As referendum nears, Greek-Americans hope to avoid full catastrophe

CHICAGO — For James Alexander, the direness of Greece's financial crisis crystalized when one of his best customers confided in him that he was anxious about what lay ahead for family in their homeland.

"He told me, 'For the first time in 50 years, my family is asking for help," said Alexander, 62, a Greek immigrant who manages Athena Restaurant in the city's Greek Town neighborhood. "They were saying, 'We're stuck. We can't pay our bills."

The world's eyes are on Greece as the country is scheduled to hold a referendum on Sunday in which citizens will weigh in on whether the country should agree to terms for an international bailout.

The nation is on the financial precipice after a five-year-old Eurozone bailout program expired, cutting Greece from financing and pushing it to the cusp of leaving the euro. Greece this week earned the inauspicious distinction of becoming the first developed country to default on a debt to the international money fund when it failed to make a $1.7 billion payment.

While its European neighbors are watching the snap vote carefully to divine if Greece will remain part of the EU, the Greek financial drama is unfolding in more personal terms in American cities like Baltimore, Chicago and New York, which have big Greek-American populations.

Greek-Americans have watched from afar as Greece's young have struggled for years with high unemployment (it currently stands at about 26%), as the elderly have seen their pensions cut and fear further cuts are coming.

The crisis is also having an impact on the fortunes of many Greek-Americans, especially those who own property or have other financial interests in the motherland.

Some Greek-Americans, who own commercial or residential rental property in Greece, have had to reduce rents or have stopped receiving rent from cash-strapped tenants altogether.

Others, like James Manolakos, 36, owner of the Pan Hellenic Pastry Shop in Chicago, say they have watched the value of their residential and farmland decline. If Greece leaves the euro and revert to the drachma, that decline could accelerate.

Manolakos said his family's residential properties outside of Athens, which his mother bought in the early 1980s, were once worth at least 250,000 euros at their peak value. Today, the properties are probably worth about a fifth of the peak value.

In the end, Manolakos said that the declining value of his family's properties is something they can endure. As it is, they have no plans to sell the land.

Still, he said he remains concerned that Greece's prospects remain dim in the long-term regardless of the outcome of Sunday's referendum.

"I worry that Greece is in a vicious cycle," Manolakos said. "If they get money, they get bailed out, the government has to change."

Connie Mourtoupalas, president of cultural affairs at the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago, has personally felt the impact of Greece's downward economic spiral over the last five years.

Mourtoupalas, who served as cultural attaché at Greece's embassy in Washington, moved to Chicago in 2012 to take her current post after the government slashed government workers' salaries as part of earlier austerity measures.

Her museum recently opened an exhibit that chronicles the explosion of Greek graffiti art in Athens since the economy went south six years ago and the nation's creditors began imposing stricter control on how the nation spends its money.

The artists' works reflect concerns about pensioners, joblessness and the struggle of migrants that have been arriving in increasing numbers on Greece's shores in recent years. ( At least 68,000 already in 2015 with more than half coming from Syria).

One of the most stunning pieces in the exhibit is a reproduction of a streetscape in which an unknown tagger scrawled in red paint: The Future is Unwritten.

When Mourtoupalas picked it for the installation, she was optimistic the worst days of Greece's economic crisis was in the past and that the message was a hopeful one.

"Right now it's not just a financial crisis that Greece is facing," she said. "It's a social crisis, it's a values crisis."

Polls suggest that the outcome of the referendum will be close. At the same time, some 62% of respondents said they thought Greece would be worse off if the country goes back to the drachma, something that most analysts say is likely if Greeks vote down the referendum, according to a poll published by the newspaper I Avgi on Sunday.

In a call with the Hellenic American Leadership Council on Thursday, a top adviser to the coalition pushing for a "yes" vote told the Greek-American audience that the failure of the referendum would not necessarily mean Greece would leave the Eurozone.

But the adviser, Leonidas Makris, warned that Greece's credibility would be diminished with a "no" vote.

"The connotation of the vote is important now. A no is translated as has been stated by the (European) institutions as a demonstration of the unwillingness of the Greek people to collaborate," said Makris who serves as the political adviser to the mayor of the port city of Thessaloniki. "Already, many countries in the European continent are tired with Greece."

Alexander, the restaurant manager, said he is hopeful that Greek voters will approve the referendum. But even if they do, he said the new austerity measures will have indelible impact on his birth country.

"The impact is going to be devastating," Alexander said. "The elderly will see their pensions cut further. The young people, already so many with degrees and professionals, have left because there are so few opportunities. Once you take all the educated out. What do you have left?"