The Power Of Queer Community: The Way The Isle Of Lesbos Is Originating Together To Aid Refugees | GO Magazine

Eressos Connected
is actually a Twitter group for neighborhood in Skala Eressos, a beachside area regarding the isle of
Lesbos
, Greece. Town is breathtakingly beautiful: old-fashioned tavernas and bars range the seafront, deposits of sunlight glow throughout the water as folks eat new seafood and toast another cloudless day in utopia. It’s also a
lesbian utopia


; queer women can be every where there’s a (record-breaking) three lesbian taverns in the major remove.

Natives, lesbians, Greek people, and hippies stay amicably alongside one another, all acknowledging that this is amongst the just places in the arena where lesbians can visit experience deep, true, long-lasting community. All factions utilize the fb group for general area business: distinguishing scruffy canines, renting homes, inviting men and women to beach volleyball competitions, or natural lesbian wedding receptions.

Two weeks ago, the site had a swell of task as men and women smelt something burning, “Could There Be a flame?” they had written. “we smell it,” they noticed — “powerful smoke smell.” A day later, development trickled in, hitting statements across European countries, and very quickly really the only articles on Eressos Connected concerned the massive flame in Moria, Greece’s biggest refugee camp, one hour and a half from the our small lesbian sanctuary.

The camp, designed to hold 3,000 people, is home — in the the majority of temporary, unclean, and unpleasant feeling of the phrase — to 13,000 men and women: destitute individuals, refugees, asylum candidates, and migrants fleeing battle, poverty, or oppressive leaderships. They await long periods, wishing to have their particular applications provided to allow them to enter the extremely militarized and increasingly resistant fortress around Europe.

Refugees don’t want to take Lesbos. Natives feel incapacitated by influx men and women here. Tourism (the island’s primary revenue) was stunted by the unfolding situation, while Covid has actually virtually brought it to a standstill. Islanders think betrayed from the Greek federal government; the government seems betrayed by additional European countries. The situation is actually complicated and burgeoning, the stream men and women from international South into the international North is only in infancy.

The Fire

Attempting to discern reality from fiction on Eressos Connected (as with all huge social networking team) is actually challenging. Intuitions, facts, and half-truths merge with each other, sparking passionate spiels, heated keyboard debates, hugging, weeping, and raging emojis. No-one’s certain whom began it as well as how the
flame began.
Many think it had been deliberately ready — by asylum hunters possibly, tired of located in purgatory, enraged because of the camp’s previous isolation purchases (after 35 Moria residents tried positive for Covid). Some say it actually was set by right-wingers, the police, the locals. We possibly may never know needless to say. The fire undeniably brought about significant harm. Some zones endured, other people tend to be ash and dirt. Photos of burnt asylum applications are especially haunting — the prospect of obtaining to start once again.

Greek authorities have constructed a parameter across the camp to stop people from finding refuge in local villages. You can find refugees demonstrating for his or her freedom, your abolition of Moria. Locals on left and right tend to be demanding the exact same thing. Army helicopters tends to be heard overhead. You can find research of police putting tear-gas and images of refugees pouring coca-cola on their burning up sight. Lesbos is during a state of emergency. Tonight, thousands of people tend to be resting on roadsides and gas programs. Certain hill ranges out, in Skala Eressos, the lesbians come into Flamingo seashore club.

The Sinking Titanic

The lesbian community in Skala Eressos is international and intergenerational: 70 year olds from Paris, 40 year olds from Cape city, 20 12 months olds from Athens. Discover females of numerous political persuasions and financial situations: personal employees and public equity lawyers, products and performers, physical fitness trainers from swanky health clubs in Berlin, ascetic-wandering yogis from Goa. Are all hooked on this place. Skala is during our blood; simple fact is that closest thing to a home a lot of us have.

Less pubs are available this year, and there tend to be fewer females than usual. We-all took a risk popping in, and seated in Flamingo tonight, it feels like its repaid. The bar pulses as Diana Ross stations from speakers and people drink daiquiris, flirt, chat, and dance within seats — achieving social highs they would composed off this present year. Most women take a 10-day getaway. They would like to consume octopus, play volleyball, experience paddleboards, chase satisfaction and happiness, and prevent whatever might destroy this sacred-seeming journey.

There are certainly others here this evening just who look attracted and cleared, like they have invested day long squinting at their own phones within the last few of the summer’s sunlight, reading and enjoying the refugee situation unfold


a few hundred kilometers away


. They can be haunted by proximity, by the similar surface in the news as well as around all of them. They profoundly have the dichotomies of


the sea as life-giving on their behalf, existence getting for other individuals; the hills as places to hike, or locations to disguise from the Greek authorities; the sun they brown in, similar sunshine that pounds onto the tarmac of gasoline stations. These women are seated in Flamingo, anesthetizing themselves with ouzo, seeing their own area, wondering exactly why no-one otherwise appears to proper care.

There are undeniably different attitudes to your refugee crisis about this area — within this very bar. There are those concerned about the local economic climate, about Greece’s monetary issues, and concerning depths of their own pockets. Discover women right here exactly who tirelessly volunteer with refugee, instructing English or violin or standard refugee legal rights. You can find women who always offer time, power, and methods but feel disillusioned now, like their attempts performed absolutely nothing to remedy the problem. There’s condescension from people who’ve tossed when you look at the towel, which knocks the wind off those who’re ready and raring doing the things they can to alleviate the suffering of men and women in immediate require.

As a residential district, we appear to be paralyzed of the divergence in view and enormity on the situation. We don’t know very well what to complete, who to trust, don’t know where you can deliver our very own cash. We don’t have tangible skills to greatly help and help. We understand that providing crisis help, asleep bags, and sanitizer is something, however a simple solution after all.

Although it could be challenging charge any person during this club with perhaps not caring, you will find a distinguished silence, heightened — t


their 12 months, as part of your — by an aspire to maybe not destroy other people’s holiday.


The silence departs people going out within beach club, the moonlight dancing in the drinking water, full of the eerie experience that people’re toasting the evening once the Titanic basins.

The Lesbian Reaction

When the celebration at Flamingo started to feel a little too disconnected from reality, some thing great happened. The DJ faded out of a Stevie question track and passed a microphone to someone in audience. “Hello Flamingo,” she stated, before namelessly presenting by herself as a member of a nearby queer womxn’s collective, Ohana. They have been a group of 10 who happen to live on an item of land a kilometer from beach.

“today, the collective met up and chatted,” she said. “We spoke and spoke and determined absolutely an elephant within the room in Skala Eressos. We are all familiar with the unfolding refugee situation about area, really into the back or perhaps the front of most in our thoughts. Yet, we do not seem to be carrying out everything about it. At the best conversational or keyboard activists, we offset our very own shame with a like or a mention before getting back once again to our ouzos, daiquiris, and lesbian romance.”

“each one of these things are fantastic, really great; we’re a marginalized area in a patriarchal world, we’re allowed to enjoy delight and pleasure and that belong,” she proceeded. “But we should do that consciously. We would be home, but thousands of people about extremely rock tend to be far removed from any semblance of home.”

“therefore tonight,” she said, “we are going to begin fundraising. We have connected up with a local NGO called
Pikpa Lesvos Solidarity.


They have been doing this island for eight many years, mainly with susceptible populations (and typically women and children). With all the money raised tonight, two people in our very own group will search for the necessities — think hand sanitizer, powdered milk, underwear, h2o — fill a Jeep, and decrease all of them down on corporation’s HQ tomorrow mid-day.”

Because speech drew to a close, she questioned individuals allow the price of a try or a cocktail — everything they’re able to. Applause out of cash aside, and a profound sense of reduction surged through crowd. An improvised donation’s bucket went around, swiftly filling with 20s, 20s, 20s, 50s, singles. After a swift half-an-hour whip, €620 spilled through the bucket. Community activation plainly isn’t challenging. The lesbians here simply needed a place to put their own methods, a path to make positive social modification.

As final few monitors played at Flamingo, the stars punctuated a lot of sections in the air, together with Ohana member took to the stage to thank everyone else abundantly. She was actually honestly gob-smacked of the overflowing bucket. “thanks, thanks a lot, efcharisto,” she mentioned. “We were expecting 100 euro, possibly two, but this is certainly incredible!”

She paused for a while before she stated, “the audience is the lesbians from the island of Lesvos; it is seriously the responsibility too.” It feels as though lesbians all over the world can substitute solidarity aided by the lesbians regarding the island of Lesbos. This continuous humanitarian crisis is perhaps all in our responsibility.

To donate to Pikpa drop by


https://www.lesvossolidarity.org/en/support-us.



Stay tuned for more changes regarding circumstance in Lesbos.