Kropotkin-19: A Mutual Aid Response to COVID-19 in Athens

Abstract

The current health crisis, triggered by the spread of COVID-19, has mobilized activist groups and individuals within social movements worldwide to respond with actions of solidarity and mutual aid. In Greece, during the lockdown between March and May 2020, several mutual aid initiatives emerged in Athens to offer support to those who needed it. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper traces the emergence of Kropotkin-19, a mutual aid initiative in the central neighborhood of Exarcheia, that has provided food, essential goods, and legal and psychological support to families and individuals. The paper offers insight into how a preestablished solidarity network has "mutated" in response to the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic while addressing several long-term and emerging crises. The paper concludes that affective infrastructures are integral to the vision of radical social change in a post-COVID world.

Solidarity and Care Economy in Times of ‘Crisis’: A View from Greece and Hungary Between 2015 and 2020

“…Material deprivation has conditioned the constant leitmotif of goals and interventions across the various practices of solidarity over the last ten years. Community kitchens, housing squats, and volunteer activists and grassroots organisations that have persisted across these years exemplify this continuity (Travlou 2021).…”

“…As outlined above, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was already evident that this 'normality' was predicated on anti-immigration policies, oppressive policing, a crackdown on social movements, housing evictions, privatisation of public property, poorly paid and precarious labour. Against the odds, in Athens, the 2020 lockdown became an opportune moment for political action: the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement that had gone through various ups and downs in the past five years reassembled its networks of solidarity almost immediately (Travlou 2021). In the months of the lockdown, mutual aid groups that focused on housing and refugee support proliferated in a demonstration of what Marina Sitrin (2020) '.…”

“…The initiative operated both online and offline. Due to the lockdown and social distancing measures, most of the communication and organisation of the group's actions were conducted online using various communication platforms-mostly open source and encrypted, such as Telegram, Jitsi, Discord, WhatsApp, and, for internal communication and the collection and delivery of food, Facebook Messenger (Travlou 2021).…”

Building back better from COVID-19: Knowledge, emergence and social contracts

“…During the first few weeks of the pandemic, a burgeoning number of mutual aid networks emerged globally with the objective of responding to economic and social needs of urban residents, who at same time saw their bonds with employers, families and relatively distant friends restrained ( Kavada, 2020 ; Pleyers, 2020 ). Examples of local social action involved very different activities, including the provision of food and medical goods, the production of masks; the offering of support services such as schooling, so economically deprived parents could continue working; psychological support for those affected by anxiety and domestic violence; and emergency transport to hospitals ( New Socialist, 2020 ; Pais, 2021 ; Travlou, 2020 ; Woods, 2020 ). This emergence illustrates how the geo-event of COVID-19 triggered transformations in the space of possibilities where relationships were being materialised.…”

Grassroots solidarity structures in Greece as counterhegemonic practices contesting the dominant neoliberal hegemony

“…This paper is part of the critical tradition in the social sciences (i.e. including human geography, sociology and social work, amongst other subjects), which aims to unravel oppressive conditions, highlight resistance, and concurrently promote the potential of progressive social change (Pentaraki, 2022;Pentaraki & Speake 2015;Speake & Kennedy, 2019;Pelling et al, 2021;Travlou, 2020). As such, it showcases welfare grassroots solidarity structures as being both disruptive to the dominant hegemonic order and offering counterhegemonic possibilities.…”