News from the streets in Greece
Hello friends,
I am writing to you as we are experiencing huge demonstrations all over Greece on daily basis for the past week. After our entrance to the IMF, a year or so later people have had enough.
There are daily demonstrations happening in over 60 cities around Greece. Everywhere. In Athens yesterday some 200,000 people surrounded the parliament chanting "Thieves, thieves, thieves" and calling politicians names. They brought rope and hang a dummy representing a politician. Women, children, young, old, from all walks of life have come out with metal pans.
The movement is called "The outraged" and there is a web site and a face book blog created where people are joining and are exchanging ideas and organizing.
The movement is calling for direct democracy, for the IMF loan not to be payed off, for the corrupt politicians to go to jail, for change in the constitution and for the Government to step down. They also are saying they want out of the euro and to go back to our own currency, the drachma. People are starting to take their money out of the bank, effectively creating a "bank run" saying that if the government doesn't default on the IMF loan they will collapse the banking system. There is a call for people to start taking 100-200 euros each day out of their bank account until the government decides to default on the IMF loan, or go bankrupt. Whichever comes first.
There are assemblies happening each night on squares around the cities where people are getting together and talking about a new system using direct democracy. They don't want any political parties and when they see anyone with a flag or a sign from a political party trying to approach the demonstration or to come to the assemblies they turn them away, asking them to come back without any political signage or affiliation.
So far the demonstrations have been very peaceful. The movement has created a security group to police the demonstrations, so no provocateurs can infiltrate and cause problems. There are people camping outside of the parliament 24/7, there are teams created to feed people and teams created for legal support, medical support etc.
So far the people are learning how to self organize and the movement is growing at the speed of light. Just yesterday on the Athens face book there where 90000 people, today there are more than 110000.
People are massively calling TV stations and making their web sites to go down because they are not covering the uprising and/or are misinforming people.
Last night the politicians had to escape from the back entrance of the parliament, at night, through the park where security took them with flash lights because the people had blocked the front entrance. The outpouring of the people was so large, estimated at 200,000 that even the cops were not able to hold them back.
There is no stopping us now. Everyone is talking about change. People who never even talked about politics, are now coming out in an outcry for direct democracy. The government is scared and they don't know what to do. The prime minister has not appeared in days anywhere and has not made any comments.
It is becoming known now that the IMF deal is a big scandal. The agreement has been liked and is online and many constitutional lawyers are going to the streets to inform people of what has really happened. They have forced on us terms that are illegal even under International or European law. They are not allowing us to go to elections. The IMF agreement states that the Greek state cannot go to a Greek court to challenge the agreement and it cannot sale its debt in order to pay it back. We have to go to European courts (from 10-15 different European nations who are the creditors of the loan) and challenge the legality of the loan in each court individually. They, on the other hand, can sale the loan to another country.
They have asked that all political parties in Greece accept the IMF and EU loan as legal and that all political parties sign it, or else we will not get the next payment. That is why they refuse to allow us to go to elections. How can they stop us from having elections in our own country? Well it is a term written in the loan agreement. Yet it is illegal and there is no court in Europe or International that can uphold such term. But our stupid sold out government has no guts.
Our system is parliamentarian, so we have a President of Democracy, who is basically a person voted by all political parties in parliament, and serves as a check and balance in our political system. If he resigns the government gets dissolved as per our constitution. In the past week he has refused to sign anything that has been voted from the Greek parliament and the Government. We hope that he will do what is right and resign. If he doesn't sign an agreement or a law that gets passed in parliament, it doesn't come to effect.
Well, there are tons of things happening. It is crazy how people, especially the youth, has mobilized. Even the church is starting to come out for the protesters, although probably a political move to gain sympathy and approval from the people.
I will write again soon with updates, there are a lot of things happening and I cannot even begin to start elaborating on them. This same movement is also going on in Portugal for the past 3 weeks, in Spain for the past 2 weeks, and in Greece for a week now. It is spreading now in France, Italy, England and other countries. Last
Sunday it happened all across Europe in dozens of European cities.
Millions of people came out on the streets and is now been organized for the entire Europe.
This coming Sunday there will be a huge protest outside of the Greek parliament where protesters will come from all over Greece. Look for the government to possibly come out or escape via helicopters, like in Argentina.
OUT OF THE IMF, EURO AND THE EU NOW.
DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW!!!
lots of love and peace
