Greeks have good reasons to protest

Declan Hill, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Sunday, December 18, 2011

Athens

‘Almost everything that you thought you knew about current-day Greece is wrong.»

That thought went through my head as I stood among a mass of demonstrators in Syntagma Square during the recent general strike. There was a festive air: souvlaki sellers amid grandmothers, students singing and lots of street theatre performances. It was unlike any of the images that I had seen; there was no stone throwing, no tear-gas or water cannon attacks. I may have been lucky but there was a wide spectrum of ordinary people marching in the demonstration. The usual suspects were there, of course: the anarchists, the Communists and the general drop-a-hat-see-me-protest lot. But there was also a broad range of others: nurses, farmers, doctors, actors and teachers.

 After the demonstration was over, I walked past the rows of gas-masked policemen (generally far nicer