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Athens – Protesters in Athens hung two giant banners from the ancient Acropolis on Wednesday with the words “resistance” in five different languages, calling for mass demonstrations after days of Greece’s worst riots in decades. Dozens of protesters could be seen holding the banners over the ancient walls of the Acropolis. On one of the banners, the word “resistance” is written in Greek, Italian, Spanish, German and English.
The other banner calls for demonstrations to march across Greece on Thursday.

What does this mean? In our beginning is our end? The circularity of history? Or that a symbol of Athenian imperialism has been appropriated? That history is for the people and not the powerful? Or has this nothing to do with the historic value but the tourist value of the location? I think that’s it. The protesters hung the banner here because it is Greece’s most visible point. The whole world can see you from the Acropolis.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

7 replies on “The History of Resistance”

  1. It means people are tired of having 99 percent of the population work hard and scrape by to have the top 1 percent of the rich and ultra-rich live well.

  2. The difference between Charles and me — the practical vs. the philosophical.

    I read that article and thought, who are these protesters? What are they hoping to achieve? What are they resisting? What is causing them to act this way? How did these protests evolve from being about the teenager who was killed to about something bigger?

    Charles reads it and thinks about the symbolism of the acropolis.

  4. Well, at least democracy got started there. Which is why I find it disheartening to see anarchists and violent mobs using it for their “cause”. If they have a gripe, they should use it to motivate political change through democracy. Not violence.

  5. Considering the details of the event that sparked this off, the social climate between African immigrants and Greece at large, not surprisingly, must be extremely shaky. I sympathize with their frustrations (best I can), but they should look to France in October 2005 as an example of what can really hurt your cause.

  7. @6 – because every time they do that the US either helps a military dictatorship do a coup against them or we attack them directly.

    Look it up, it’s in your history books.

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