Tens of thousands of school and university students and workers participated in profoundly anti-government mobilisations in all Greek cities last Monday.
The demonstrations marked the second anniversary of the killing of 15 year old schoolboy Alexis Grigoropoulos by police which led to a two-month spontaneous youth uprising in Athens in December 2008.
Police viciously attacked demonstrations throughout Greece – reports mention several injuries by police tear-gas and bomb-and-smoke grenades and hundreds of arrests some 50 in Athens alone.
On Monday morning, school students gathered outside their schools and went on to stage marches and blockades of main streets.
In several Athens districts, school students along with their parents, demonstrated outside police stations.
Hundreds of school students gathered at the cemetery where Alexis Grigoropoulos had been buried and left flowers on his grave.
They then marched to the centre of Athens where they met some 5,000 school students, teachers and other workers.
Both the ADEDY (federation of public sector trades unions) and the OLME (secondary teachers trade union) had called a three-hour national stoppage.
The subsequent march to the Vouli (Greek parliament) was dominated by the energy of school students who kept on shouting witty slogans against the government and the police.
Many school students threw red paint and fruit against banks and the state General Accounts Office.
In the afternoon, another demonstration took place in Athens organised by university students.
Over 15,000 students, workers, left-wing parties and organisations and anarchist and ‘anti-state’ youth participated in probably the most anti-government demonstration of this autumn.
At the front of the march the large banner of the occupied Athens Polytechnic university departments was placed.
Students and workers shouted continuously slogans such as: ‘The IMF-EE Memorandum will be overthrown in the streets!’; ‘Down with the terrorist junta!’; ‘Let’s overthrow the IMF-EE junta!’; ‘The blood flows and seeks revenge!’.
‘Both bourgeois parties want austerity, unemployment and terror!’; ‘They are demolishing gains of a whole century – everyone on the streets, everyone in the fight!’; ‘France, Britain, Italy – justice is on the streets not in ministries!’
Four school girls, Vassiliki, Garyfalia, Anatoli and Fotini from the Peristeri district of Athens were at the march along with one of the girls’ mothers.
Vassiliki spoke to the News Line on behalf of all four of them. ‘We have come to the march to honour Alexis and to show our opposition to the government.
‘We are a bit scared by the police actions but we are determined.
‘We will also demonstrate tomorrow (Tuesday) against the visit of the IMF’s director.’
Half an hour before the march started, youth demanded that the heavily-armed riot police presence be withdrawn from the back and the two sides of the demonstration outside the central building of the University of Athens.
As police refused to do so, youth started throwing stones and fruit against them. Police attacked with scores of tear-gas and smoke, noise and lightning grenades.
The demonstration marched to the Vouli building but throughout the streets of Athens hundreds of riot police moved alongside the march, every now and then throwing grenades straight into the mass of people demonstrating.
But the march kept its discipline, was not dispersed and reached the square outside the Vouli building in a hugely militant anti-government mood.
Some 1,000 armed riot police had been stationed in double and treble lines in front of the Vouli building as well as around the other three sides of the square.
There was also heavy presence of police outside the luxury hotels and the Finance Ministry building. As the thousands of demonstrators gathered the atmosphere became extremely intense.
Then youth threw some stones against the police in front of the Vouli. The riot police threw tear-gas and percussion grenades against them and attempted to split the march into two.
For the next ten minutes the square was transformed into a battle ground, as youth threw fruit, stones, flares and some petrol bombs against the police. Literally dozens of tear-gas and smoke-noise grenades were thrown into the crowd.
A white cloud of tear gas smoke dominated the top end of the square. But once again the march stood its ground and the police did not move in between the mass of the demonstration.
Marchers moved out of the square towards their starting point with police launching attacks on the march’s flanks and rear.
Thousands of youth marched towards the Athens Polytechnic area where nearby a mass meeting and vigil was organised on the spot where Alexis was shot and killed.
Riot police had attempted to isolate the spot and make it out of bounds, but the masses of school students and parents cancelled the police plans. But riot police kept on raiding streets near by the Polytechnic chasing youths.
The Greek Communist Party (KKE) refused to take part in any of the marches and mobilisations.
In December 2008 the KKE general secretary had described students and youth who were fighting against the police and the state as ‘agent provocateurs’.
The mass, explicitly anti-government, action by school and university students and youth last Monday was also a huge blow to the Papandreou government’s orchestrated plan against the mobilisations.
On the eve of the marches, last weekend, the Greek police announced ‘terrorist’ arrests and declared the whole of Athens city centre closed to traffic while radio and television stations ‘warned’ people not to go the the city centre on Moday because there will be ‘violent marches’.
Indeed, the majority of shops in the Athens city centre remained shut and there were few shoppers around.
But the state and police plans failed due to the profoundly anti-government militancy of the marches and the determination of the masses of school students.
Last Monday’s demonstrations marked the deep anti-government feelings of the working class and youth in Greece.
It is clear that the general strike on December 15 will be a most important event.
