For the fourth year in a row, Antifa League Cyprus returns to startle us, to remind that this island can go against all odds and any form of alternative waves. We meet again in the neighbourhoods and villages of Limassol, against the mass culture and the commercialization of our lives.
For us football is not about two opposite teams that try to impose each other, sponsors, fanaticism inside and outside football fields, manipulation of the masses, hierarchical structures, economic interests, season tickets and for no reason it’s not about supporter’s ID card, profiling, the stadium “churches” etc. Football is the noon after school in the neighbourhoods, the agony to meet each other, to organise and start our fight without searching for freshly cut lawn but the carelessness and a way out from the daily routine. Football is much more than the laws that limit us and the restrictions that are imposed on us. It exists to unite and not to divide, becoming the motive for collective action and not hatred.
And just like that, four years before, we teamed up and created Antifa League Cyprus, the first self-organised and antifascist football festival in Cyprus, away from everything that disgust us. We launched into counter attack creating something that fulfils our standards. A politicized festival that anyone who takes part, contributes and tries every year to make it better. We seek to build more communication and solidarity bridges across the whole island, to rally against fascism and detect that dialectical thread that connects self-organization in sports with the struggles in the social field, inside and outside the stadiums. Football is an essential need of our life against the misery and the personalization, an existential cry against the violence of non-communicative.
The cornerstone of Antifa League is self-organisation. We are trying with every mean we’ve got to prepare a live act that can’t be compared with Madonna’s but in the end that’s not our goal and it would never be. Our goal is to promote our own music that speaks for what we believe, want and fight for. Voices of freedom and not commercialised logics is what we want to be heard through our microphones. We form a one-day festival and we play again on cement and soil like we used to, because our purpose is not a luxury game or other comforts but to reunite, play and create relationships. Moreover, every year there is collective kitchen, vegetarian and non-vegetarian food cooked by us with the most we can offer.
A political attempt that is open to anyone who wants to create relations of comradeship/ friendship. We rely on unity and we shut out any sexist, racist or fascist behaviour. We make clear that we are not going to tolerate such behaviour or people acting on self-promotion or even seeking attention through supposedly revolutionary actions. We will not hesitate a moment to stand against such actions.
The last years we noticed the appearance of alternative festivals on the island, which is something we cannot let pass unremarked. We want to make clear that we do not have any relation with such alternative crap which baptizes the profitability with words like equality and solidarity through throwing bananas. Festivals that are funded by banks, NGOs and businesses that reek of worker exploitation. Alternative non-politicised festivals that promote the culture of imprisonment and concentration camps, having the nerve to trivialize basic needs (like milk) which refugees are deprived daily. For us these festivals are the reflection of the world of power, of the state, of capitalism and festivals of such type are driving us apart from a free society.
Our main goal is the solidarity towards everyone who is being oppressed. We stand against the oppression of our lives and we stand next to every rebellious part of the society we live in. From Chiapas’s mountains to the autonomous Kurdish cantons. From the Palestinian resistance to people who struggle in Turkey. From the refugees and migrants that bring down borders and fences to the political prisoners. As a minimum indication of solidarity, the income of Antifa League Cyprus is given to the ‘Solidarity fund for imprisoned and persecuted fighters’, an open structure that operates all over Greece and it aims for the ensuring of political-ethical-material support of the fighting prisoners. It also supports structures that operate inside Cyprus but also many other current issues.
That said, we are waiting you to be there alongside us, next to what we believe and against everything we despise. With activities, live acts, screenings, bookstore and other printed material. Through collective actions we must clutch our lives back. Willing to put a small stone against anything that oppress us so we can smash the misery and the humiliation of all things. Antifa League Cyprus is a small step to take our lives once again back into our hands.
Antifa League Cyprus #4
against all odds.
SELF-ORGNISATION SOLIDARITY EQUALITY ANTIFASCISM
In greek
