Nicole Itano
Nicole Itano reports about the Balkans for GlobalPost from her base in Athens, Greece, where she has lived since early 2006. Before that, she spent five years in Johannesburg, South Africa,...
May Day in Greece
Today is a public holiday in Greece — and across much of Europe, honoring the worker. This year, of course, May Day comes in the midst of an economic crisis and hard times, so governments across the continent were bracing for large protest marches and potential violence.
Athens' annual May Day march, which by tradition starts outside parliament in the city's main square, predictably ended in clashes between police and a small number of hard-core protesters. But despite economic troubles, an unpopular government teetering on the edge of collapse, and lingering resentment over the police shooting of a 15-year-old boy that sparked riots in December, the gathering was fairly small, especially compared to the large street protests at the end of last year. Perhaps it was the fine spring weather or simply protest fatigue.
In Greece, strikes and protests are a national pastime with their own rituals and culture. Small protests over specific issues occur on an almost daily basis, but the biggest ones are amorphous gatherings of people with many different causes and grievances: anti-American, anti-globalization, anti-capitalist, anti-war, pro-worker, pro-immigrant, pro-animal rights. Sometimes different protests, organized by different groups in roughly the same geographic area, will meld together and then separate again, like globs of oil floating in water.
Here are some of the groups who joined the May Day protests:
These immigrants (above) were protesting for legalization. A man with a bull-born was shouting "Legalization for the paperless-ones" — in French.
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A group of Kurds (above) in traditional costume joined in as well. They were waving flags bearing the image of Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), who is in jail in Turkey. Many Kurds blame Greece for Ocalan's capture, because it occurred while he was being transferred from a Greek embassy in Nairobi to Nairobi's international airport.
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