Greek American Poetry – Διασπορικές διαδρομές

http://apopeirates.blogspot.com/2012/04/blog-post_20.html

New Literary and Cultural Venue – Voices of Hellenism Project

http://www.voicesofhellenism.org/index.html

Greek American Radicals – The Untold Story

www.greekamericanradicals.com

The historical documentary  Greek American Radicals - the untold story  presents  a forgotten page of Greek immigrant experience in America: the role of immigrants in the radical labor movement in the United States and the journey of the Greek American left from the early 20th century until the years of McCarthyism.

Texts, letters, songs, newspapers, photographs, and unique archival footage from film recordings of the American labor movement substantiate the narrative.  Personal testimonies and interviews recreate the atmosphere of the Great Depression of 1929, the struggles of trade unions, the presence of immigrants as volunteers in the trenches of the Spanish civil war, the political persecution of McCarthyism and the deportations of the protagonists.  

The unknown story of Greek American radicalism as part of the political and social developments in the United States highlights the history of those who lived on the other side  of the "American dream" of success and political conservatism.

Ο Μετανάστης (1965) (Η Ταινία)

http://vimeo.com/14091972

My Big Fat Greek Wedding and "High Stimulus Culture": Pranks as Means for Socializing into Ethnicity

It is most likely that viewers of My Big Fat Greek Wedding will recall those moments in the film where Ian Miller's prospective kin capitalize on his lack of Greek to play pranks on him. These are memorable scenes in which a member of the dominant group participates in social life outside his "cultural turf," only to be subjected to embarrassment and ridicule. Why does the film emphasize this kind of situations? Obviously for their humorous effect, generated by the discomfort audiences may feel for the exercise of ethnicity's power. But there is more. For some time now I have been working on a close reading of the the film (forthcoming), and I discuss this situation along two axis:

• Ian clearly finds himself in a position of minority within the ethnic subculture. He lacks the linguistic and cultural skills to effectively negotiate his integration and belonging within ethnicity. Structurally, he is the weaker link in relation to ethnic networks. Let us pause for a moment and remind ourselves that this predicament has been a defining experience of immigrants and minorities. The film then "invites" the viewers to experience, at least momentarily, how it feels like to be a vulnerable outsider. If immigrants have been devalued and humiliated in the past (but also even in the present) by the dominant society, the film creates situations for the dominant to experience what it feels like being in the weaker side of the power relation. What purpose does this aim for identification serve? In my paper I argue that it functions as a condition for generating deep cross-ethnic understanding, intersubjectivity. If the dominant experiences marginalization, it feels its devastation, it is likely that it will empathize with those disenfranchised (one hopes then that the feelings this recognition of suffering generate will be those of empathy, not resentment).

In this post I suggest that the aforementioned scenes associated with Ian's introduction into ethnicity highlight the mechanisms through which he is acculturated into Greek American ethnicity (or more accurately, the version of ethnicity that the film presents, given that there is no uniform Greek American culture). Representing a super nice "white guy" (modeled after Tom Hanks, as a number of scholars have argued), Ian Miller eventually embraces ethnicity, representing in this manner the dominant society's openness to cultural diversity. Here is a more formal analysis of Ian's acculturation into ethnicity:

Understanding the conditions under which the male hero is socialized into ethnicity is important. The intimidation and pranks that the ethnics perform on Ian do not solely function to relegate the newcomer into a position of inferiority. They do not solely “return the gaze” at the dominant, reversing the hierarchies between Self and Other within an ethnic setting. They also initiate a process of ethnicization, namely Ian's education into the ways of ethnicity. This point is brought home once we note that Greek popular discourse exhibits high tolerance for verbal aggression while “white mainstream culture” inhibits it. The latter “is a low stimulus culture,” Thomas Kochman observes, “making individuals who would initiate potent stimuli (such as personal insults) entirely responsible for the serious way they might be taken,” thus “inhibit[ing] the production of potent stimuli” (335). As a result, recipients of insults display low capacity to manage verbal abuse. The filmic situations where the hero is battered (threatened and humiliated) therefore, dramatize volatile and potentially disruptive cross-cultural encounters (*). Confronted in this manner, the character of Ian would either follow the logic of his own low stimulus culture and have his sensibility seriously offended, or consent to the rules of the ethnic “high stimulus culture” and exhibit high tolerance toward the insult. The former option would signal an alienating posture jeopardizing the solidarity of his newly found extended family; the latter will signal his willingness to enter into the signifying webs of ethnicity. Ian’s frisky chasing off the abusers who have just humiliated him in front of the entire family (recall the “I have three testicles” scene) signifies his acceptance of the exchange as playful, a strategy of “high stimulus cultures.” Male ethnics here invite the newcomer to play along with their ethnic codes, initiating education into the ways of ethnicity. Ian will learn to negotiate taunts and retorts in the manner of the ethnics. In this manner, most importantly, the process into the agonistic play of difference and intersubjectivity begins.

(*) The middle class ethos of conflict avoidance does not mean that verbal aggression is absent in the socialization within “white culture” (see Ayoub and Barnett).

Ayoub Millicent R., and Stephen A. Barnett. “Ritualized Verbal Insult in White High School Culture.” Journal of American Folklore 78 (1965): 337-44.

Kochman, Thomas. “The Boundary Between Play and Nonplay in Black Verbal Dueling.” Language in Society 12.3 (1983): 329-37.

** For additional analysis see, http://immigrations-ethnicities-racial.blogspot.com/2012/11/my-big-fat-greek-wedding-analysis.html

Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 38.1-2 (2012)

Articles:

7 “Greek American Studies in the Twenty-First Century,” by Dan Georgakas

29 “The Greek Communities of the Bahamas and Tarpon Springs: An Intertwined History,” by Tina Bucuvalas

71 “Greek American Identities in the 21st Century: A Generational Approach,” by Angelyn Balodimas-Bartolomei

99 “Love and Death in the Fiction of Harry Mark Petrakis,” by Dennis Q. McInery

127 “Review: Redrawing Borders: Basil Rouskas,” reviewed by Adele Kenny

130 “Review: Your Own Ox-head Mask as Proof: George Kalamaras,” reviewed by Dean Kostos

132 “Review: The Greek American Community of Essex County, New Jersey: John Antonakos,” reviewed by Theodore G. Zervas

133 “Review: Confronting the Greek Dictatorship in the U.S.: Orestis E. Vidalis,” reviewed by Steven Bowman

See, http://www.pellapublishing.com/journal-hellenic-diaspora.php

Greek-American Music

Spyros Soukis «Η Μάγισσα της Αραπιάς»

For more on this musician see Angelike Kontis' piece in the National Herald:

http://www.thenationalherald.com/article/53336

Johnny Otis (born Ioannis Alexander Veliotes) (1921-2012)

For those interested in the life and work of Johnny Otis the scholarship of George Lipsitz is exemplary:

Lipsitz, George. 1993. "Introduction. Creating Dangerously: The Blues Life of Johnny Otis." In Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. xvii–xxxv. Wesleyan University Press.

Lipsitz, George. 2007. "How Johnny Veliotis Became Johnny Otis." Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora. Vol. 33(1&2): 81–104.

Lipsitz, George. 2010. Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story. University of Minnesota Press.

There is also Johnny Otis' autobiography (Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. Wesleyan University Press, 1993). To honor Otis's life-long anti-racist activism I share the following passage, a commentary about marrying his high school sweet heart Phyllis Walker, of Afro-Samoan ancestry (in Reno, Nevada on May 2, 1941):

[California anti-miscegenation law prevented them from marrying in California, but also in Nevada where] “we got around the problem by the same apartheid mentality in Reno” (59)

“Our parents could have the marriage annulled if they chose to [the couple were both underage]. My mother chose to. She sent my father to Reno with specific instructions to break us legally. But Pop had different ideas.
The first thing he did when he saw Phyllis was to take her in his arms and hug her and kiss her.
‘Your mother sent me to annul the marriage, but I came to meet my new daughter,’ he said in Greek, with tears in his eyes.
‘And besides, I don’t want to get God on my case.’
I never loved that old man more than I did at that moment” (59).

An Analysis of Hilary Sideris' Poem "Geometry"

Hilary Sideris's [poem] "Geometry". . .  deploys exceptional poetic economy to engage with the hyphen. A highly ambiguous piece with a multiplicity of semantic nuances, the poem presents hard interpretive challenges, requiring careful reading. I cite "Geometry" below in its entirety:

How can you be the you who called
the table of contents the plate
of compliments, who named the water
bottle baba wayo? Tonight we cram

isosceles, scalene & how the rhombus
differs from a square. I love your
getting-wavy hair, the way your lashes
graze the page, their half-moon curve,

like your father's, when you nod off.
I don't know which I prefer: math
from your mouth or your textbook's
definition of a line, the part where

it goes on in both directions forever.

The poem interrelates two unlikely practices: an explicit reflection on language, most strongly communicated in the speaker's incredulity over a string of incomplete and misplaced translations, and a math tutorial. At the start the reader is also confronted with doubt: who speaks to whom in the poem, who is the speaker and who is the addressee? Is it possible that there is more than one addressee? If so, how can the reader tell? This seeming indeterminacy brings to the fore the question of speaker, audience, and identity. Who speaks incorrect English? Who creates poetry in English? What is the place of Greek in the text? Where is the hyphen located, if in fact it operates at all?

The opening lines pose a puzzle, demanding the reader's careful navigation. The utterances plate of compliments, and baba wayo seem to point to two distinct linguistic registers. The former evokes a semantic slippage from "table of contents," a misplaced translation that might be committed by an adult whose command of the host language is partial. Could it represent a foreigner who inhabits English awkwardly? The latter most certainly points to an infantile effort to grapple with basic rules of phonetics. Could it represent an immigrant's grappling with the fundamentals of pronunciation? Alternatively, is it that it records a baby's incursion into spoken language? Or is it that "you" refers, perhaps, to both? It is difficult to tell. One element, however, is for certain. The incomplete grasp of English refers to a reality in the past. The speaker's incredulity ("How [End Page 284] can you be the you") leaves no doubt that those linguistic inadequacies represent a memory of a situation that has been spectacularly rectified.

To begin unraveling the identity of the addressee, let us note the speaker's objectification of the "you" that she addresses. As I mentioned, the expressed incredulity communicates dramatic transformations in linguistic fluency over time. Could this double reference of the second person pronoun also serve as a playful pun signaling the operation of two different subjects? One character from the pair in the poem represents the recipient of the tutorial, who in all likelihood is a young student, old enough to handle language. The poetic persona's connection with this subject is conveyed through the language of loving intimacy. The language borders on eroticism, but is also a language of affect that a parent might use to fondly address a child, ever attending to transformations in physical features ("your getting-wavy hair"), comparing mannerisms with the father's ("like your father's, when you nod off"), sprinkling adoring compliments ("I love . . . the way your lashes / graze the page"). On the other hand, if indeed there is a second addressee, this might be none other than the speaking subject, the objectified self of the speaker's monologue. But how can we tell? At this juncture I will take a detour, to attend to the poetics of the text before I proceed with the question of the poetic persona's relationship with the hyphen.

A reader with no interest in identifying the operation of the hyphen in "Geometry" could approach the poem as a reflection on language. The text certainly invites analysis on the ways language operates as both a constraining and liberating medium. The opening stanzas, for instance, point to the poetic potential of misnaming. The play of words and meanings is an activity which immigrants or children may unintentionally produce and poets often strive to create. Seen poetically, the bending of rules may delight a poet in the slippage between "table of contents" and "plate of compliments." Once measured against semantic rules, however, misnaming generates incredulity and the immediate impulse for correction. Misplaced poetic license seems to require immersion in rules and rationality, urging for a tutorial in geometry, a science of measuring and logic. The speaker fires in rapid succession images of symmetry, in fact she densely packs images of linear containment (isosceles, scalene, rhombus, square), which could be read as a metaphor of society's power to contain poeticity through socialization in linguistic conventions.

The narrative shifts from the practice of logical analysis to the language of emotion through images of linearity to references that turn into arcs and arches. The contrast is brought about through a marvelous economy of expression, as linearity gives way to curvature: "I love your / getting-wavy hair, the way your lashes / graze the page, their half-moon curve." The teaching of logic is superseded by the expression of affect.

Still, the poem evokes duality only to explode it, challenging conceptual dichotomies. Although it initially evokes linearity as a metaphor of logic and containment, it later also recognizes it as a sign of infinity. Math textbooks indeed define a line as an extension without end in two directions. Seen metaphorically, and in the context of my analysis, this geometric infinity aligns with the [End Page 285] potential of language—through the very craft of poetic world making—to create innumerable new realities. If language contains, it is the poet's task to enable flights of imagination. One must command the rules of language, however, in order to move into the realm of the infinite possibilities of poetry.

But the question persists, is there a hyphen in the text? The editor's decision to hyphenate Greek-derived American poetry motivates a reading that insists in excavating the hyphen within the poem.¹ Evidently, the tutorial cramming also crams the poem with Greek-derived English words: geometry, isosceles, scalene, rhombus. Greek certainly inhabits the poem in English, and it does so in cascading abundance. Still, this presence does not necessarily make the poem a Greek-American one, since words like "geometry" and "isosceles" have been naturalized into English. Neither does the Greek in English reveal anything about the speaker's relation with the hyphen. Though there is certainly popular and institutional memory of this historical association, the hyphen in this case is fully embedded in the dominant language. In this respect it is invisible, marking no Greek foreignness (difference) in the text.

If the poem reflects on language via a tutorial in geometry, it is precisely on the uses of language in the poem that one may look to trace the hyphen. The speaker brings generous attention to the Greek language, as I mentioned, packing the poem with Greek-derived terms in English. The marking does not only take place in the title. There is textual attention, in fact, to denote the difference between Greek in English and English, evident in the form and content of the following two lines: "isosceles, scalene & how the rhombus / differs from a square." "Difference" is marked in the clustering of the Greek in English and aligned in a single stanza, further highlighted by the "difference" between the Greek "rhombus" and the non-Greek square, the latter even placed in a different line. The architecture of the two lines functions as a sign differentiating Greek in English from English. As I will explain in fuller detail later, the hyphen appears as difference within sameness.

We can speak here about an inferential presence of ethnicity, a presence that is not announced by literal references to a Greek experience or identity, but implied by allusion and inference. A key to this inferential presence is located in the speaker's relationship with the Greek language in English. The litany of Greek-derived words such as "isosceles" and "scalene" is not neutral; the experience of hearing it spoken during the tutorial generates deep emotions. The speaker's tenderness toward the addressee is extended to include affect toward the sound of Greek in English ("I don't know which I prefer: math / from your mouth or . . ."). The utterance of words approximating Greek sound² generates affect, characteristic of a speaker's attitude towards the mother tongue. The speaker is no stranger to Greek after all. The possibility that the poetic persona herself is the "you" who once was a stranger to English confusing "plate of compliments" with "table of contents," could be now more confidently asserted, based on a poetics of "ethnic" affect.

The speaker is no stranger to English either. In fact, she is at home in this language too, as her admirable command of English, the linguistic plasticity, and the stunning economy of writing, clearly demonstrates. But there is more. [End Page 286] The naturalization of Greek into English enhances the poetic prospects in the host language. Just abbreviate a Greek-derived word, mathematics, and listen to the homonymic potential emerging in the juxtaposition between math and mouth: a mouthful poetics. The sound of spoken Greek in English and the sound of the homonymic pair math / mouth are simultaneously celebrated. The poet craftily showcases poeticity in English in a manner that cannot totally be separated from Greek.

But let us not mistake this reading as a final one, bringing closure to the poem. As my analysis demonstrates, the text is open-ended, hospitable to multiple interpretations. This is indeterminate poetry whose ambiguity in fact must be seen as its defining feature that serves a key purpose: it resists being contained within any single interpretation, being squeezed within a single category. To the question, "is this hyphenated poetry?" the poem may consent to an interpretive strategy that decodes the hyphen within its lines, but also to a reading that neglects to pay attention to the hyphen. Actually the speaker's unresolved dilemma ("I don't know which I prefer") only highlights the multiplicities of her affiliation. The poetic persona may cherish both Greek in English (the sound of "rhombus"), the poetic potential of combining Greek in English with English (math-mouth), and creating poetry in English (the metaphorical association of the infinite part of a line with the infinite possibilities of poetry I identified earlier). The poem, moreover, intimates the historical and cultural link between English and Greek. Thus the text explodes any attempt to contain it within a single ethnic or national category. In my reading, this is American poetry, and Greek-American poetry, and American-Greek poetry, and transnational poetry, all at once.

What does the poem tell us about the hyphen? In her double inhabitation in Greek and English, the speaker experiences a sense of "doubleness," of similarity and difference.³ She relates to Greek-derived words both as naturalized words in English—because she is at home in English; and as an affective site—because of her particular cultural affiliation with Greek. In this respect, ethnic identity is not experienced in terms of an absolute binary opposition (American/Greek). It does not signal pure otherness. Instead, Greek identity ("difference") is generated in relation to the dominant language (naturalized Greek in English). In this configuration the hyphen entails the production of new meanings—the experience of affect toward terms that others may read neutrally—within the dominant system of representation. It produces difference within sameness.

This particular construction of the hyphen underlines the power of an "ethnic" subject to attach new meanings to an object; to multiply the meaning of a sign, and as a result denaturalize it. In this manner, the poem posits difference as a constructed entity, always experienced or spoken about from a situated perspective. "Difference" is not naturally available; it is contingent instead upon historically and culturally situated subjects. Greek in English becomes a sign marking difference only from the point of view of the speaker, whose particular cultural biography turns Greek in English into an affective site. For the poetic persona, "isosceles" no longer points to a mere triangle with equal sites, but additionally as a location of emotive identification. Greek readers of the poem may feel this way too, and perhaps venture into discovering other situations to [End Page 287] apply this meaning-making process. The social implications of this insight are worth noting: encountering the host language and culture does not necessarily equal alienation. One could always resignify (translate) a "foreign" reality into one resembling the familiar, making life in the host society more spacious.* "Geometry" brings this point home. Poetry and ethnicity in the poem intersect to produce new sites for the hyphen to assert itself.

1. A caveat is in order here. One must resist confusing the poet, one with a Greek surname, and the poetic persona, and assume that the latter, the speaker, is Greek. As contemporary literary criticism instructs, the operation of the hyphen must come into play within the text itself, not outside of it.

2. This situation presents of course an imperfect equivalence, as the sound of isosceles in Greek and English is not identical. Once again, inhabiting two languages at once brings about the issue of translation (see Van Dyck, Karen. 2000. "Greek Poetry Elsewhere." Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism. Special Issue on Contemporary Greek Poetry, edited by Michalis Chryssanthopoulos, Ekaterini Douka-Kabitoglou, Lizy Tsirimokou. 8:81-98).

3. On the notion of "doubleness" see Hall, Stuart. 1996. "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation." In Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader, edited by Houston A. Baker, Jr., Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg, 210-222. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

*. Pioneer Cretan immigrants in Utah and Colorado, for instance, likened the regional mountain ranges with those in the ancestral island, producing affinity with the new place and thus alleviating the shock of their migration displacement. The meaning of place is denaturalized in the process of turning an American landscape into a point of reference for diaspora Cretan identity.
[Excerpts from my essay "Reading the Hyphen in Poetry," Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 29(2), 2011: 279–290.] (muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_modern_greek_studies/v029/29.2.anagnostou.html)

"Who's Afraid of the Greek Diaspora?" An Exchange

What is the place of the Greek diaspora in Greece's political life? Two points of view, one by the editor of the National Herald (TNH) and the other by a reader, take up the question from different angles:

1) By A.H. Diamataris, Editor, the National Herald, NY:

Ted Spyropoulos, U.S. Regional Coordinator of the World Council of Hellenes Abroad (SAE) wrote an article in this past weekend’s Greek edition of TNH entitled “Ομογένεια, η μεγάλη απούσα” (The Greek Diaspora is the Big Absentee) that deserves special attention.

In his article, Mr. Spyropoulos, a Greek-American with progressive ideas, along with lots of successful undertakings to show for himself – including some of the most important initiatives in recent decades regarding our Community issues – touches upon important issues in the relationship between the Greek American Community and the Greek homeland.

Among other things, he expresses his disappointment over the fact that the Greek Diaspora has not been utilized, and he questions why “the political leadership in Greece has not put the question of where the Greek Diaspora stands during this critical juncture in the country's history to the Greek Parliament.”

He adds that “it should be understood that neither the Greek American Community nor the Greek state need to dominate one another. On the contrary, both sides would benefit from mutual support, coordination, and cooperation. It is time that we overcome the national division between ‘us and them’ and start operating with a collective vision.”

Mr. Spyropoulos’ three main points are absolutely correct, and all share the common indisputable fact that Greece, and to a lesser extent Cyprus, never wanted to utilize the Hellenic Diaspora in any essential way. On some occasions, they were compelled to recognize certain personages (i.e., Archbishop Iakovos), because their influence on public opinion was simply so great that they could not do otherwise. They wanted to promote their policies to the Diaspora in certain extraordinary situations, but they never dared to make this cooperation official and they never “coordinated” with the Diaspora. They never wanted to recognize it as an official, essential interlocutor.

And the reason for this reluctance to utilize the Diaspora and give it an official role is simple: they fear it. Granting the Diaspora an official role and naming Greeks abroad to important government posts, i.e. prime minister, president of the republic, cabinet ministries, etc. represents a threat for the majority of the politicians operating inside Greece. They fear that utilizing Greeks of the Diaspora would open the floodgates and usher in healthy forces aimed at cleaning up the country, which would mean that the politicians back in Greece would lose their ability to exert political influence (in the form of corruption) because of the selflessness of Greeks abroad, which has been cultivated by the environments in which they live. Simply put, it would mess up their entire operation.

That is why even the few members of the Diaspora who have been given secondary positions, are, with few exceptions, examples of Greeks abroad to be avoided, and share a very similar mentality with the politicians inside Greece.

A similar example can be found in the attempts that some Greek businessmen are making to get the country to return to the drachma. They simply want to control the national currency, like they did back in the day.

There is only one way to overcome the obstacles being raised by Greek politicians to upgrading the role of the Greek Diaspora to some official capacity: by forcing their hand.

The Greek Diaspora must gain such strong representation that no political party would dare to ignore it.

Only then will it be taken seriously.

2) Response by Elissaios Paul Taiganides, editor@GreekEthos.org:

I have responded briefly to an earlier editorial of yours on the same topic as today's blog [below], but this time I like to go into details.

After I gave the banquet address at a national convention of environmental engineers in the early 1970s at Purdue University in Indiana, the word got around to the few Greeks on the faculty in Lafayette that a Greek had given a humorous speech . So I got an invitation to the home of professor of mechanics and hydraulics Dr Lianis. He was helping Andreas Papandreou who was in Diaspora trying to get support for his political cause and the overthrow of the anachronistic military junta that had usurped the power of governance from his father.

I listened politely but I was too busy with my career in engineering academia to get involved in politics. 15 years later I was visiting Singapore where I had managed a United Nations environmental project for a decade and was returning on short visits as consultant. The Greeks in town insisted that I join them to a lunch where the newly appointed Greek Ambassador to Japan was to be. I did not recognize him [he had grown a beard], but he recognized me.

Prof Lianis was the newly appointed Ambassador; he had arranged to remove Singapore and Malaysia from the Thailand Embassy and bring it under his umbrella. He sought my advise on the key politicians in these countries where I had worked and cultivated high level friendships. I introduced him to some people both in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur where I had also served for several years.

Ambassador Lianis brought me up to date; he had returned to Greece with Papandreou after 1974 giving up his professorship. Worked to get Andreas elected; served as a parliamentarian unelected but appointed [Vouleftis Epikratias]; run for a seat in Naoussa, got elected, got appointed as a minister, and finally became ambassador having developed close relationship with Papandreou who on his way back from Australia, as a prime Minister, stopped in Singapore [I was told by the local Greeks that Andreas supplied his newly acquired home with electronics, furniture and gifts for his girlfriend a Liannis relative].

The moral of the story is that if the Greeks of Diaspora want to be appointed Ministers they have to work for a political party and get elected or appointed as is Ms Elena Panaritis of www.prosperityunbound.com who left her job in Washington to work for the Papandreou team.

After all, Papandreou, Samaras, Papademos et al are fruits of Greek Diaspora.

So I do not see the point of Mr Spyropoulos of SAE complaining that prominent Americans are not appointed in leadership political posts in Greece. Greece makes it possible for everyone of us in Diaspora who can prove to be descendants of Greek blood to enter politics and fight for our political ideas. Only a military junta can appoint as ministers Greeks of Diaspora without going through elections, with disastrous consequences, of course.

We need to enter into the dance [Prepei na mpoume ston horo]. We stay outside in our comfortable jobs unaffected by the politics of Greece; we advise, we criticize as most of us did about a brilliant politician, distinguished American University professor Andreas Papandreou calling him un American and even communist. (printed by permission)