[Pen-l] Fwd: The View from the Grassroots: An Interview with Giorgos Gogos on SYRIZA’s Election Victory in Greece

[Louis Proyect]

The View from the Grassroots: An Interview with Giorgos Gogos on 
SYRIZA’s Election Victory in Greece

Giorgos Gogos and Katy Fox-Hodess February 16, 2015
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Gior­gos Gogos is a Greek dock­worker and union leader from the Port of 
Piraeus. A mem­ber of SYRIZA, he is active at the regional and union 
lev­els of the party and is engaged in local orga­niz­ing efforts in 
Piraeus, the large urban indus­trial area sur­round­ing the port 
out­side of Athens. Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the Greek econ­omy, the 
mem­o­ran­dum with the troika included a pro­vi­sion to sell off 
prof­itable state-owned com­pa­nies to pay back loans to for­eign 
lenders, result­ing in the par­tial pri­va­ti­za­tion of the Port of 
Piraeus, Greece’s largest port, where Chi­nese state-owned ship­ping 
com­pany COSCO now holds the con­ces­sion for two con­tainer 
ter­mi­nals. Since that time, dock­work­ers have waged a mil­i­tant and 
sus­tained strug­gle, with strong local alliances in Piraeus and 
inter­na­tional sup­port from dock­work­ers around Europe, to return the 
port to full pub­lic own­er­ship and improve the poor work­ing 
con­di­tions at the pri­va­tized COSCO ter­mi­nals. Katy Fox-Hodess is a 
doc­toral stu­dent in Soci­ol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, 
Berke­ley writ­ing her dis­ser­ta­tion on inter­na­tional sol­i­dar­ity 
among dock­work­ers’ unions. She spoke with Gogos on Jan­u­ary 31 
fol­low­ing the recent elec­tion in Greece.

Katy Fox-Hodess: How have peo­ple in your com­mu­nity reacted to the 
elec­tion results?

Gior­gos Gogos: Gen­er­ally, it was accepted with great enthu­si­asm by 
many peo­ple, not only by those who voted for SYRIZA but other peo­ple 
who tra­di­tion­ally belonged to other par­ties and couldn’t escape from 
those com­mit­ments. Every­body I think was say­ing, ok, let’s see what 
this new route is like and we have to try, some­how, a new way of 
approach­ing the whole problem.

full: 
https://viewpointmag.com/2015/02/16/the-view-from-the-grassroots-an-interview-with-giorgos-gogos-on-syrizas-election-victory-in-greece/
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