Athens - demonstration last night

Everybody was out on the streets marching or supporting the marchers and awaiting the vote in Parliament.


People are angry that the Greeks are being portrayed as shirkers to justify these draconian measures:  ' They want to make Greece like a failed Balkan state.' 


Someone else not on the march who had seen the event on TV, thought a military government is the answer...  

People agree that the current government is useless, without a mandate, and is reneging on all its promises. Some comments were:

'Salaries are being cut by 50% and prices are going up - you can't live', said a woman who works in a research institute and staying in Greece only to support her elderly parents.

 'You just can't live on the reduced salaries... if you get ill you can't afford treatment - even if it's available' - a woman who works on the Parthenon restoration.

'Lots of the decisions don't even bring any revenue to the government... it's illogical, unprecedented and insupportable ... and it's encouraging the rise of the far right' - Aristides, a human rights lawyer. 

It was very much the ordinary people, not 'troublemakers' as the media would have us believe, yet the people in Syntagma Square still got the tear gas treatment from police. But the people kept marching - despite the rain.  

The proposed measures have no logic in economics or common sense.  

'New ideas are needed', a taxi driver says. 

The European Greens Council this weekend must get its progressive message out there... there is no-one else with the radical vision to get Europe out of this mess. 

Shan Oakes
Green Party