See, about thirty-some years ago, Greece stopped being a dictatorship and became a democracy, and it all happened on November 17th, when some students from the Polytechnic University had an uprising. Unforunately, that military dictatorship was backed by the US, because the Americans saw it as a safer alternative than Communism.
Nowadays, the 17th is a holiday in memory of the students who died in the uprisings. It's also a day when all of the Communists (and there are quite a few here, apparently) take the streets and protest, because they believe that this should be their day - that it should be a Communist holiday. I'm not so clear on the specifics, but from what I hear, they generally don't have warm feelings towards Americans on this day.
So I guess I'm staying in, though I'd really kind of like to go see what's happening downtown. Oh well. Maybe I'll sit here and yell at my Woody Guthrie poster instead. That would be a safer way of confronting the communists, though not quite as interesting.
Anyway, here are some pictures to give you some insight into the radical political scene in Greece:
This second one isn't really relevant, as it's Anarchist graffiti, not Communist graffiti. However, I thought it was sort of funny. I hear that the Anarchists often leave funny graffiti around town, but I unfortunately fail to understand it most of the time, as it is usually in Greek. My friend Will tells me that they sometimes scrawl the Greek word for "ballot box" on the trash cans.
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