The historical context of the group was really inspired by the struggles that refugees escaping persecution and war faced in their journey towards Europe. Over the many years that the Syrian Civil War has been going on and the decades of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, economic and political refugees have been crossing into Europe hoping for a better life. The activists at City Plaza noticed the rising anti-refugee sentiment burgeoning across Europe as well as the complete lack of available and effective resources for refugees once they enter Europe. The political and historical context of the group stems from the growing anarchist sentiments in certain neighborhoods of Athens and across Greece that led to the electoral success of the leftist Syriza government which promised to close down refugee camps across Greece and provide refugees with dignity.
The current refugee crisis is firmly tied to the financial crisis of 2008-2010 which impacted Greece greatly and whose remnants we still see today in Athens and across Greece. City Plaza Hotel is firmly tied to the financial crisis as like many other Greek businesses, the hotel had to close its doors in 2010 in the wake of the European financial crisis. The financial crisis has hit the country of Greece very hard and after numerous bailouts by the European Union, the Greek government had to impose wide spread austerity measures that cut public funding for essential services. The downturn on the Greek economy led to the collapse of many businesses like City Plaza which was originally created to house tourists for the 2004 Olympic Games. After the influx of refugees to Greece, the Greek government was not prepared or had the funding to house all the refugees stuck in Greece after the closure of the Western Balkan route up through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and then onto Germany. The large amount of refugees that were stuck in Greece were not adequately housed and many found themselves stuck in squalid refugee camps, far out from the major cities. These camps had no running water, electricity and had very limited resources for refugees seeking education, healthcare or legal help. The birth of City Plaza was firmly cemented in the financial crisis that Greece went through and the lack of national financial resources available to help refugees. Greece placed thousands of refugees in squalid camps with no access to water, sanitation or healthcare and provided no dignity in refugee protection. Solidarity activists and refugees saw the need to provide alternative services that ensured each refugee was treated dignity and respect. City Plaza is seen as an alternative to the collapsing provision of refugee services within Greeks political system and even if Greece and many other countries are unable to provide services to refugees due to economic and political constraints, activists are able to take the burden on themselves and help ensure refugees are protected when they come to Greece. The elected Syriza government, a coalition of left wing and radical left parties, promised to close down refugee camps across Greece and move refugees into more permanent refugee accommodation to provide refugees with a sense of dignity and respect within Greece. However, due to financial constraints and the growing prominence of the right-wing Golden Dawn party, the government has abandoned most of its plans to build new accommodation for refugees and have actively tried to evict them from refugee squats throughout the city.
While the City Plaza Hotel can chronicle its journey from April 2016, the common mindset behind the hotel and he group of Greek solidarity activists that helped establish the hotel was established through the work of DIKTYO (Network for Social and Political Rights). The independent organization has been born out of the thriving far-left political scene in Greece and is made up of a collection of activists and organization who believe that wide spread changes need to be made to the political system in Greece to create a more equitable society. The independent network proposes an alternative formula of social organization based on a model of self-coordination, equitability and ‘horizontal,” collaboration, rather than the traditional hierarchical one, especially with its focus on capitalist ideals of a sponsored free market. The building, which was kept closed for seven years following the business declared bankruptcy, was squatted in 2016 by a group of activists and migrants, including DIKTYO, the former SYRIZA’s Youth and Antarsya, a radical leftist group from Athens. The Greek organizations started a process of allowing refugees to stay in the rooms of the hotel and creating a solidarity space for refugees in Athens. Volunteers would arrive from across Europe to assist with the operation of the hotel and ensure it was effectively and equiatably providing an alternative space for all political and economic refugees in Athens. Shortly afterwards, given the advanced self-organisation developed by City Plaza, the three groups decided to take a step back in the management of the structure, passing the lead on to the local team living inside the building, and from that moment on supporting them only from the political point of view. (DIKTYO Website).
Below is a quick history of some of the most important points of City Plaza Hotel journey:
On April 22, 2016, a ragged consortium of Greek activists, refugees and international volunteers from the Solidarity Initiative for Political and Economic Refugees broke the locks of the hotel, reconnected the utilities, cleaned up the rooms and occupied the building. They opened the hotel to refugees fleeing war, poverty and climate change in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan.
Over 2017, the Hotel improved its services offered to refugees including expanding into coordinating with volunteer doctors to provide basic healthcare, opening up spaces for artists to come do trauma therapy with refugee children and creating an activity center for refugee youth to gather for games and language tutor sessions. Furthermore, during this year, City Plaza extended the scope of its work to include advocacy work for refugees that firmly put them in the driving seat behind change to refugee systems in Greece and across Europe by elevating their voices and giving them the platform to advocate for what they want to see changing.
On April 22, 2018, City Plaza will celebrate its two-year anniversary of providing solidarity services to refugees across Athens. Currently 350 refugees and more than 50 activists live in the City Plaza Hotel, creating a sense of community and solidarity among people from all different walks of life. They will have a large celebration commemorating two years of City Plaza and providing services for more than 1000 refugees.
The ideological compilation of the activists is firmly anarchist, leftist organizers who believe in creating solidarity movements for refugees that can battle against the rising tide of nationalism in Greece and across the European continent. Furthermore, the anarchist ideological composition arises out of the activists’ desire and willingness to take over an abandoned Greek hotel and disregard previous property rights. The activists and refugees themselves saw the need to provide more accommodation of better quality to refugees that the Greek state and traditional international refugee agencies were not providing. The two groups - activists and refugee activists - worked in conjunction with each other to identify areas that could potentially host refugees and made plans to occupy them. They disregarded the traditional notions of property owning, a fundamental aspect of capitalism, and decided the need to provide refugees with dignified accommodation was a much greater necessity and better use of unoccupied space in Athens.
An important aspect to note is that the ideology of refugees is unknown within the context of City Plaza, there is necessarily not much consensus or desire for the refugees to agree with the motives of the protesters, rather they work together to determine whether the actions of the activists are helping contribute to the protection of refugees. The solidarity activists at City Plaza do not try and impose their ideological or political perspectives on refugees, rather they aim to simply provide services to refugees and other vulnerable populations in Greece.
City Plaza Hotel is firmly a grassroots organization that aims to inspire refugees to make their own decision in terms of their home and encourages the integration of refugees into Greek society by providing them with a platform to advocate for their own needs as a community. The internal make-up of the hotel is built on fostering a sense of community built on their ideals of empowering refugees while at the same time abiding by a behavior code that has zero tolerance for racism, sexism or abuse. The refugees come from numerous different countries, all escaping a political or economic trauma that they have faced. The staff at the hotel aim to integrate refugees by not allowing one nationality or ethnicity to live on the same floor an encouraging country themed nights that allow different refugee nationalities to learn about each other’s culture and the troubles that forced them to leave. The internal decision making process of the hotel is one based on equitability where all refugees have a voice in the decision making process of the hotel.
Day-by-day management is ensured by few but fundamental activities organized in shifts of mixed teams made up of volunteers and residents, especially with regard to preparing and serving meals, cleaning the premises and supervising the whole building both during daytime and night-time. For this reason, those who live at City Plaza have two cards: one for identification, which allows the access to the building, and a second one which is used for the collection of daily meals in the common dining hall. Decisions are always taken through the democratic instrument of collective discussions, which are called in dedicated meetings such as the coordination meeting and the solidarity meeting, the latest specifically dedicated to volunteers, also called "solidarians". In addition to that, City Plaza is kept in top shape by the constant presence of long-term volunteers and a group of activists belonging to the collective that supports the occupation.
Although, the initial leadership of the group was mostly made up of Greek solidarity activists it included some refugee activists who had moved to Greece earlier who believed in the goal of providing refugees with more effective resources than they had. Currently, activists wholly work alongside the refugees, giving them an important voice in the proceedings and ensuring that every action they do has the goal of improving refugees’ lives and their future prospects in Greece.
