Saving Iceland

A solidarity concert for the Reykjavík Nine will take place this coming Thursday, January 13th in Nasa, Reykjavik. Some of Iceland’s most known bands and musicians will perform as well as authors and one of the accused will give talks during the concert.  The performers are (in no particular order): múm, Reykjavík!, Sin Fang Bous, Diskóeyjan, KK and Ellen, Parabólurnar, Steini (guitarist and singer of the reggea-band Hjálmar), Prins Póló, Ellen K. and Pétur H., Elín Ey, Arnjótur, Idir and Einar Már Guðmundsson. More acts might be announced in the next days. Read More

A good friend and comrade through the years, Jason Slade, is facing heavy charges in the US for his participation in a protest against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in Washington D.C. on April 26th 2009. For the last years Jason has lived back in forth in Iceland and is a veteran Saving Iceland and Food Not Bombs activist over here, to name only a few examples. We are calling for support of him, especially financial assistance at this moment.

During the above-mentioned protest, Jason was handcuffed after wanting to check out a friend of his who had been attacked by the police and arrested. In the end he was though not arrested until the next day when leaving the city in a car with that same friend. They got pulled over by a policeman who told them they had not given a turn signal. Shortly afterwards a policeman from the day before turned up and arrested Jason. Read More

An international week of actions has been called for 10th – 16th of January, 2011 in support of the Reykjavik Nine, nine individuals including anarchists and radical leftists, who face up to 16 years in prison for protest against the Icelandic parliament.

In December 2008 the bullet that killed Alexandros Grigoropoulos set fire to the streets of Athens, a fire that soon spread to every city across Greece. That same December on the opposite shore of Europe, in Iceland another revolt was already under way born out of the wreckage of the economy that had collapsed that fall. In the winter of 2008, Iceland, the first ‘victim’ of this global crisis, was witness to the largest mobilization in its history. Demonstrations, mass gatherings and popular assemblies, direct action and confrontation on a daily basis and finally mass riots managed to bring down the right wing government at the time. But, just like in Greece that bullet was only one cause to a revolt that had a thousand reasons behind it, in Iceland the bubble that burst that fall was only the spark for the pent up rage and frustration resulting from two decades of neoliberal government – and well, against the political and economic system in its entirety.

As we speak, the Icelandic state threatens with imprisonment nine individuals chosen to be the scapegoats of the uprising that brought down the government in January 2009. They are the Reykjavik Nine. Read More