EC Meeting March 2017

There has been a refugee scheme since the summer of 2015. Greece is the first country refugees get to with the Eurozone. This is causing major problems, and the refugees are just seen as burdens not people in trouble. There is no talk about the war being the cause of the problem or discussion around disarmament. There is an increase of far right groups across Europe (most notably – Golden Dawn) with a number of vicious attacks on refugees and the people trying to help them. But on the flip side there has been some great compassion from the left with Greeks opening their homes to refugees despite in a crisis themselves which is helping to slowly reform the mentality. The government is not tabling any kind of thorough or viable proposal with the refugee issue just simply accepting people and making no Euros from it – in the long run Greece will be left to ruin to save the rest of the EU from dealing with the crisis. The EU want to turn the islands of Greece – their main source of income via tourists – into refugee islands in order to release the ‘burden’ elsewhere. Zoe told us of how in Denmark valuables are being taken off refugees upon entering as payment for them! Hitler would be proud. We visited another project that helped homeless people – called the Social Kitchen. Before we met the founder we spoke to one of the volunteers who gave us her interpretation on what is was like living in Athens at this time. When SYRIZA came into power, a lot of people had hope for a better life but in fact things are worse than they were before an the problem is that people expected too much. In the work that she does, she makes sure that people have food but she believes that there needs to be more. She didn’t believe that the public knew the true meaning of solidarity. The project has been running for over 5 years and every day there will be about 10 people volunteering but there are just 5 core people that work there all over Greece though there are little groups attempting to do the same. The main aim of the project is to bring people and communities together, to work together and share good practice of how they can make change. Penny was a volunteer at Costas project and she spoke to us at length whilst we waited for Costas. She explained how the night before whilst we were meeting with Zoe the far right Nazi groups were having a ‘celebration’ across Europe. In Greece they were particularly violent as lots had travelled over from Germany in order to tell the refugees they weren’t welcome. They didn’t just attack the refugees but the volunteers who were trying to help and protect them too. People are not fighting back at them as they are afraid to do so. Most do not understand the whole situation around the refugees or Greece ad they are not facing it themselves. She told us in Greece anarchists are buying buildings and filling them with people to create communities but they are having issues as there is a lot if in house fighting and no direction/ goal to what they want to achieve. According to Penny it is very difficult trying to help others without offending them but at the kitchen the visitors/ users are helping themselves. The project is not about helping someone to make you feel better it is about educating people and communities about what solidarity actually means, Penny Social Kitchen Athens: The Other Human

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