REVOLT AND CRISIS IN GREECE
186
After almost two years of reflection and several return visits, I’m only now becoming capable of sifting through everything I witnessed to separate it into either cross-cultural phenomena, the specifically Greek, or relegating it to the bizarre happenstances wholly peculiar to insurrection. Since my introduction to Greece happened to also coincide with my very first uprising, some reflections still manage to be intractable combinations of the three, like for example, hearing for the first time the epic howls of Antartika, Greek Civil War music, blaring from the speakers of the occupied GSEE. Ceasing the passive reception of the senses which were instead felt intensely and antagonistically, the pulse of insurrection has the effect of amplifying commonplace circumstances that would normally fall into the former categories: I to this day still long, with an almost burdensome nostalgia, for the taste of the collectively looted food, and for the warmth, the odour, and the sound of dozens of exhausted insurgents, huddled together, sleeping in the first quiet place they could rest. As for the rally that took place in front of the central Athens police station, it refuses to be classified amongst the others I’ve attended both past and present, standing as an example unto itself; not only because of what happened at the gathering but more importantly due to who showed up to it. That is to say, I’m completely sure that I’ll never again see a rally with that many children, and I mean, literally, children, some as young as 10 or 11. And of all kinds, different attitudes and subcultural allegiances, including styles that scream apathetic and apolitical no matter the country: emo-kids, high-school football stars, prom kings and queens. From a distance, you could barely notice the leftist blemishes in the sea of kids, as the old paper-peddlers were almost indiscernible from the taller seniors of equal height. The rebellion had joyously lifted all the seriousness from the usually solemn ritual, and while some, in tiny groups laughed, chatted, and gossiped in that way that only school children can do, others took to playfully humiliating the cops, pelting them with eggs, tomatoes, and oranges. After looking backwards to ensure that their friends approvingly watched, the braver ones lobbed stones at the police guarding the station. Once the trend caught on, the MAT, unable to bear the smallest reprisal for their daily behaviour, fired a tear gas canister into the crowd. After the shot, a riot ensued and people dispersed and scattered without any preset plan or direction, in and out of the side streets and back and forth from the main boulevard. The shuddering explosions of concussion grenades, the heat from the flames, the shrieking, screeching snaps of the riot police shields split by stones, each vying for pronunciation within the chaos.