We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, November 11, 2013

Greek police raid occupied and worker-run TV station

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution.
As one ERT veteran described the experiment after spending a month at the occupied station, the worker-run ERT “was not professional but it was a good effort. Many people thought that it was for the first time a free voice, an anti-government voice from the state TV, from the public TV that used to be controlled by the government.”

It is precisely for this reason that Samaras’ government decided to shut it down.
The control of media is a vital method of any ruling class to control what information their subjects receive about issues that affect them. They will never allow even independent voices access to media if they in any way interfere with the interests of the ruling class.
The Greek media are an ideological keystone in the crumbling edifice of the transnational class coalition that is now sucking Greek society dry with its insistence on full debt repayment.



...[after they were forcibly removed]  journalists took out their gear and continued broadcasting outside of the headquarters in front of the lines of riot police who have cordoned off the building. According to its workers, 1.2 million people watched the 9pm broadcast tonight.