[WSF-Discuss] Essay on Athens Uprising

[Marina Karides]

Seeing Beyond the Fire: Some Thoughts and No Visuals on Athens’ Youth 
Uprising 

by Marina Karides* 

By exploiting the visual effects of city fires, left, right, and 
liberal media missed the success of the youth movement in Athens. 
Athens was not burning, instead most Athenians engaged in their 
everyday activities—work, socializing, church, and political debate. 
Public transportation was running close to normal, street vendors from 
East Africa and South Asia were selling their wares, and there were 
even some tourists about in the typically slow winter season. 
 
The students, on the other hand, walking in groups rather than in a 
traditional march gathered in Syntagama, the city center. Here, both 
the national government buildings and the city’s main shopping 
districts are conveniently located for those who oppose both state and 
capital. And just a few kilometers away, the historically and 
politically famous Polytechnic University and Athens’ major 
universities can be found. In this contained space of state, agora, and 
education students (despite some of the extraneous vandalism) were 
extremely precise in striking their nemesis and making themselves known 
around the world. 
 
In Greece, universities provide a free political space; police and 
military are not permitted to enter them. In 1973, students occupied 
Polytechnic in protest of the military junta that had ruled for several 
years. The junta sent a tank to the university grounds, killing forty 
students. The protests at Polytechnic lead to the toppling of the junta 
and the re/start of a democracy in Greece. Enough Greek students know 
this history. On November 17, the date the tank rode in, schools are 
closed or classes meet for a few hours to review the events or, in the 
case of my kindergartener, to color in a handout picturing a tank, a 
university, and students. The doors through which the tank drove at 
Polytechnic are permanently sealed in memory of the lives lost. The 
murder of “Alexis” by police harkened this memory for older folks, and 
may have informed the youth uprising but the thrust of the movement has 
its’ heart in contemporary struggles.        

This week’s events emerge as another radical moment of spirited youth 
demanding social and political change in Greece’s modern history. An 
ancient tradition, the obsessive avoidance of stasis or the civil 
unrest and widespread discontent by the first politicians of ancient 
Athens, has not been borne out in modern politics. This effort was 
completely forgotten by New Democracy (ND) the right leaning ruling 
party. In bed with an Orthodox monastery’s scandalous appropriation of 
land from citizens (that dominated recent news until the protests) and 
attempting to import economic reforms that run contrary to a relatively 
leftish citizenry and a nation with strong communist parties, the ND 
made the mistake of being self absorbed with status not stasis. Greece 
is not a contractually regulated society; it manages in governance and 
in everyday life through negotiation. The ND failed to negotiate. 

And so young citizens headed for the forum intent on drawing a 
political line. For certain, the ND party will not be reelected, maybe 
and hopefully early elections will be called, and my guess, police 
violence will be hampered. Globally, it draws attention to a country 
that in many ways suffered economically from a lopsided European Union 
and for certain by neo-liberalism.  The Greek rising offers the global 
justice movement a new source of power.

What I found visually stunning was that the movement was not branded. 
The protesters were just plain clothed students carrying home made 
signs on strips of canvass spread out and painted on city streets or 
butcher paper found at their part time jobs. Coming from the overly 
graphically designed context of the US and its social movements, it was 
as striking as the stark topography of Greece to see a lack of matching 
t-shirts or uniform signage, it made things at least appear more simple 
and grassroots. And according to interviews with youths, most hit the 
streets not as members of political parties but because they witnessed 
the death of a peer and perhaps because of their experiences with 
injustice. 

Older folks and others who were not actively protesting were not afraid 
to share streets and rub shoulders with protesters. There is an 
unspoken sense of safety in Greek streets that was only threatened this 
past week by the shooting, tear gas and perhaps some fires. The youth, 
esteemed citizens in Greek society, were having their say against 
police trespasses on this safety and freedom. For the most part Greeks 
do not begrudge the students their protest, not the intensity nor the 
length. In fact, based on my random conversations, with exception of 
some of the destruction, it was expected. Nor did they suggest the 
murdered student anarchist provoked the police, instead it was hands 
down unacceptable that a police shot a 15 year-old boy. Across Greece, 
including all of its small and far-flung islands, public schools closed 
Tuesday for the funeral of Alexis. 

Living mostly in the US, I almost didn’t have the imagination to assume 
that all educational facilities would be closed to mark the death of a 
student by the state. But it was taken for granted by Greeks living in 
small villages and in major cities that they would be. It says a lot 
about the sociology of a nation, its people’s commitment to liberty and 
hope of better governance to come. The repeated scenes of fire and 
rocks have not given a fair representation of the everyday people, the 
young ones, who took the streets and made a massive statement directly 
to its government.  

*Associate Professor, Florida Atlantic University; Book Committee, 1st 
United States Social Forum. The author was on a Fulbright studying 
women’s cooperatives in Lesvos, Greece and visiting Athens when 
protests broke out. Contact: mkarides at fau.edu.