What to Wear to the Revolution

Most of what I’m writing today is based on hearsay.  Then again, most of what I write everyday is based on imagination, so I guess that’s an improvement, at least if you’re looking for “just the facts.”  This piece is also slim on photos, for it did not seem opportune to take the ones I’d like.

Last week I wrote about the source of the anger streaming onto screens around the world from that now famous area bordering Greece’s Parliament, Syntagma (Constitution) Square.  This week I thought it only fair to point out how very different life in Athens actually was from what you saw in the media for virtually all but the hardcore protestors.

Tuesday was the first day of a two-day general strike across Greece against Parliamentary votes on Wednesday and Thursday that adopted the stringent measures required by Greece’s lenders in order for the country to receive additional bailout funds.

No doubt the strike brought hell to a lot of tourists in the midst of holidays, but for Athenians at least it was not nearly as inconvenient as it sounded.  When the power company announced it would join the strike, that meant “rolling outages” and a published schedule of which neighborhoods would be affected and when (I hurriedly typed the first draft of this before my time had come).  Stores remained open and although public transportation was “on strike” the metro kept running.  Greeks are, after all, practical and their people must get to the protests inevitably accompanying a strike.

Taxis, too, were operating for Greeks are also entrepreneurs.  And what sane Athenian would drive into Athens on a protest day?  Then again, perhaps “sanity” is not limiting enough of a qualification when it comes to the Athenian’s approach to their countrymen’s protests.

Athenians accept protests as an inevitable part of their way of life, and until this week, walked around them as people elsewhere would a rowdy football celebration.  The focus of the crowd was not on the people on the street, but on the government, and as long as you stayed away from the very few serious anarchist types going head to head with the police and outright vandals seizing the moment, you’re basically ignored.  As for those omnipresent whiffs of tear gas, well, you got used to them.

At least that’s what I'd always heard from friends who did business in and around Syntagma.  

When Syntagma is not “on the air” it’s home to some of Athens' finest hotels and shopping.  As a matter of fact, on Tuesday afternoon I received a call from a friend who worked within “throwing distance” of Syntagma and asked me to come down to see “what’s really going on.”  I was assured it wasn’t dangerous.  “Sort of like after midnight mass on Easter Saturday, when the kids are tossing firecrackers.”  

I asked about the tear gas and she said, “It’s not bad, but might not be good for your allergies.”

I jumped at that macho excuse for passing on the invitation. 

Then she said that she had to be at an appointment on the other side of Syntagma at six, and was worried about wearing her Louis Vuitton backpack, as it might seem ostentatious in light of the austerity measures that precipitated the demonstration.

Life in Athens had become surreal.

The evening before (Monday) I had a six-thirty appointment a few blocks from Parliament.  My first surprise was that my drive into town took only fifteen minutes.  The past record was twenty minutes with a little more than two hours on the down side.

When I came out a couple hours later the streets weren’t any busier.  So, I decided to take a spin past Parliament and around Syntagma.  Police buses were lined up along one side of the building, but there were a lot more TV broadcasting vehicles than that lined up elsewhere—perhaps covering both the demonstrations and the Special Olympics World Summer Games going on between June 25^th and the 4^th of July, in part just a few blocks from the heart of the protests.

There were police and military types milling around but no one seemed engaged or concerned.  The famous Grande Bretagne Hotel on the corner of Syntagma just across from Parliament looked to be doing business as usual, although its first floor windows were shuttered.

The square itself was not at all what I’d expected to see.  Yes, it was cloaked in homemade banners proclaiming all sorts of unachievable things, and filled with "indignado" protestors camped there for weeks, but there was no noise.  Calm before the storm?  Maybe.  But it seemed more like a Woodstock experience between acts.

Then came what made me dismiss my friend’s concern over her journey through the crowd.

At the end of the square farthest from Parliament, by the main entrance to Syntagma, vendors were selling Greek flags and whistles—a wise marketing decision considering the purpose of the gathering.

BUT, just inside the entrance and running along both sides of the walkway for forty feet or so, lined up five rows deep, was a breathtaking assortment of every conceivable knock-off designer bag!  And beyond that, rows of knock-off watches.

My friend had nothing to worry about, I thought.  This revolution seemed to appreciate the properly accessorized.

Sadly for the Greek people, it turned out that my friend and I were wrong.  This demonstration did become dangerous Tuesday evening, and tear gas lingered in the air in far greater volumes than whiffs.  Thankfully, my friend delayed her trip across the square until early Wednesday morning and was out of the area by the time violence resumed at noon.

But the violence of these demonstrations was of a sort quite different from that of Greece’s Mediterranean neighbors, as captured in a scene by an Associated Press photographer.  Ekathimerini, Greece’s daily newspaper of record, reported that in the midst of the conflict “[a] stun grenade exploded in the hand of a Greek riot policeman, severing a finger.  Police and demonstrators ceased combat and scoured the debris-strewn street, uniting in a frantic search for the missing digit.  They found it.  The finger was rushed off in a wet towel to a hospital, where doctors reattached it to the injured man.” 

PS. For those of you who may have seen a sign or two in the midst of the demonstrations saying “Jeffrey leave Greece” it wasn’t directed at me.  Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou was born “Jeffrey Papandreou” in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Jeff—Saturday