David Mark Erickson

So I’m back in Seattle after an amazing amazing 10 day trip to Athens!  It’s hard to put in words all that happened and I know I tried to blog post a couple of times while I was there and just utterly failed.  Maybe it was because I was feeling so guilty for having so [...]

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So I arrived in Athens 7 hours later than originally planned and without my bag! Bad weather in NY caused our flight to be divereted and by the time I got to JFK my flight was long gone. They rerouted me through Paris but my bags never left JFK – hoping that it arrives later this afternoon … fingers crossed.

For those that might be wondering, “what the hell is Dave doing in Athens??” … here is the quick rundown of what I am up to:
About this time last year I passed through Athens and covered some demonstrations marking the 2nd anniversary of the shooting death by police of 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in 2008, which sparked 3 months of rioting that shook Greece to it’s core. This year I am for 10 days to do some reporting with the Common Language Project, a Seattle based nonprofit, to do some reporting on what’s happening here in Athens.

I will be triangulating my stories around 3 key issues:

* The death of Grigoropoulos as symptomatic of police-community relationship
* The law of “University Asylum” which prevents police from entering onto the campus of any University of College
* Profiling the neighborhood of Exarcheia, also known as the “Anarchist District” in central Athens

While here I will be recording audio, taking photos and writing stories to create a multi-dimensional picture of what is going on. In part, this is an exploration of my own ability to capture and produce material to produce multimedia stories. It is also an experiment with new forms of journalism and with the possibilities that crowdsourcing/crowdfunding make avilable.

Here are several links to follow my progress and keep up with my reporting:

Common Language Project Page
http://clpmag.org/safehaven

Athens Hotsheet (on facebook, no account require)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27218&id=155061487864191&fbid=165353516834988

Via my Twitter account
http://twitter.com/bror00
[Twitter users note: #travelerdave for pithy travel commentary and #Exarcheia for reporting]

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