Greece’s solidarity movement: ‘it’s

Greece’s solidarity movement: ‘it’s a whole new model – and it’s working’
“A long time ago, when I was a student,” said Olga Kesidou, sunk low in the single, somewhat clapped-out sofa of the waiting room at the Peristeri Solidarity Clinic, “I’d see myself volunteering. You know, in Africa somewhere, treating sick people in a poor developing country. I never once imagined I’d be doing it in a suburb of Athens.”
Few in Greece, even five years ago, would have imagined their recession- and austerity-ravaged country as it is now: 1.3 million people – 26% of the workforce – without a job (and most of them without benefits); wages down by 38% on 2009, pensions by 45%, GDP by a quarter; 18% of the country’s population unable to meet their food needs; 32% below the poverty line.
And just fewer than 3.1 million people, 33% of the population, without national health insurance.
So, along with a dozen other medics including a GP, a brace of pharmacists, a pediatrician, a psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon, a gynecologist, a cardiologist and a dentist or two, Kesidou, an ear, nose and throat specialist, spends a day a week at this busy but cheerful clinic half an hour’s drive from central Athens, treating patients who otherwise would not get to see a doctor. Others in the group accept uninsured patients in their private surgeries.
“We couldn’t just stand by and watch so many people, whole families, being excluded from public healthcare,” Kesidou said. “In Greece now, if you’re out of work for a year you lose your social security. That’s an awful lot of people without access to what should be a basic right. If we didn’t react we couldn’t look at ourselves in the mirror. It’s solidarity.”
The Peristeri health centre is one of 40 that have sprung up around Greece since the end of mass anti-austerity protests in 2011. Using donated drugs – state medicine reimbursements have been slashed by half, so even patients with insurance are now paying 70% more for their drugs – and medical equipment (Peristeri’s ultrasound scanner came from a German aid group, its children’s vaccines from France), the 16 clinics in the Greater Athens area alone treat more than 30,000 patients a month.
The clinics in turn are part of a far larger and avowedly political movement of well over 400 citizen-run groups – food solidarity centers, social kitchens, cooperatives, “without middlemen” distribution networks for fresh produce, legal aid hubs, education classes – that has emerged in response to the near-collapse of Greece’s welfare state, and has more than doubled in size in the past three years.
“Because in the end, you know,” said Christos Giovanopoulos in the scruffy, poster-strewn seventh-floor central Athens offices of Solidarity for all, which provides logistical and administrative support to the movement, “politics comes down to individual people’s stories. Does this family have enough to eat? Has this child got the right book he needs for school? Are this couple about to be evicted?”
As well as helping people in difficulty, Giovanopoulos said, Greece’s solidarity movement was fostering “almost a different sense of what politics should be – a politics from the bottom up, which starts with real people’s needs. It’s a practical critique of the empty, top-down, representational politics our traditional parties practice. It’s kind of a whole new model, actually. And it’s working.”
It also looks set to play a more formalized role in Greece’s future under what polls predict will be a Syriza-led government from next week. When they were first elected in 2012 the radical left party’s 72 MPs voted to give 20% of their monthly salary to a solidarity fund that would help finance Solidarity for All. (Many help further; several have transferred their entitlement to free telephone calls to a local project.) The party says the movement can serve as an example and a platform for the social change it wants to bring about.
In the sleek open plan, blonde-wood office she used when she was a successful architect, Theano Fotiou, a member of Syriza’s central committee, was packing leaflets for the last day of campaigning, with the help of a dozen or so exceedingly enthusiastic young volunteers. She is seeking re-election in the capital’s second electoral district. “The only real way out of this crisis is people doing it for themselves,” she said. “If people don’t participate, we will be lost as a country. This is practice, not theory, a new social ideology, a new paradigm – the opposite of the old passive, dependent, consumerist, individualist model. And the solidarity projects we have now are its incubators.”
Fotiou said a large part of the first stage of a Syriza’s government’s programmers – ensuring no family is without water or electricity (in nine months of 2013, 240,000 households had their power cut because of unpaid bills); that no one can be made homeless; that the very lowest pensions are raised and that urgent steps are taken to relieve child poverty, now standing at 40% in Greece – was largely inspired by what the party had learned from its involvement in the solidarity movement.
“We’ve gained so much from people’s innovation,” she said. “We’ve acquired a knowhow of poverty, actually. We know more about people’s real needs, about the distribution of affordable food, about how not to waste things like medicines. We’ve gained a huge amount of information about how to work in a country in a state of humanitarian crisis and economic collapse. Greece is poor; this is vital knowhow.”
If the first instinct of many involved in the movement was simply to help, most also believe it has done much to politicize Greece’s crisis. In Egalio, west of Athens, Flora Toutountzi, a housekeeper, Antonis Mavronikolas, a packager, and Theofilos Moustakas, a primary school teacher, are part of a group that collects food donations from shoppers outside supermarkets and delivers basic survival packages – rice, sugar, long-life milk, dried beans – to 50 local families twice a month.
“One family, there are six people surviving on the grandmother’s pension of €400 a month,” said Mavronikolas. “Another, they’ve lived without running water for two months. We help them, yes, but now they are also involved in our campaign, helping others. People have become activated in this crisis. They are less isolated.”
In the central Athens district of Exarchia, Tonia Katerini, another now largely unemployed architect (“There’s not a lot of work for architects right now,” she said), is one of 15 people running a cooperative social grocery that opened a year ago and now sells 300 products, from flour to oranges, olive oil to bread, pasta to dried herbs. The business has grown rapidly and the collective’s members can now pay themselves an hourly wage of €3
The local “without middlemen” market, one of 30-odd to have sprouted in Athens and several hundred around Greece, where farmers sell their produce for 25% more than they would get from the supermarkets and consumers pay 25% less, takes place only once a month, and the group wanted to set up a small neighborhood grocery offering similarly good value, high quality foodstuffs directly from small producers.
Ninety per cent of the products the store sold were “without middlemen”, Katerini said, and about 60% were significantly cheaper than in the supermarket. Several come from other solidarity projects – the store’s soap, for example, is made by a collective of 10 unemployed people in Galatsi.
“All these projects, it’s very important to me, are not just helping people who need it, but they represent almost the start of a new kind of society,” Katerini said. “They are run as direct democracies, with no hierarchy. They are about people taking responsibility for their lives, putting their skills to use, becoming productive again.”
Katerina Knitou has devoted the past few years to preventing people from losing their homes. Part of a group of lawyers formed to fight a much hated “emergency house tax”, her focus has switched to the one in three Greek households fearing repossession or eviction – either because they are among the 320,000 families behind on mortgage or other debt repayments to their bank, or one of the 2.45 million Greeks who have been unable to pay a recent tax bill.
Knitou, a Syriza member like almost all those involved in the movement, gives free legal advice on how to avoid foreclosure and eviction. In the first half of last year 700 homes were either repossessed by the banks or foreclosed on by the Greek state over unpaid tax or social security bills. (With colleagues, Knitou also occasionally takes more direct action, disrupting – and preventing – planned auctions of repossessed and foreclosed homes.)
“This whole thing,” she said, “has made a lot of people very aware, not just of what they face, but also of what they can – and must – do. Expectations are going to be high after Sunday, but there are of course limits to what even a Syriza government will be able to do. It’s up to us, all of us, to change things. And honestly? This feels like a good start.”

Kết quả (Việt) 1:

Phong trào đoàn kết của Hy Lạp: 'nó là một mô hình hoàn toàn mới- và nó làm việc'"Một thời gian dài trước đây, khi tôi là một sinh viên," nói Olga Kesidou, đánh chìm thấp trong ghế sofa đơn, hơi clapped-out của phòng chờ đợi tại Phòng khám Peristeri đoàn kết, "tôi sẽ thấy bản thân mình tình nguyện. Bạn biết, ở châu Phi một nơi nào đó, điều trị người bị bệnh trong một quốc gia đang phát triển nghèo. Tôi không bao giờ một lần tưởng tượng tôi sẽ làm nó ở một vùng ngoại ô của Athena."Ít ở Hy Lạp, thậm chí 5 năm trước đây, sẽ có tưởng tượng của suy thoái kinh tế và severity tàn phá đất nước như bây giờ: 1,3 triệu người-26% lực lượng lao động-mà không có một công việc (và hầu hết trong số họ mà không có lợi ích); tiền lương xuống 38% vào năm 2009, lương hưu bởi 45%, GDP của một phần tư; 18% dân số của quốc gia không thể đáp ứng thực phẩm của họ cần; 32% dưới mức nghèo khổ.Và chỉ ít hơn 3.1 triệu người, 33% tổng số dân, mà không có bảo hiểm y tế quốc gia.Vì vậy, cùng với một tá khác medics bao gồm cả một bác sĩ gia đình, một đôi dược sĩ, một bác sĩ nhi khoa, một nhà tâm lý học, một bác sĩ phẫu thuật chỉnh hình, một bác sĩ phụ khoa, một chuyên gia tim mạch và một nha sĩ hoặc hai, chuyên gia Kesidou, tai, mũi và cổ họng, chi tiêu một ngày một tuần này bận rộn nhưng vui vẻ bệnh viện một nửa một giờ lái xe từ Trung tâm Athens, điều trị bệnh nhân nếu không sẽ không nhận được để xem một bác sĩ. Những người khác trong nhóm chấp nhận các bệnh nhân không có bảo hiểm trong phẫu thuật riêng của họ."Chúng tôi không thể chỉ cần đứng và xem rất nhiều người, cả gia đình, được loại trừ từ y tế công cộng," Kesidou nói. "Tại Hy Lạp bây giờ, nếu bạn đang ra khỏi công việc cho một năm bạn mất an sinh xã hội của bạn. Đó là một nhiều khủng khiếp của những người không có quyền truy cập vào những gì nên là một quyền cơ bản. Nếu chúng tôi không phản ứng, chúng tôi không thể nhìn vào bản thân trong gương. Đó là đoàn kết."Trung tâm y tế Peristeri là một trong 40 có bung lên xung quanh thành phố Hy Lạp kể từ cuối cùng của cuộc biểu tình lớn chống severity vào năm 2011. Bằng cách sử dụng tặng ma túy-bang y học bồi hoàn đã được cắt giảm một nửa, do đó, ngay cả bệnh nhân có bảo hiểm trả tiền 70% hơn cho thuốc của họ- và thiết bị y tế (Peristeri của siêu âm quét đến từ một nhóm Đức viện trợ, trẻ em của nó vắc xin từ nước Pháp), các phòng khám 16 trong khu vực Greater Athena một mình điều trị hơn 30,000 bệnh nhân một tháng.Các phòng khám lần lượt là một phần của một phong trào lớn hơn và avowedly chính trị của các nhóm công dân-chạy tốt hơn 400-thực phẩm đoàn kết trung tâm, xã hội nhà bếp, hợp tác xã, "mà không gom" mạng lưới phân phối cho sản phẩm tươi sống Trung tâm trợ giúp pháp lý, các lớp giáo dục-đó đã nổi lên để đáp ứng với gần sự sụp đổ của Hy Lạp của phúc lợi xã hội, và có nhiều hơn gấp đôi kích thước trong ba năm qua."Bởi vì cuối cùng, bạn biết," nói Christos Giovanopoulos trong scruffy, rải rác poster thứ bảy tầng trung tâm Athens văn phòng đoàn kết cho tất cả, mà cung cấp hỗ trợ hậu cần và hành chính với phong trào, "chính trị đi xuống đến những câu chuyện cá nhân của người dân. Gia đình này có đủ để ăn? Có đứa trẻ này có cuốn sách đúng ông cần cho các trường học? Các cặp vợ chồng này về để bị đuổi?"Cũng như giúp đỡ những người khó khăn, Giovanopoulos cho biết: phong trào đoàn kết của Hy Lạp bồi dưỡng "gần như là một cảm giác khác nhau của những gì chính trị nên là-một chính trị từ dưới lên, mà bắt đầu với nhu cầu của những người thực sự. Nó là một phê phán thực tế của sản phẩm nào, từ trên xuống, representational chính trị của chúng tôi thực hành truyền thống bên. Nó là loại là một mô hình hoàn toàn mới, thực sự. "Và nó làm việc."Nó cũng sẽ thiết lập để đóng một vai trò hơn formalized tại Hy Lạp của tương lai theo những gì cuộc thăm dò dự đoán sẽ có một Syriza chính phủ từ tuần tới. Khi họ lần đầu tiên được bầu vào năm 2012 trái Đảng cấp tiến của nghị sĩ 72 bình chọn để cung cấp cho 20% của mức lương hàng tháng cho một quỹ đoàn kết mà có thể giúp tài chính đoàn kết cho tất cả. (Giúp đỡ nhiều hơn nữa; nhiều đã chuyển giao quyền lợi của họ để miễn phí các cuộc gọi điện thoại cho một dự án địa phương.) Đảng của ông phong trào có thể phục vụ như là một ví dụ và một nền tảng cho xã hội thay đổi nó muốn mang lại.In the sleek open plan, blonde-wood office she used when she was a successful architect, Theano Fotiou, a member of Syriza’s central committee, was packing leaflets for the last day of campaigning, with the help of a dozen or so exceedingly enthusiastic young volunteers. She is seeking re-election in the capital’s second electoral district. “The only real way out of this crisis is people doing it for themselves,” she said. “If people don’t participate, we will be lost as a country. This is practice, not theory, a new social ideology, a new paradigm – the opposite of the old passive, dependent, consumerist, individualist model. And the solidarity projects we have now are its incubators.”Fotiou said a large part of the first stage of a Syriza’s government’s programmers – ensuring no family is without water or electricity (in nine months of 2013, 240,000 households had their power cut because of unpaid bills); that no one can be made homeless; that the very lowest pensions are raised and that urgent steps are taken to relieve child poverty, now standing at 40% in Greece – was largely inspired by what the party had learned from its involvement in the solidarity movement.“We’ve gained so much from people’s innovation,” she said. “We’ve acquired a knowhow of poverty, actually. We know more about people’s real needs, about the distribution of affordable food, about how not to waste things like medicines. We’ve gained a huge amount of information about how to work in a country in a state of humanitarian crisis and economic collapse. Greece is poor; this is vital knowhow.”If the first instinct of many involved in the movement was simply to help, most also believe it has done much to politicize Greece’s crisis. In Egalio, west of Athens, Flora Toutountzi, a housekeeper, Antonis Mavronikolas, a packager, and Theofilos Moustakas, a primary school teacher, are part of a group that collects food donations from shoppers outside supermarkets and delivers basic survival packages – rice, sugar, long-life milk, dried beans – to 50 local families twice a month.“One family, there are six people surviving on the grandmother’s pension of €400 a month,” said Mavronikolas. “Another, they’ve lived without running water for two months. We help them, yes, but now they are also involved in our campaign, helping others. People have become activated in this crisis. They are less isolated.”In the central Athens district of Exarchia, Tonia Katerini, another now largely unemployed architect (“There’s not a lot of work for architects right now,” she said), is one of 15 people running a cooperative social grocery that opened a year ago and now sells 300 products, from flour to oranges, olive oil to bread, pasta to dried herbs. The business has grown rapidly and the collective’s members can now pay themselves an hourly wage of €3The local “without middlemen” market, one of 30-odd to have sprouted in Athens and several hundred around Greece, where farmers sell their produce for 25% more than they would get from the supermarkets and consumers pay 25% less, takes place only once a month, and the group wanted to set up a small neighborhood grocery offering similarly good value, high quality foodstuffs directly from small producers.Ninety per cent of the products the store sold were “without middlemen”, Katerini said, and about 60% were significantly cheaper than in the supermarket. Several come from other solidarity projects – the store’s soap, for example, is made by a collective of 10 unemployed people in Galatsi.“All these projects, it’s very important to me, are not just helping people who need it, but they represent almost the start of a new kind of society,” Katerini said. “They are run as direct democracies, with no hierarchy. They are about people taking responsibility for their lives, putting their skills to use, becoming productive again.”Katerina Knitou has devoted the past few years to preventing people from losing their homes. Part of a group of lawyers formed to fight a much hated “emergency house tax”, her focus has switched to the one in three Greek households fearing repossession or eviction – either because they are among the 320,000 families behind on mortgage or other debt repayments to their bank, or one of the 2.45 million Greeks who have been unable to pay a recent tax bill.
Knitou, a Syriza member like almost all those involved in the movement, gives free legal advice on how to avoid foreclosure and eviction. In the first half of last year 700 homes were either repossessed by the banks or foreclosed on by the Greek state over unpaid tax or social security bills. (With colleagues, Knitou also occasionally takes more direct action, disrupting – and preventing – planned auctions of repossessed and foreclosed homes.)
“This whole thing,” she said, “has made a lot of people very aware, not just of what they face, but also of what they can – and must – do. Expectations are going to be high after Sunday, but there are of course limits to what even a Syriza government will be able to do. It’s up to us, all of us, to change things. And honestly? This feels like a good start.”