unicorn Riot visited the healthcare center in late 2018 and spoke with Dimitra Pouliopoulou, a psychologist who volunteers at the center, to learn more.
For more info click here.
[CC – Greek, English] Unicorn Riot brings you inside the worker-run and occupied Vio.Me. factory. We are guided through the facility by Nicole, a worker in the factory in one of our three part video series on Vio.Me.
Workers have successfully self-managed the production of environmentally-friendly cleaning products for the last six years in the occupied factory Vio.Me. There are no bosses in this factory on the east side of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city.
For more info click here.
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Because we love so much. Mistakes please let go. I am willing to love you. tetris skribbl io
https://theduran.com/forgotten-battles-against-the-deep-state-part-2-jfk-vs-the-empire/
Great! One of the things that really struck home was when the worker spoke (and I’m paraphrasing) about the importance of the product of the co-operation not only being something which the society expected to consume it but also that society should desire the co-op means of production.
The internet is an ugly place which frequently reveals capitalism at its worst.
Even 25 years ago when many netizens of a socialist bent endeavoured to sabotage BS intellectual ‘property’ laws by uploading movies, games, music and TV shows, the attitude of many of the ‘customers’ was apalling.
Gimme gimme demands, unreasonable expectations and ingratitude to the nth degree would dominate in some of the newsgroups.
The example of anonymous encrypted messaging being subverted by pedos is well known, it seemed every attempt to keep the net in the hands of users was being subverted, that all the sabotage was by pretenders – types employed to deliberately corrupt and destroy the means of supply. That was how I felt at the time, but now I am less sure.
eg I have long belonged to a France based file serving/sharing/streaming venture that charges a fraction of what other like minded entities do for a decade. There is an unofficial understanding among most subscribers that we take the rough with the smooth, that on the rare occasions when the seed box is problematic or bandwidth usage for a particular server at 100%, we just shrug our shoulders and move on to something else.
Increasingly however, some users refuse to comprehend a simple fact, that they are paying 2 euros per month for a service that frequently costs more than ten times that from private ‘enterprise’ for a less robust arrangement. Just because they have become habituated to fucking swearing and SHOUTING at the service desk staff working at the private enterprise joints (which IMO is reprehensible given that the service desk staff are earning shit pay and have zero ability to fix the systemic issues) doesn’t entitle them to treat such an effective and economic service the same way.
The abuse (mostly in english natch) is becoming so trenchant that I can see a time when this great enterprise pulls the pin. Of course being as they are trying to survive in Macron’s France, DDOS attacks have also increased in size and complexity making their toil frustrating as fuck sometimes.
Many of the cooperative ventures possible going forward (as the capitalists describe anything set to happen beyond the eternal now) will probably occur on the net, so achieving the sort of yearning for a product or service by society that the VIO.ME worker described, will be a challenge. I have no doubt that a range of solutions will be devised in the same way that VIO.ME workers found solutions to their challenges, but this an issue where the creation of many ideas by many, many, different humans is essential.
We must use that which many perceive as a weakness – so many humans now, as a strength – more people more notions of what could work.
Resolving something that is generally quite linear such as an effective production model is a doddle compared to the varied and complex combination of education, information dissemination and attitudinal change required to encourage our brothers and sisters to be receptive to alternative models of organisation.
This is especially the case when we consider that often it is disgust and fear of current organisations which motivates them to seek change. Just because they seek a change doesn’t mean they will shed their experience earned distrust of all about them.
Brilliantly put.
Im interested in your comment in the parentheses after “going forward”. I hate the phrase because it implies this linear progression: always in the same direction, onwards and upwards, an intolerance for “failure”, never stopping (etc) but do find it hard to articulate quite why.
When people use this workplace bullshit phrase I might query it and play dumb (it’s reasonably well known that I’m a resident of Aspergistan so I can get away with this, and being rather blunt) before exclaiming “oh, you mean in the future…!” as though I’d never heard the phrase before.
Of course “the future” is another construct but perhaps not quite so deterministic.
Anarchy (rules WITHOUT rulers) in action.
Ubiquitous Hyper-Normalisation by design, dinkum . . .
Who needs politicians ?
Will anybody have a job soon with driverless cars, automated fruit picking, even the jobs of white collar professionals being automated?
The only future people can look forward to now that they are no longer needed is being culled by the Davos elite, who want the world population reduced to 500 million.
Indeed, as evidenced by the Georgia Guidestones, Point 1:
Yes, 5G is a great tool for the elites. Make the masses redundant, AND kill them, all using the same technology…….5G. Here is an essential rundown of the health implcations of this evil tech
This is also very good
5G, sperm counts down by 1% a year, GMO, promotion of homosexuality, abortion, feminism, paedophilia, bestiality, incest, all part of the same programme promoted by the same Davos/ Bilderberg folks. When they’ve reduced the population to 500 million, there will still be plenty left to provide them with all the personal astrologers, personal trainers, personal rabbis, and child sex slaves they need. All one big Epstein Lolita Island.
Rigging every election worldwide from the Beast supercomputer in Jerusalem
We need more of this in the west quite frankly then when people see socialised work they may change their tune in socialism