http://kasamaproject.org/
Posted by Mike E on June 28, 2012
photo: Sopiko Japaridze
A report from Greece by the Winter Has Its Endproject.
by Sopiko Japaridze, Eric Ribellarsi, and Sara Khaled
Sometime around 7 A.M., our group of reporters stumbled back to the apartment we’d been staying at. Making our way through the maze of narrow street corners, we are greeted by the sunrise.
All night, until 8 A.M., Crete’s May Days festival went on, fusing communist politics and local culture.
Together, we‘ve been reflecting back on the last two days of nonstop camaraderie and politics.
The young Greek communists who put together this festival here in Heraklion, Crete (the capitol city of an island south of the Greek mainland) infuse politics with a flourishing radical culture. The organic fusion between people’s enjoyment of music, dance, food and politics has been nothing like the political world we come from.
We’ve come to Crete for the “Delayed Maydays Festival.” It’s situated in the center of a park in the heart of Heraklion, the capital city of Crete. All around, young communist students hang ful banners bearing slogans and art. One slogan reads
“With the people at the front, we can find a way out.”
The Georgiadis park is beautifully shaded by trees cooling everyone under them. Trash bags are taped to the trees to easily collect trash. Chairs and tables brought from homes are placed underneath the shade and throughout open areas. There are vendors selling everything from apricots to jewelry. A table is set up with kegs and kegs of beer and hard alcohol for mixed drinks made to order. Marinated pork souvlaki is cooked on grills, which KOEs members keep going day and night. They use hair dryers to keep the coals going despite the wind.
Reconstruction of society
Back in Athens, we’d heard that the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE) believes that it is very important to “reconstruct” the Greek society “socially, politically, and economically.” This phrase captures the spheres of the society that KOE believes will have to be profoundly transformed to bring about a revolutionary future in Greece.
This festival is an outgrowth of that view: It is building on seven years of previous festivals before it to bring together a broad array of political forces, ranging from mass movements to other communist organizations, to musicians and artists who are partaking in the construction of a new culture.
As we walk down the row of booths that line the park, we meet a warm comrade from KOE with a thick beard and long brown hair. He tells us about how he is part of a football club that is trying to bring anti-imperialism and new values of solidarity into football.
The table across from him is for a new clinic that KOE members have been a part of initiating. It organizes doctors to serve the unemployed and undocumented for free. One more table down, local farmers from Crete are selling plants for growing one’s own food. Across from that sits the table of the union of unemployed and precariously employed workers that KOE has also been part of initiating.
After the elections: A shaky right-wing government
We sit down for lemonade and beer with Chris and Adonis, two young communists. Chris is wearing stylish glasses and a sweetheart smile. He wants to discuss the election results. He says that
“Whether people are emboldened or whether they are demoralized will largely depend upon the actions of SYRIZA.”
He is not concerned that SYRIZA did not win, and “perhaps it is for the best” he says. But he is concerned with what SYRIZA does next.
Adonis, who is tall and thoughtful, says that
“This new government will attempt to continue with the austerity and, if it does, it may not even last 4 months.”
He says that as far as he can tell, these elections have not had a demoralizing result, but rather have shown to the vast millions who want to fight the Troika IMF-EU imposed austerity regime the possibilities of solidarity and a new way forward.
Chris laughs and says
“I think if you walked around this district of the city and asked people what they think of this government, 99% of them would be against it, even the ones who were terrorized into voting for it!”
The first “panel” we see is not a panel at all, but rather a radical children’s puppet show. Kids are all gathered around as ful puppets make them laugh, smile, cheer, and help them understand the condition of the society they are growing up in.
Afterwards, we head over to see a panel in opposition to “Green capitalism” and ecological destruction. The panel features speakers from an anti-mining organization, an activist against Green capitalism, next to an anti-austerity activist, and a parliamentary representative of KOE.
The panel explains to the crowd the process under which huge plots of land are being sold to Germany (up to a third of Crete’s land someone tells us), how the ecosystems of this land will then be destroyed and replaced with green-washed power sources, how Greeks will be expected to pay Germany for this power, and how Germany will then use these acts to claim to have met the regulations of the Kyoto Protocol and continue with their level of pollution inside of Germany. Fighting against these measures is conceived of a way of both fighting to overthrow the Troika, and saving the environment.
Other panels include our reporting team’s panel on “Occupy in the U.S., and the tasks confronting communist revolutionaries there, and another presentation of speakers who are a part of anti-austerity movements throughout Europe and North Africa.
Football againt the Troika
After the panel, we head over to the part of the festival where a large screen is displaying the Euro Cup game between Germany and Greece. One sister from KOE says,
“Normally, we always root for the other team as a point of internationalism but this match is different. For people, it is a battle against the Troika.”
And indeed it is. The game depicts a smiling, gleeful German Chancellor Angela Merkel cheering, as her favorite team punishes the “lazy” Greeks she so despises. The chairs keep increasing and when there are no more left, people stand around the screen. Germany wins the game 4 to 2, but that doesn’t stop this crowd of Greek radicals from jumping up and down, throwing beers into the air, and chanting anti-Troika slogans every time Greece scored.
We head over to get beer and pork souvlaki, and then hear the music of the festival.
Music of a revolutionary movement
There is quite a range of music.
The first musicians we see are a traditional Greek band. Several members line the stage sitting in chairs with string instruments. Soft, beautiful music resonates across the park. Small roundtables set in front of the stage illuminated by flickering candle-light momentarily light up people’s faces. Smiling and relaxed, they sip on drinks and chain smoke hand-rolled cigarettes. We ask why everyone rolls their own cigarettes. They reply that these last two years of austerity have left everyone hurting, and hand-rolled is much cheaper.
The next day, vivacious, beautiful music reverberates through the low hanging trees of the park.Koza Mostra, a band of six young men takes the stage first. Immediately, the crowd is ignited. The band wears kilts and a variety of t-shirts. The lead singer was wearing a Batman tee. Fusions of ska, rockabilly, punk and other styles are blasted through trumpets, guitar, bass, and drums. Hundreds of young Greeks crowd around the stage, singing the words to Koza Mostra’s covers and originals.
The next band to take the stage is a popular European group called Imam Baildi. Named after a Mediterranean eggplant dish, the group plays an eclectic style of music, ranging from Balkan music to a style similar to Rebetika (an original Greek urban folk music that was inspired by precariously displaced Greek immigrants that briefly lived in Turkey during WW2). A beautiful, tall woman wearing a copper dress and similarly tinted hair steps on to the stage between a series of beautiful instrumental sets, cooing into the microphone as she traces her hips and arms to the melody. This music necessitates movement. Men and women in the crowd sway their hips in the ease of Middle Eastern dancers, before an effortless shift to pounding their feet into the ground as their arms stretch towards the sky when a hip hop artist jumps on stage.
The making of a festival
This festival was unlike any political event our team has ever been able to be part of.
In the midst of an intense political upsurge in Greece, an organizing brigade of about 80 to 100 communists planned and executed this major festival of thousands of people in Crete. To say they worked tirelessly would be an understatement; and they made it look effortless.
We couldn’t help but appreciate the striking discipline and coordination of these comrades. They have been in political battle for the last two years against the most menacing imperialist and capitalist forces, followed by an intense electoral crisis only a few days before this festival.
Delayed Maydays isn’t just a festival. At the heart of all of these festivities lays a range of politics that really embodied the revolution which KOE has been fighting to bring into being.
One KOE member says to us,
“You must have a sincere relationship with people.”
The road to get here has not been easy for KOE and we in the communist left in the US have a lot to learn from our Greek comrades.
