Monday, April 11, 2016

March Against Unemployment, from Patras to Athens: The beginning of new peoples' struggles

Photo source: 902.gr.
With a massive demonstration in front of the Greek Parliament, in Syntagma Square, labour unions, working class associations, youth and women organisations welcomed the participants in the Great March Against Unemployment. After 7 days and covering a distance of 220 km, the march which began from the city of Patras arrived in Athens on Sunday afternoon. The KKE-backed mayor of Patras, Kostas Peletidis, whose initiative was the March against unemployment, was the major speaker in the rally. 

Addressing the demonstrators, Kostas Peletidis, a doctor by profession, said in his speech among other things: "The slogan 'Patra-Athens is the beginning- People go forward on the first line" compacts our orientation for the future. No compromise, it's about time for those who make peoples' life a "living hell" to feel peoples movement's breath on their necks. Organisation and struggle everywhere, (to) confront the anti-people policy of the EU, of the bourgeois governments, of the monopolies. They are bodies of decline and regression. Their domination blocks social progress".

Patras' mayor Kostas Peletidis greeted with
enthusiasm in an Athens neighborhood.
The rally was also attended by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece Dimitris Koutsoumbas. In his statement to the journalists, KKE's Secretary said the following: "This gathering here in Syntagma isn't the end of the Great march which started in Patras. It is the beginning of new, large, powerful struggles from now on, against unemployment, for permanent and stable work for everyone, for labour with equal rights, for the protection of the unemployed people, for a total overthrow of the anti-people policy".

A delegation of the Patras City Council, under the leadership of mayor Peletidis, alongside the GS of KKE Dimitris Koutsoumbas and KKE MP Thanasis Pafilis met with the Parliament's Vice-President Tasia Christodoulopoulou. The delegation handed over a Council's resolution regarding unemployment.

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