On Saturday 5/9 the inauguration of the 74th International Expo of the city, a site for government speeches and promises was met by thousands people taking to the streets in an "independent class" protest march, separate from the party-controlled marches of PAME and the GSEE.
The march was led by PEKOP, the Athens Cleaner's Union whose gen. secretary, K, Kouneva, was attacked with sulphoric acid last December by company thugs. In its call to the struggle PEKOP had announced:
"In the dark days that they are preparing for us, lets get ready, lets organise and lets hit back without delay with a warm autumn and a hot winter. We do not forget December! We do not forget the bullets that killed Alexis, nor the acid that burned K. Kouneva, PEKOP's gen. secretary! We live social war everyday here. And Konstantina is the flag of our social struggle [...]
We shall not be the tail of the bureaucrats who constantly team up with the bosses and the State, alloting like 'parties of power' the priviledges of class collaboration, having the audacity to speak in our name, in the name of the working class, stabbing the back of our struggles. Nor will we give ground to those who constantly want to control us, to transform our struggles to votes, and when December comes they cross to the other side of the river...The workers must march and struggle against the bosses without false mediators and good-willers of this or that bureaucracy. The emancipation of the working class is the work of the working class itself!"
http://libcom.org/news/mass-class-protest-march-salonica-riots-athens-06092009
