An Introduction

It is best to begin with a disclosure about my thoughts at present.  I took on this three month journey because I am in a position to do so.  I took this on with an understanding that although I consider myself a “global” citizen, I am a guest here in Greece and the European Union (EU).  I am heavily interested and involved in my own ancestry.  I am the great grandchild of people whom I’ve mostly never met except through the stories of the living and names on monuments and walls.  I studied the political history of Southeastern Europe in Thessaloniki, Greece for the better part of three years.  I cannot help but compare the mass migration of people to the United States (US) in the early 20^th century to what is happening right now; hundreds of thousands fleeing war, poverty, and famine for a chance at a better life, met by a divided populace on whether those fleeing are welcome.  I cannot help but remember my distant family is one of many who fled a war and poverty-stricken Europe.  I took on this mission in my life because we as a whole are sometimes so far removed from the past that we blindly ignore its lessons.  We shrug collectively and indifferently, offering little other than saying, “This is different,” or some rhetorical platitude.  I cringed in horror the moment news broke out about Donald Trump’s (the current US Republican Presidential candidate frontrunner, mind you) comments on creating a national database for Muslims living inside the US and issuing them special identity cards.  It wasn’t so much that Mr. Trump said it.  It is how a large portion of the population agreed with him.  I cringed in horror, and still do, that we found/find it acceptable to even be having this conversation in any serious way.

This is not my America.

For weeks I have contemplated about what this blog will look like.  Will I make this solely about my volunteering and read like a travel book, perhaps in the vein of Robert Kaplan or Rebecca West?  Will I place American politics aside while focusing primarily on EU/Southeastern Europe?  How much of myself am I willing to put in these stories?  Where, if at all, does this story end?

Perhaps the best answer I’ve given myself is that I must be willing to challenge everything and to not be afraid to offer my voice to that challenge.  This crisis changes every day and I knew from the beginning I must be flexible to adapt to the needs on the ground.  So, at the end of the day, this blog will become an amalgamation of all these questions and challenges.  What I do know is that this post will likely be the last in awhile where I use the pronoun “I” so extensively because this isn’t about me.  We are these refugees, we are these immigrants, we are these people.  And the moment we deny that is the moment we spit on those who have come before us and deny the very freedoms and liberties we cherish.

That said Greece is fighting an unwinnable war on all fronts.  A country ravaged by austerity measures forcibly put in place due to decades worth of fiscal irresponsibility is now condemned for not having the money and resources to protect the EU’s southeastern border.  A country struggling to provide services to its own citizens is now condemned for struggling to maintain a minimum level of comfort and aid to hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed the seas.  The EU, likely still bitter over the years of fighting over austerity measures for bailouts, has opted for the same coercive, forceful tactic of threatening Greece, most recently with a temporary exit from Schengen Agreement if it could not control its borders (with the money and resources it doesn’t have).  Greece is bordered by no true allies currently in this crisis.  Macedonia (FYROM) has virtually shut down its border for everyone but a few Syrians.  Bulgaria has constructed kilometers worth of razor wire fences across its border.  The route to Northern Europe has been effectively dammed and Greece is the reservoir.  Meetings meant to discuss what to do about the crisis have excluded Greece from the table.  The EU has opted rather to invest in – or bribe – Turkey in the hopes that the Turkish government would be able or willing to stem the flow coming from their own borders.  People are still coming.

Greece is by no means blameless. Hard to stomach reforms to put Greece back in line with eurozone requirements has made the country stubbornly combative towards the EU.  The Greek government has been offered border assistance which had been denied on the grounds that it infringed on what Greek sovereignty still exists.  Greece has not been too willing to find common ground with the EU’s other member states by resorting to its own rhetoric and victimization.

The undeniable fact is that Greece, right now, is becoming the “permanent warehouse of refugee souls” that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras warned about this week.  The undeniable fact is that this crisis isn’t going away anytime soon.  The undeniable fact is that this cannot be Greece’s burden to shoulder alone.

So I am here, ready to extend my hand.