World-renowned archaeologist, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Classics, and Director of the Athenian Agora, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Professor John Kemp, received the Theodore Salutos Award.
Breaking the organization’s protocol, the American Hellenic Council honored for the second time with a lifetime achievement award one of its co-founders, Aris Anagnos – a well known political activist and communist sympathizer , with the Greek Communist forces against the Greek Army .
Following the dinner and award ceremony the Takis Kokotas Band entertained the guests with authentic Greek music.
Watch our coverage and interviews from the event:
The American Hellenic Council is a non-partisan political advocacy organization that aims to promote democracy, human rights, peace, and stability in Southern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, with an emphasis on Greece and Cyprus. The group also informs the American public and public officials about on-going issues and conflicts in the area and about the threat arising from the economic crisis in Greece.
The Council has become an effective and respected political advocacy group whose primary purpose is to educate and inform the U.S. Congress for the protection and promotion of Greek-American interests.
Since its inception, it has been the focal point of political activities of Greek Americans in California.
Who is Aris Anagnos
- Wealthy funder of Marxist groups and causes
- Creator of the Humanitarian Law Project
- Funder of the Christic Institute
See also: ACLU Aris and Carolyn Anagnos Peace Center Foundation
Americans for Democratic Action Los Angeles Peace Center
Office of the Americas Humanitarian Law Project
Aris Anagnos was born in Athens, Greece in 1923.[1] He came to the U.S. in 1946 and earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from UCLA in 1951. He then worked several years in the insurance industry before going into real estate investments and development, where he earned a billion-dollar fortune.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, Anagnos and his wife Carolyn organized the Committee for Democratic Freedoms in Greece. When Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 the Anagnoses established the Save Cyprus Council, which evolved into a political lobbying group dedicated to the promotion of Greek-American interests.
Throughout the 1980s, Anagnos was a vocal opponent of U.S.-backed regimes in Central America, particularly in El Salvador. Moreover, he supported the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Marxist rebels in Chiapas, and Fidel Castro in Cuba.
In the early 1980s, Anagnos began a 25-year tenure as a board member of the Southern California American Civil Liberties Union, including a two-year term as president of that chapter. In 1985 he was among the founders of the Humanitarian Law Project, over which he presided for a number of years. And he also served a stint as president of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action.
In the 1980s as well, Anagnos was a prominent financial backer of the Christic Institute. Indeed, he contributed some $600,000 to the Institute's infamous lawsuit which falsely alleged that the CIA was scheming with the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras to use drug money to finance their war against the Marxist Sandinistas. For details of this case, click here.
In 1988 Aris and Carolyn Anagnos established the Los Angeles Peace Center, a building where several anti-war and “social justice” organizations were given access to rent-free office space. Now known as the Aris and Carolyn Anagnos Peace Center Foundation, this location has served as an operating base for such organizations as the Coalition for World Peace, the Humanitarian Law Project, the Office of the Americas, Peace No War, and branch offices of the National Lawyers Guild and the Democratic Socialists of America.
In January 1989 the FMLN, a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary group based in El Salvador, solicited Anagnos, his wife, and a radical Catholic nun (Sister Pat Krommer) to ceremoniously deliver to U.S. congressional leaders a document outlining the organization's proposed peace plan for El Salvador. Sixteen years later, the FMLN awarded Anagnos its 25th Anniversary “Farabundo Marti Medal,” named in honor of the late Salvadoran Communist revolutionary.
In the summer of 1989, Aris and Carolyn Anagnos donated $1 million to the Nicaraguan government for “humanitarian, educational and relief purposes” which included the construction of the Che Guevara Housing Project for Sandinista soldiers who had been disabled in the Nicaraguan civil war. Anagnos was subsequently awarded the Comandante Enrique Schmitt Medal, the highest Sandinista honor for non-Nicaraguans.
In 1999, Anagnos and his wife were among the founders of the California-based Progressive Jewish Alliance.
In 2000, Anagnos told the Los Angeles Times that he considered Fidel Castro to be "one of the outstanding statesmen of the world today." "He [Castro] has served his people faithfully and unselfishly and is a model for presidents to imitate," Anagnos added.
In the early 2000s, Anagnos sat on the board of directors of the Office of the Americas. Serving alongside him were such notables as Ed Asner, Roy Bourgeois, Noam Chomsky, Jodie Evans, Dolores Huerta, Martin Sheen, and the late Howard Zinn.
In 2002 Anagnos was a signatory to Not in Our Name’s “Statement of Conscience,” which condemned the Bush administration's “stark new measures of repression” domestically, and its “unjust, immoral, illegitimate, [and] openly imperial policy towards the world.”
Anagnos was also an endorser of World Can't Wait, a direct-action movement founded in June 2005 by Charles Clark Kissinger, a longtime leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
For years Anagnos was a major donor to the Pacifica Radio Network, whose station KPFK held its local advisory board meetings at Anagnos' Los Angeles Peace Center.
Anagnos has also given much financial support to such entities as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, MoveOn.org, and the Progressive Majority. In addition, he has contributed large sums of money to the political campaigns of Tammy Baldwin, Medea Benjamin, Joe Biden Barbara Boxer, John Edwards, Russell Feingold, Bob Filner, Al Franken, Raul Grijalva, Tom Harkin, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Patrick Leahy, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, Jim McGovern, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, Bernie Sanders, Hilda Solis, Norman Solomon, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson, and Lynn Woolsey. For a comprehensive list of candidates whom Anagnos has supported, click here.
Today, Anagnos is a member of the publishing consortium associated with the socialist journal In These Times.
NOTE:
[1] In 1941, during the Nazi occupation of Greece, he escaped to the Middle East where he joined the exiled Greek army which was fighting on the side of the Allies. After World War II, Anagnos returned to his home country and worked briefly with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association.
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