Political health and solidarity in Greece

The text and photo­graphs of this contri­bu­tion result from three years of field­work in Greece that asso­ciated field philo­sophy and critical docu­men­tary photo­graphy^[1]Chris­tiane Vollaire et Philippe Bazin, Un Archipel des soli­da­rités : Grèce, 2017–2020, Loco, 2020. For over twenty years, the enti­rety of our joint work has been ques­tio­ning the destruc­tive effects of neoli­beral poli­cies and the processes of globa­li­sa­tion that support them, in terms of social rights (housing, work, health) and migra­tion ; however, it focuses on the move­ments of resis­tance and reven­di­ca­tion that chal­lenge them. In the Balkans, Poland, Egypt, Chile, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. Finally, on the French terri­tory, in refugee camps in Northern France^[2]Refu­gees wanting to get to the United Kingdom., around the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ (Yellow Vests) move­ment, around the French-Italian border in Briançon and in working-class neigh­bou­rhoods of Seine-Saint-Denis^[3]A North East suburb of Paris..

Our work in Greece briefly displayed here, stems from 145 inter­views with allies, migrants or immi­grant back­grounds met in Thes­sa­lo­niki, Athens, Patras, the islands of Lesbos and Ikaria and the regions of Epirus, Thes­saly and Western Mace­donia. It chal­lenges both the present of soli­da­rity —against economic violence and against the violence of migra­tion poli­cies— and the histo­rical twen­tieth-century of fights against fascism. 

Going to Greece between 2017 and 2020 led us to perceive a specific dimen­sion of the health issue. When health poli­cies become –under the troïka of Euro­pean and global banks’ diktat– poli­cies of aban­don­ment, they not only endanger the physical survival of people who are abruptly deli­vered to health preca­rity but also threaten the social struc­ture in itself, as well as its very own poli­tical health.

Resisting in Athenes

V.I. is a biology teacher forced into early reti­re­ment by the economic hard­ship that has befallen the country since the 2010s. She became the volun­teer manager of an impor­tant phar­macy run by the Elli­niko social clinic in Athens. She said :

“I came here because I think it’s against the system : the system wants all these people to die. With the work I do here, I am figh­ting back. That’s why I live. I don’t want to use a gun or kill myself.”

One could not be pers­pi­cuous about what destruc­tive economic poli­cies do to everyone’s mental health. Nor could it be more explicit about the reme­dies required to avoid passi­vely suffe­ring from such social patho­ge­nesis —which is even more toxic in the long run than the physical patho­lo­gies it causes. V.I. does not content herself with the signi­fi­cant admi­nis­tra­tive work she accom­plishes in this social clinic. She also deve­lops the meaningful acti­vity of disse­mi­na­ting infor­ma­tion. From the pers­pec­tive of its thera­peutic effi­ciency on the social body, she presents it as a rejec­tion of denial about the real heca­tomb gene­rated by the troi­ka’s intervention :

“I write all the papers against them, to all the jour­na­lists and the press. Every month we publish two Letters. The press releases say that diabe­tics cannot get what they need. We must tell the govern­ment that they have to change this from within. We talk on tele­vi­sion, it repre­sents a resis­tance.”

Consi­de­ring herself to be at war in this dispen­sary, she stresses how impor­tant the inter­na­tional dimen­sion of soli­da­rity is since it is the ulti­mate response to the violence of globalisation :

“At the begin­ning, there were ten volun­teers. At present, there are 300, along with those who work from home. Many volun­teers work for the clinic throu­ghout Europe by orga­ni­sing collec­tions and buying medi­cines. From Germany to Italy, to Austria, to Swit­zer­land, to France (Doctors in Paris and Brit­tany are giving medi­cine), to Belgium.”

She insists on the fact that this answer has nothing of huma­ni­ta­rian aid. And that inter­na­tional aid concerns exiled people who ought to benefit from it. For it stems from global finan­cial poli­cies and their tragic social consequences :

“We saw malnou­ri­shed chil­dren. Even if it were only 20 babies, it is too much, because milk at this age is like medi­cine. Parents are without jobs, and if they do have a job, the salary is 300 € per month. To buy a brick of milk, they need to pay 20 €.”

This dispen­sary, which proved to be vital and has expanded so much, will not only receive any state support but will be threa­tened with evic­tion in favour of a gigantic amuse­ment park for the jet-set, to which the land has already been sold and against which the clinic’s acti­vists have been figh­ting for almost ten years.

Exiled people behind the civic engagements in Thessaloniki

Five hundred kilo­metres north of Athens, in the metro­polis of Thes­sa­lo­niki, another social health clinic has opened. C.K, a hospital doctor and head of the inten­sive care unit, is one of the foun­ders. As she recounts, medical soli­da­rity and collec­tive victo­ries result from a migrant workers” hunger strike :

“In January – February 2011, in Crete, a group of migrants decided to orga­nise a wide-scale hunger strike. They were essen­tially from North Africa : Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. They were agri­cul­tural workers in Crete. We said OK to help them. They travelled to Thes­sa­lo­niki (…) We had a big protest here at the Univer­sity. (…) They won : they got papers, permis­sion to work and working docu­ments.”

However, the success of the commu­nity move­ment with exiled people coin­cided, at the end of that year, with the heavy blow of the govern­ment’s deci­sion to scuttle the public health system. Taken for purely ‘mana­ge­rial’ reasons, this deci­sion abruptly deprived three million Greek citi­zens of access to health care.

C.K. describes this temporal coin­ci­dence as an oppor­tu­nity : as a common victory just took place with the exiled workers, alter­na­tive move­ments feel endowed with the strength to fight back against the govern­ment’s deci­sion concer­ning citi­zens. Thus, aware­ness is growing from having to consider their leaders as enemies and those who are supposed to be outsi­ders as allies, and it gives them the energy for a common struggle.

The auto­no­mous social clinic in Thes­sa­lo­niki opened in November 2011, and it was instru­mental in pres­su­ring the left-wing govern­ment that came to power in 2015 to provide free heal­th­care. It will be done in 2016 however under the condi­tions of hospital over­crow­ding without increa­sing the medical staff and without adequate reim­bur­se­ment of medi­cines, dispen­sa­ries will have to take over, once again.

An archipelago of health struggles

Thus, it has esta­bli­shed a signi­fi­cant archi­pe­lago^[4]The concept of the archi­pe­lago, in its geogra­phical and symbolic dimen­sions, is explored in our book. of health struggles, revea­ling the reality of poli­tical health through collec­tive social initia­tives. In East Thes­sa­lo­niki, in Skou­riès, Halki­diki, the opening of a gold mine by a multi­na­tional company has been confronted since the 2010s by an envi­ron­mental advo­cacy group that is in part informed by medical resear­chers from the Univer­sity of Thes­sa­lo­niki. The latter were amongst the whist­le­blo­wers and they came to inform the villa­gers by holding on-the-spot meetings and by carrying out exten­sive educa­tional work.

D.B., a retired miner, gained geophy­sical and heal­th­care know­ledge from these inter­ven­tions, leading him to parti­ci­pate in soli­da­rity move­ments. Previously engaged in the miners” trade union struggles of the seven­ties, he broa­dened the meaning of this present struggle not only to workers but for the health of the popu­la­tion at risk of perma­nent danger. Whether it be for water supply (ground­water conta­mi­nated by mercury or arsenic, neces­sary compo­nents in gold explo­ra­tion) or for air breathability :

“What is happe­ning now is more dange­rous than it was at the time of the ’77 strike. Thir­teen villages in the region have been leased for a hundred years. Moreover, there are twenty thou­sand tons of dust every day. There is a pit where toxic waste is being dumped and further waste is meant to be dumped. The biggest problem is its proxi­mity to villages.”

Meanw­hile, in a self-managed VIOME factory near Thes­sa­lo­niki —that is aban­doned by its mana­gers and has been reclaimed by its workers through organic soaps and clea­ners’ produc­tion— a clinic focu­sing on the issue of work-related risks has opened :

“We opened a clinic for all workers in the area. They are informed by the Coope­ra­tive Union. We knew people who were doctors. Some were very inter­ested, and they were orga­nised. As for the migrants, they are from the working class. And the consul­ta­tions are taking place in the indus­trial buil­dings.”

In the harsh context of contem­po­rary economic, social and post-colo­nial discri­mi­na­tion, reco­ve­ring not on indi­vi­dual physical and psycho­lo­gical health, but also common poli­tical health is one of the major chal­lenges of these soli­da­rity-based care spaces. Addi­tio­nally, there is signi­fi­cant aware­ness that at present the migra­tion debate is a common factor for reven­di­ca­ting soli­da­rity health. There­fore, Greece is beco­ming not only a labo­ra­tory of economic and migra­tory violence but a refe­rence point and an instru­ment for poten­tial resis­tance in Europe and elsew­here. This is the meaning that our work, within its inter­na­tional pers­pec­tives, aspires to attri­bute to it.