From ‘Demos’ to ‘Podemos’: Popular Uprisings in Greece and Spain

[polly7]

Last edited Wed Feb 24, 2016, 02:53 PM - Edit history (1)

Published on
Thursday, February 19, 2015
by TruthDig

byAmy Goodman

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Greek opposition leader and head of radical leftist Syriza party, Alexis Tsipras (L) and Spanish Podemos party Secretary General Pablo Iglesias wave to supporters following a campaign rally in central Athens January 22, 2015. Photo: Reuters/Yannis Behrakis)

In ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, power derived from “demos,” the people. Well, the people of contemporary Greece have been reeling under austerity for five years, and have voted to put an end to it. In January, the anti-austerity Syriza Party was swept to power in national elections. Greece is a member of the so-called eurozone, the nations that joined together with a common currency back in 1999. Following the economic crash of 2009, the Greek economy was in shambles. In 2012, I interviewed economist and Syriza member Yanis Varoufakis, who is now Greece’s minister of finance, and is at the center of the current crisis in the eurozone.

“Greece is going through its Great Depression, something akin to what the United States went through in the 1930s,” he told me. “This is not just a change of government. It’s a social economy that has entered into a deep coma. It’s a country that is effectively verging to the status of a failed state.” In order to stabilize the Greek economy, a bailout package was proposed, delivered by three institutions reviled in Greece as “The Troika”: the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In exchange for the bailout of more than $100 billion euros, Greece would have to impose strict austerity measures, including mass layoffs of public-sector workers and the sale of public resources, like government-owned port facilities.

Paul Mason, economics editor at Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom, has been doing some of the best reporting in English on the Greek crisis. On the “Democracy Now!” news hour, I asked him to explain austerity: “Austerity in Greece means something like a 50 percent measurable increase in male suicides. It means real wages fell by 25 percent in five years ... you’ve got the 300,000 families who can’t afford electricity.” Interviewed in Der Spiegel, Varoufakis called austerity “fiscal waterboarding.” Greeks, as well, have not forgotten that Germany, under the Nazis, brutally occupied their nation for four years during World War II. Syriza’s representative in the European Parliament, 92-year-old Manolis Glezos, was imprisoned by the Nazis after he tore a swastika flag off of the Acropolis. “The German political class just can’t get their head around the idea,” Mason explained, “that a party has been elected that wants to do something so radically different, that they can’t do it without breaking the rules that the eurozone has been formed around. So it’s becoming cultural.”

The future of Europe is in flux, as popular movements in Greece and Spain gain power and challenge traditional economic and political systems. The global economic crisis created enormous suffering for billions around the world. But it also created an opening, allowing people to reassess the rules under which they live and work, to challenge those in power, and to demonstrate that another world is possible.

Full article: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/02/19/demos-podemos-popular-uprisings-greece-and-spain

[polly7]

4. It is, isn't it? I love seeing them together, I think they're great as partners

in all of this.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Some new information I had not encountered. Amy Goodman is the best! Thank you, Polly. n/t

[polly7]

3. Yvw Judi Lynn nt.