Today, December 6th. this evening to be precise, is the seventh anniversary of the murder of a 15 year old youth in Athens Greece. That Saturday night, just after 9pm, some youths are chatting in a café in Exarcheia, just as they do most Saturday evenings, two police arrive, there are some words, the police leave, then return shortly afterwards, two shots ring out and 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos falls to the ground and dies in the arms of his young companion. This cold blooded murder by the police, sparked some of the worst riots in Greece. For weeks the righteous anger of the people of Greece spilled onto the streets. This callous murder lit the touch paper of the powder keg of anger that had been rippling just below the surface, an anger that to this day is still there, fuelled by the continued plundering of the people of Greece, by the financial Mafia and their cohorts in government.
This is a very fitting video to the memory of young Alexandros, showing that the people do not forget their own. It is also a display of the desire for freedom that is locked in all our hearts. An awakening in the people's consciousness to the fact that, there is a better way, we do not need to be tied to the debilitating yoke of capitalism.
Outside Greece, solidarity demonstrations, riots and clashes with
local police also take place in more than 70 cities around the world,
including London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Dublin, Berlin, Frankfurt,
Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, the Hague, Copenhagen, Bordeaux, Cologne,
Seville, Sao Paulo, as well as Nicosia in Cyprus, and Paphos proving for
the first time before the “Arab Spring” that people could spread the
news and react through protests for the same matter around the globe,
from San Francisco to Wellington and Buenos Aires to Siberia.
While the unrest was triggered by the Alexis Grigoropoulos murder by
police, the reactions lasted for so long simply because they were rooted
in deeper causes, like the coming economic crisis a year later, which
was already being felt by poorer classes and younger generations through
rising unemployment rate and a feeling of general inefficiency and
corruption of the authorities, institutions and right wing politicians
of the Greek state (mainly New Democracy and PASOK political parties).
