Tag: Greece

Violence in your backyard: Poverty in America

Posted on by kathiemm

Recent posts have linked poverty to violence in Greece and Africa. But poverty means violence here in America, too, and the forces that breed poverty and violence can reach into every home if they are ignored.Homeless campsite

A few examples of the link between poverty and violence in the United States:

  • Gun deaths are higher in states with higher levels of poverty and lower incomes
  • Poverty is a major contributor to domestic violence (opens in pdf)
  • Deaths due to poverty-related factors are as common as deaths due to heart attacks, strokes, and lung cancer
  • On average, in Camden, NJ, the poorest city in America, someone was shot every 33 hours in 2012.

We can afford to do better.

The U.S. is the richest country in the world, has the largest number of billionaires in the world, and has the highest gross national product.

It also ranks first (opens in pdf) in defense expenditures and military weapons expenditures.  Indeed, the military budget is so large, the Pentagon had a surplus of $105 billion at the end of FY2012.

A small portion of this money could reduce the violence of poverty—and the costs of that violence– dramatically.

UNICEF has shown that nations can lift children out of poverty and nations around the world are doing just that.

The U.S., however, is lagging in this effort.  We have the second highest rate of child poverty among developed nations. This is indefensible.

For more faces of poverty, check out these photos.

Poverty is violence.  It costs money. It costs lives. We must do better. To address violence, we must address poverty.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Poverty: A terrible terrorist, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Charikleia TsatsaroniBegging

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst violence.” Poverty is also a terrorist.

Poverty means threats of or actual loss of jobs, loss of pensions, loss of one’s home, loss of hope. It means living under the heavy shadow of a big national financial debt, constantly terrorized by the risk that your country will be bankrupted, fearful of reprisals if you protest austerity programs that bring no relief to poverty. After three years of austerity in Greece, freedom from such terror feels unattainable.

All these violent expressions of poverty can have serious consequences to people’s health and psychological well-being. For example, currently the Greek health care and education systems lack adequate materials and personnel, and have become more difficult to access, as well as less egalitarian. Unemployment has reached record-breaking rates.

Greek people seem increasingly distrustful. Such social distrust can sometimes take the form of violent social conflicts. For instance, racist attacks on immigrants and refugees are more common since the financial crisis, because some people consider immigrant groups and refugees to be the cause of unemployment in Greece. Also, for the first time since 1950, the infant mortality rates went up in 2012, as well as suicide rates and psychological problems (e.g., stress, panic attacks).

Poverty is a nearly global problem hurting individuals and communities well beyond the borders of my own country. For decades, many organizations around the world have tried to deal with it. Do they work together or compete or undermine each other? Where do their interests lie–with ordinary people or the power elites?

What can ordinary people do to stop this form of violence? Are there effective ways to help? Are there peaceful ways to protest against poverty and the terror it produces?

I have sought answers and inspiration in different places such as the thought-provoking films from the project “Why poverty?” that aim to inspire people to ask questions about poverty, become part of the solution, and bring positive change. More significantly, I try to remain mindful and engaged.

Charikleia Tsatsaroni, MSc., EdM., from Greece, is the former head of the Department of Human Resource Training and Development of the Greek Organization Against Drugs (OKANA), and is a member of GIPGAP.

Poverty: The worst violence, Part 1

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Charikleia Tsatsaroni

Adult and child begging
Photo by Michael Coghlan used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Mahatma Gandhi said it: “Poverty is the worst violence.” More and more people around the world must recognize the truth of his words.

In the fall of 2008, when banks collapsed and the financial crisis struck with hurricane force, I was starting my doctoral studies in Boston. In spite of the media’s dramatic broadcasts about ordinary people’s losses due to the crisis, I was full of excitement for this new chapter in my life. For months, I mindlessly passed people begging for money or searching for a safe shelter for the night, usually outside churches in the center of Boston.

Soon reality took me out of my mindlessness. At a quiet corner at the entrance of one of the metro stations in Boston, a man in his forties, with a small boy hugging his knees, displayed a sign saying he had lost his job and he and his child were hungry and homeless. Their faces were the faces of people like me. They could be my neighbors, my relatives, my friends. It was a painful enlightenment, a reawakening of mindfulness.

Returning in 2012 to my home country, Greece, a country in great financial turmoil for the last three years, I experienced the devastation caused by the financial crisis directly and painfully. Images like the ones I had seen in Boston are common in Athens–on the streets, in the trains, in the stores. The great majority of the Greek people become poorer every day, battered by the violence inherent in loss of jobs, lack of income, inaccessibility of resources, and inability to care for children, the ill, and the elderly.

Poverty’s violence is viral; the costs of this form of violence are global. Where are the world leaders who will put the protection of ordinary men, women, and children ahead of the interests of banks and international corporations?

Charikleia Tsatsaroni, MSc., EdM., from Greece, is the former head of the Department of Human Resource Training and Development of the Greek Organization Against Drugs (OKANA), and is a member of GIPGAP.

Not in my name (Stories of engagement)

Posted on by kathiemm

Our guest author, Glyn Secker, is on the executive committee of Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) and was a lead organizer and captain of the Jewish Boat To Gaza last year.

I grew up with no faith and within no Jewish community, but with a deep commitment to human rights and justice. Searching for my cultural community, I became conscious that it had been buried by a fundamentalism that learned from history nothing but the very mindset of oppression through which it had itself emerged.

In the fight for human rights we should each choose the domain where we can be most effective. So for me, as a Jew, the title of our organization, “Jews For Justice For Palestinians” is an existential statement: its subtitle, “Two Peoples – One Future,” is a deep philosophical belief.

My family arrived in the U.K. as refugees from the pogroms in Poland and Romania. I live in London with Vanessa, who lost a generation of her family in the Holocaust, and our two sons.

I have been a lifetime campaigner for social justice and human rights:

  • Organizing and delivering printing presses to social democratic parties in Greece in 1974 prior to the fall of the military junta
  • Coordinating with social democratic parties in Czechoslovakia prior to the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the regime in 1982
  • Serving on the organizing team of the UK Anti-Nazi League in 1977 and the giant Rock Against Racism concerts in 1978.

I have been on fact-finding missions and solidarity work in Portugal in 1974, Algeria in 1978, Palestinian organizations in Lebanon in 1979, and Egypt in 1981, and I was a courier for social democratic parties in Turkey in 1982 following the military coup in 1980.

All of this prepared me to sail a boat to Gaza to breach the blockade and to say “Not in my name.” I  organized sailing our family boat to Gaza as a JfJfP boat in 2009, with hospital medical equipment provided at the ready by Conscience International, and the crew on standby.

This mission was postponed when Israel began impounding Free Gaza boats for the first time. However, in 2010, I was lead organizer and captain of the Jewish Boat to Gaza.

Glyn Secker