Links to Greece's Discontent with Austerity

Greece-Oct 19

The General Strike of Greece in Pictures, from The Guardian.   The Issue: Who will control the economics of Main Street in Greece? The Euro Wall Street or the Main Street of Greece?  According to one protester,  municipal employee Giorgos Kamkeris, "The men and women whom we elected to power were not given a mandate to reduce us to poverty."  He went on to say,  "this is about people power. It is about the masses persuading politicians to think again"  (qtd. in Helen Smith).

This BBC article with video shows the intensity of the clash between Main Street and Euro Wall Street during Greece's General Strike going on right now.  According to the article, at least 70,000 people gathered together at Syntagma Square in central Athens. But people all through Greece are part of the General Strike. According to the article, "one striker, university lecturer Yannis Zabetakis, told the BBC Greece was like 'a taxation Armageddon.'"

This blog article offers one or more videos of the crisis in Greece. The videos follow the article. Its headline reads, "Greece Braces for 'Mother Of All Strikes As Austerity Vote Nears." Further beneath the videos are "related articles" on the crisis in Greece.

After Greek Parliament votes yes, yes, make Main Street pay once more, people on Main Street say no, no, no. Yet, who's listening?  Who wrote the sacred list of "Not To Be Tampered With" and how is that working out for us? Should we re-evaluate our addiction to a particular kind of governing in which unavoidable suffering and imbalances occur with such rapidity both are hard to keep up with? Should we continue obeying  a small group of people who we essentially allow to write up death lists, poverty lists, and privilege lists? Main Street has to decide together. We have to examine where we've been and where we'd like to go. Whatever we do, we should really figure out a way to avoid setting up people on Main Street as tools for people on Wall Street to use for their benefit.

 But what do I know about the desires of others? Maybe people just want the crumbs that usually fall from the table for us.  Nothing says we should meet the demands of the 21st century for a more humane society. Nothing says we shouldn't obey people who have assumed rulership over others. We can cattle ourselves onto a very thin line, in which our  major goal remains policing our own and our family's state of being to stay on that line, the thin one from which we can be easily seen by those who have drawn it or continue to alter it according to their needs. We can count on some nice person in power to change things--eventually one day, later, in some future, after we're dead even, for our children or grandchildren. It's really our choice. It always was and always will be.