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Finally, several of my anarchist contacts described supplementing these
communication strategies with random invitations to young people at chance encounters,
sometimes in person and sometimes anonymously via mobile multimedia messaging
technology. This latter method illustrates how receptive the youth have become to anti-
establishment publics and how ingrained within micro-social practice the anti-
establishment ethos has become. Recall Nikos’s Bluetooth café recruitment strategy.
Switching on the Bluetooth antenna of one’s mobile phone has become a popular ritual
young people perform when visiting public places. In fact, it has become standard social
practice for anyone with a mobile phone under the age of thirty-five and has even
transformed some social conventions mostly to do with politeness in public places124.
It is clear that the new communication strategies are working. Contributing to
anti-establishment publics and tapping in to youth intersubjective dynamics has allowed
the core of dedicated anarchists to mount numerous large protests including: the 1998
action against the appointment of teachers based on a state-defined system of meritocracy;
the 1999 fight to stop reforms to the social security system; the 2002 awareness campaign
to preserve local natural and ecological environments threatened by construction;
ongoing action in 2003 and 2004 against the Olympic Games in general; the 2006/2007
student movement for improvement to the education system; and finally the 2008 protest
against, again, changes to the social security system and especially pensions. Of course
interspersed among these major protests are countless other minor protests. Before losing
count I recorded over 162 distinct anarchist-supported or anarchist-organized protests in
Athens during the period of my fieldwork. However, the most impressive anarchist-
124 Baker (2003) describes how publics can create and transform social practices in his study of another
technologically-mediated anti-establishment public, Interkom.