Between partying and ‘revolution’ – lessons from #Occupy Frankfurt

First of all let me say that i was happy to join all those people at Saturday’s #Occupy Frankfurt march. Police claimed it to be 2500 people, the organizer 5000.

The march started at the so called “Hauptwache” where we first headed towards a shopping spree and more and more people then started to join us. The march stopped several times so that the organizers could read/speak to the crowd. During the march the people were more quiet than i had expected. “Who’s streets? Our streets!” was the only slogan that was repeatedly chanted among most of the demonstrators.

Yet i haven’t seen anyone of the so-called 1% yet and the streets, that have been closed by the police in advance of course, felt empty to me although there were thousands of people. Finally we arrived at the banking district with all its skyscrapers, filled with the world’s corporate ownership. Before entering we stopped and the Guy-Fawkes-masked organizers wanted everyone to shout as loud as they can to tell the 1% that the 99% are here.

Up to that point i was still very curious about what’s going to happen when we arrive in the banking district. Will there be vast police brutality as seen in Oakland or Denver? Will there be a very angry crowd willing to take direct action and maybe enter one of those buildings? And the most important question to me, how would the occupation at the European Central Bank look like?

With all respect to this worldwide movement and the idea behind it, i have very significant criticisms to make when it comes to Frankfurt. I was in daily contact with the Frontline at #Occupy Wallstreet so i am very familiar with the events taking place there. I’ve seen pictures & videos from Oakland and Chicago and i stood and still stand in solidarity with them and this movement because i agree with their declaration.

But allow me to make my points.

So, after entering the banking district the next stop was set to be at the ‘Commerzbank’ building. The steps to the main entrance were crowded by the demonstrators within seconds so we decided to walk all the way up to get an idea of how many people we actually are. Finally, with most of the people standing in front of the Commerzbank building they started to play their (i guess) self-titled “Revolution Song” and the people started singing, dancing, clapping and some seemed to be having the fun of their life there. (watch the video to see it for yourself) There were two unarmed guards protecting the entrance of the bank’s building, with several hundred people directly in front of them, but nobody even thought of entering a building or at least demanding the leadership to come out and justify their actions. I am very well aware that to most people this may sound unrealistic or utopian but when we actually get people to come out and raise their voice, it must conclude with more than singing, dancing and laughing in front of the eyes of those people that are being protested against. Also, you can’t be seen as a real threat to the establishment, when the establishment knows every single step of you in advance. There was absolutely nothing i saw that one could actually call “police presence”. The cop’s i saw during the whole event can be counted with both hands.

Then the march came to an end and we finally arrived at the European Central Bank, where you could see the tents of those estimated 200 people that are occupying the ECB for over two weeks now. There were several stands that offered detailled information about the #Occupy movement and others selling buttons, books, Che Guevara shirts and alike but again, it felt really empty despite a high number of people actually being there so i went over to the convoy where several people held speeches about this movement I heard some students speak about the communal injustices in Frankfurt, about several cuts in the social sector and about how overcrowded our Universities are because of the cuts in this sector.

At that point i really started to think about the purpose of all this and suddenly, what Attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz, head of the New Black Panther Party recently wrote about the #Occupy movement, came to my mind.

“First, I feel vindicated because all year some looked at me twisted when I called for 3 National-International Day of Action’s and Unity. We had to beg-and beg Black people just to stand up for ONE day. Now the white left has spearheaded organizing in the streets for several weeks in over 100 cities. Well, I guess the white left is suffering more than the Black’s.”

I started wondering how many people coming out to protest here were aware of what this corporate/banking system just did to the people of Libya, the Ivory Coast, what they did to Iraq & Afghanistan and in the words of Immortal Technique, that “slavery was the capital for capitalism”?

I listened to more speeches, talked to different people, read all those signs and i came to the conclusion that our white middle class, despite all efforts and the willingness to protest & demand changes, is still trapped in a eurocentric mindset. The speeches didn’t go far beyond Germany. Some showed their solidarity with Greece, but i didn’t hear anyone speak out against the latest imperial devestations of other countries. The white middle class cannot lead a struggle against a system to which they aren’t the main targets & losers. The system needs to face the people their dirtiest policies produced, all the oppressed and colonized people abroad, the black & brown people in the United States, the immigrants in Europe whose countries our people formerly colonized & are trying to re-colonize and those people whose leadership allows their resources & wealth to be literally stolen by the west, all over the world.

The last person i met there was this 75 year old american, who stood up against police brutality in the USA and he told me that he attended several marches in Frankfurt now and the police here are saints compared to the states so we discussed it and i told him the thoughts i have now written down. He agreed on most issues, but  was nonetheless happy to see so many people come out to peacefully protest. He told me that he served the  so-called 1% until he read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and became aware of what was really going on. Suddenly he went over to a guy holding the flag of a socialist organization and told him that socialism isn’t the answer so i needed to start a serious discussion. He was very kind and gave me all the time i needed to raise my points. After saying that he rejects any form of governing and is mainly focussing on domestic politics i gave him a short overview of the Libyan Jamahiriyah and how this system works. He got interested and asked me to tell him more about Libya & Gaddafi since he didn’t know too much about it, despite the mainstream media’s reports. After finishing my points his short but direct reply was “Damn, this guy was a serious threat then”. After recognizing my Hugo Chavez shirt we went on talking about Venezuela & Cuba. Just before exchanging our email adresses, he revealed that he’s also an alternative medium and that he believes that those changes around the world have something to do with a new kind of energy going around.

What i want to say is that we need to get people, whether 16 or 75 to see the bigger picture. To make them see that it is not just about us, having to pay higher student loans or taxes, but about the lives of black & brown people all over the world. We must show more solidarity to the people that are being oppressed by this system, because only they can put an end to it. The system makes 1% extremely rich because it holds 99% poor. But the system also killed and continues to kill millions of people from Afghanistan to Latin America, to Iraq, Libya, South Asia and most of Africa. The system only has the power to oppress our people at home because it got rich from enslavement, colonization and mass murder of non-white people all over the world. It is not only a unjust system, but a racist system and WE, the white middle class can never ever be the centre of this struggle. It’s our part to support those who really suffer under this current system and we have to think globally. The word revolution is all over the place, with little understanding of its real meaning. A revolution comes from below and as long as the needs of those below the white middle or working class aren’t put in the centre of this struggle it will impose no real threat to the system. Bridges need to be built and then the “people united can never be defeated”. But the people can’t be united if the poorest & most oppressed are only a part of the 99%. They must be the centre, and i’m not even talking about those at home.

While we were outside protesting against the system that imposes higher taxes/fees on us, we kept quiet about what the same system did, when it bombed Libya back into the stone age.

To perfectly understand and then be able to fight the system, the little boy/girl in Somalia, Iraq or Palestine must be the centre of our struggle because criticizing and fighting our system without putting those children’s future & their countries past & present situation into context makes us political active but naively egocentric at the same time.

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Despite all criticisms of the march in Frankfurt, i believe that the #Occupy movement has the power to be transformed into something bigger if some of the points i made are being considered in the future and i am open to discuss my thoughts on any occasion if you are willing to build bridges, not break them.

Myth and Truth about Greece bailout – Media Lies Exposed!

by Jérôme E. Roos on June 24, 2011

In a short BBC interview today, I argued that the media’s witch hunt against Greece perpetuates a false impression that the Greeks themselves are to blame.

With special thanks to Naveena Kottoor, I was able to appear on BBC World Have Your Say today, for a brief segment on the international media’s coverage of the Greek debt crisis.

Asked whether I agreed that the international media are engaged in a ‘witch hunt’ against the Greek people, I pointed out that all talk about the Greeks being profligate, lazy and spoilt is simply not true (video below, my contribution from 34m50s onwards — somehow the audio got messed up)

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Unfortunately, however, I didn’t get the time to back up these assertions with hard facts — so I would like this to use the opportunity to do so here.

Special thanks for the data below go out to Alex Andreou and Ingeborg Beugel.

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MYTH #1: The Greeks are profligate

The unquestioned assumption in the international media is that the Greek debt crisis was caused by excessive state expenditure, an overburdened welfare state and an inflated public sector.

TRUTH #1: The Greek welfare state is actually anemic

Here are the facts:

• Public spending: according to the Center for American Progress, public spending in Greece is only 44.6% of GDP. This is lower than the EU average, lower than Germany’s 46.6% and considerably lower than Sweden’s 55%.

• Tax collection: the real problem is not social expenditure on the poor but the lack of tax collection from the rich. From 2001 to 2007, Greece collected only an average of 39.4% of GDP in taxes, compared to the EU 44.4% average.

MYTH #2: The Greeks are lazy

Another unquestioned assumption is that the Greeks don’t work enough — they retire at 50, take crazy amounts of paid holidays and lie around in the sun drinking ouzo most of the day. Angela Merkel, for example, recently called on the people of southern Europe to “work more, play less“, i.e. work more hours, retire earlier and take less holidays.

TRUTH #2: The Greeks actually work most of all Europeans

Here are the facts:

• Hours worked per week: According to Eurostat data of 2005, the Greeks worked 43.1 hours per week (compared to 35.7 hours in so-called ‘thrifty’ Germany, with its much-touted ‘Protestant work ethic’).
• Hours worked per year: More recent OECD data shows the Greeks to work an average of 2,119 hours per year — 690 hours more than the average German, 467 more than the average Brit and 356 more than the OECD average. In fact, out of all OECD countries, only the Koreans work more.
• Amount of paid holidays: The paid leave entitlement in Greece is 23 days per year. This is actually below the EU average, and significantly lower than the minimum of 28 days in the UK and 30 (!) days in Germany.
• Retirement age: Again, Eurostat data from 2005, shows the average age of exit from the labour force in Greece to be 61.7. This was higher than in Germany, France or Italy and higher than the EU27 average. It is being raised even further now as a part of the EU-IMF bailout conditions.

MYTH #3: The Greeks are spoilt

In a truly terrible piece of journalism earlier this week, Sean O’Grady (economics editor of The Independent) wrote that “for many in northern Europe, the rioting in Athens must remind them of a tantrum by a spoilt child.” He refers specifically to popular opposition to the cutting of the so-called “13th and 14th salary” as a key indicator of this ‘spoiltness’.

TRUTH #3: The Greeks suffer more than anyone else

Here are the facts:

• According to Eurostat, even before crisis, in 2008, one in five Greeks (among them almost half a million children) lived under the formal poverty line of 500 euros per month.
• An independent survey by Kapa Research and the London School of Economics found even worse data: a third of the Greek population now live in formal poverty (and mind you: this was in 2007 – it’s actually gotten a lot worse since as a result of these draconian austerity measures).
• Every child in Greece is born with a 40,000 euro debt on their name.
• Greece’s youth are now referred to in the country as Generation 700: because that’s the maximum monthly wage that young Greeks will typically make – that is, if they are lucky enough to find a job: according to the Financial Times, over 35 percent of young Greeks is out of work right now.
• The so-called 13th and 14th salaries (Christmas, Easter and summer bonuses) are not additional salaries. As a Greek reader on this blog, Amalia, pointed out: “Greeks do not get two extra salaries a year; their annual salary is simply divided by 14 and they get two installments at Christmas, one and half at Easter and one and a half sometime in the summer.”
• The Dutch get a 13th month worth of salary and Austria has a 14th month. Since these countries are not experiencing a similar budget crisis, this simply can’t be the cause of Greece’s debt.
• The bottomline is: it doesn’t matter in how many installments you receive your salary (whether it’s in 12, 13, 14 or 2,000 parts); what matters is your annual salary. As long as you make less than 6,000 euros a year (as is the case for 20 percent of Greeks) you live in poverty — period.
• Living costs in Greece are the highest of all of Europe.
• As a result of this lethal combination of low wages and high living costs, millions of Greeks are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive.
• Since last year’s bailout, the Greek economy contracted almost 5%, 50,000 to 65,000 business have been closed, unemployment increased by 400,000, industrial activity declined by 11%, the construction sector contracted by 73%. Partly as a result, suicide rates are reported to have nearly tripled.
• All in all, this is a humanitarian tragedy of unprecedented proportions. How could Mr. O’Brady possibly keep a straight face arguing that the people experiencing all of the above, are somehow spoilt children?

MYTH #4 — The bailout is helping the Greek people

Part of O’Brady’s logic assumes that the Greeks should actually be grateful for receiving EU money in return for austerity measures. After all, EU taxpayers are footing the bill for the failures of the Greek people, no?

TRUTH #4: — It’s an indirect subsidy for Europe’s insolvent banks

Here are the facts:

• First of all, the bailout is not a handout: the Greek people don’t actually benefit from the EU-IMF bailout. Even if the bailout money really did go to the Greeks, this wouldn’t necessarily be beneficial for the Greek people at all. After all, the bailout is a loan for which the EU and IMF charge an exorbitant 8 percent interest rate, meaning northern European tax payers and the IMF should make a handsome profit from their so-called ‘rescue aid’, while the Greeks will only be further indebted by it.
• The bailout serves not Greece but Europe’s insolvent banks: as former IMF Chief Economist Kenneth Rogoff pointed out last year already, “a lot of European banks are insolvent.” The real problem of the European crisis isn’t the fiscal crisis in the periphery, it’s the financial crisis in the banking sector of the core.
• Private bank exposure to Greek sovereign debt: BNP Paribas: 5bn – 7 percent of equity; Société Générale: 2,5bn – 6 percent of equity; Postbank: 1,2bn – 21 percent of equity; Kommerzbank: 2,9bn – 27 percent of total equity. That’s just a handful. More data here.
• Central Bank exposure to Greek debt: the European Central Bank has 190bn of exposure to Greek debt.
• ECB close to insolvency: according to a recent report by Open Europe, asset losses as small as 4.25% could tip the ECB into insolvency. Greek default alone would chip 2.35% to 3.47% off of the ECB’s capital base. Add in a Portuguese or Irish default and you have the European Central Bank – the flagship of European capitalism – literally going bankrupt.

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But no one really seems to care about Europe’s ailing banks and the ECB. Indeed, hardly anyone is talking about it. Instead, we prefer to talk about the handful of Greek workers who retire at 50, the ‘spoilt children’ who refuse to accept the EU’s generous aid packages.

By narrowly channeling our ire onto the suffering people of Greece, we have completely lost sight of the infinitely larger structural problems we face in the European Union. Our private banks are insolvent. Our central bank is on the verge of bankruptcy. This is the real crisis.

Yet apparently, in all this misery and chaos, bashing the Greeks seems like an infinitely more enjoyable pastime for Europe’s populist politicians and the factually illiterate international media. It’s time we put these lies to an end and start speaking truth.

Thanks again to Naveena Kottoor and BBC World for allowing me a brief minute to highlight these concerns. I just wish there had been a little more time to delve into the real issues in depth.

Thanks to Jérôme E. Roos for this one. I hope everyone who’s reading this is willing to post and spread it as far as he can.

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