“The moment and the drop are insidious because they do their job quietly” is one of the dictums the academic from Minor Asia writer, novelist and essayist Tasos Athanasiadis left us as a legacy and explains why: “The first brings you unexpectedly an end and the second a flood”

Goddamn it! How truthful he was for that insidious moment of February 1st, 2022, when the 12 executioners took Alkis’ life in such a hideous way.

In the case of the drop however, what flooded our own souls were the limits of our pain and those of our society’s tolerance against fan violence. Somehow like that, 3 people decided to leave our couches and take action.

Lefteris made a personal invitation to me and Ioannis. He was an unknown online friend of mine, who was always aptly commenting on some of my writings on the “Spicy column” of Perikles Traios. At the call, I also met Ioannis, a much younger but intelligent person, with a smart sense of humor, but above all with sensitivities and a restless spirit.

It was February 5th, 2022, when we met at a café called “8 ½” on Papanastasiou Street, before the football match against Volos, 4 days only after the brutal murder of Alkis. Lefteris was carrying some “seeds” and Ioannis had brought his anxieties with him. I went because an inexplicable force was guiding me there. It was about those coincidences which are finally not coincidences but karma of a non-insidious moment, because not all moments are insidious after all.

The motive was to receive some t-shirts made by Lefteris with the logo “My name is Alkis and I am Aris”. Ioannis was motivated to come not only by his anxieties, but also by a post he had made about Tzavela bus-stop, which, as Lefteris confessed, made him smile for the first time after the assassination.

I only sat at the café for half an hour, but despite the grief in my soul, I left with a “beam of light”, which was perhaps unconsciously planted in me by the seeds of Lefteris, written on a piece of paper. I went home and wrote a text that I posted on “Piperata” expressing the beam I had “seen”. Lefteris responded and that’s how we started. We didn’t know exactly the form our project would take, but we definitely knew that we wanted to react. Two days later, I received a phone call from Lefteris….. “I need you by my side for something very difficult. We must go to Veria to meet Alkis’ parents”. Ioannis couldn’t bear the pain, so he didn’t come with us, but he stayed awake all night writing the concepts of the 3rd axis.

Not even for a moment did I have second thoughts about going to Veria, probably because that moment wasn’t insidious. We went up to the house of the Kampanou family feeling awkward. “Why do you want to do that?” was the father’s question. We expressed the pain of our souls about the incident and the strong will to make Alkis a symbol, so that there would be no other Alkis.

While we were leaving the house, the feeling of awkwardness had vanished, because we had taken courage by the greatness of Ms’ Melina’s and Mr’s Aris’ soul. Afterwards, we sat down at a café to get ourselves together and plan some meetings on the same day.

Christos, Elias, Dimitris, Nikos, Tasos and Stathis came along….. It doesn’t matter what was spoken, nor how many did we inspire, because we had started by getting our way of thinking together.  Very important, a little later, was the support of Alexander and of the first woman in the Structure, Zoe.

In the post I had made, another Alexander, also unknown to us, wrote: “I want to attend your next meeting, too….”

We were two, we were three……. We became more and the Structure “February 1st, 2022, In the name of Alkis” became a reality, taking legal status in April 2022.

And that’s how the time passed! It is truly strange that we were united by a great pain, but we didn’t want to stay idle, following the maxim “An hour of idleness is more tiring than a year full of work”.

We use the diary of our life unconsciously and it willingly comes to remind us and enliven our memories, without, unfortunately, returning anything to us…. Damn it, not even Alkis.

However, Alkis is alive for us, a beacon of hope and a symbol of change. “Alkis, you are alive and you will never be forgotten”. That is what we wrote on the banner that led the colorful but silent march we held on the black anniversary, one year after Alkis was murdered.

“We were two, we were three” The tittle is borrowed by the lyrics of Mikis Theodorakis. “We are one thousand and thirteen” is allegorical, implying the uprising. The uprising, is my turn to say, for the change in the fan culture in our society. WE CAN.

Manolis Andreadakis