Thessaloniki: Greek Social Forum

On Saturday morning there was a meeting of the Greek Social Forum against war and imperialism.

The meeting had 5 speakers, including Toni Negri (one of the authors of ‘Empire’), a representantive of the Asian Social Forum and Joe Higgins (Irish MP of the CWI).

The meeting had about 400 present.

Joe Higgins received a long applaus for his speech. He explained the reasons for war and the capitalist crisis. This crisis leads to severe attacks on the workers’ rights in Europe. Today there is a growing resistance against these attacks. In this resistance movement there is a need for a political alternative. Such a political alternative, in the form of a new mass workers party, would be an important instrument to build the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements.

More pictures at Linkse Socialistische Partij

Mass demonstration

This was followed by the demo which was huge. At this moment it isn’t possible yet to say how many people exactly participated at the demo. With Xekinima (the CWI’s affiliated organisation in Greece) and the CWI we again had a lively contingent which grew quickly to about 500.

Before the demo started there seemed to be some clashes between police and anarchists who had been accused of starting a fire in a few banks and a Mc Donalds. To secure our contingent, we had a strong system of stewards around our contingent. The demo however remained peaceful.

The fact that we had a disciplined contingent with very political slogans was a point of attraction. We had loudspeakers and made a lot of noise to support our slogans against the EU and against capitalism.

At this moment (around 8 pm) we see a helicopter above the city and smoke coming from inside the city. There’s probably still clashes going on over there.

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