Thousands of people from all over Greece sent a message of struggle and demands for the life that belongs to them at the magnificent rally. It was a decisive message for another society, where the working class will enjoy the wealth it produces.

Over 1000 organizations of the labour and people’s movement (trade union federations and labour centres, trade unions, struggle committees, farmers’ associations and organizations, self-employed associations, student unions, school-student unions, women’s associations, pensioners’ organizations, people’s committees etc.) took part inthe initiative of the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME) in the magnificent national demonstration, which was held on Saturday 1^st of November in Syntagma sq. outside Parliament.

Tens of thousands of people arrived with coaches, both from mainland Greece and also from Crete, the Aegean and Ionian islands, who had rallying points at 9 different points in the Greek capital. They began from these rallying points and ended up in Syntagma sq. , which turned out to be too small to fit all the demonstrators (note: see the street plan that shows the extent of the demonstration).

The Executive Secretariat of PAME in its specific statement saluted the sea of people that flooded the centre of Athens, noting that over 100,000 people participated in it.

Speaking at the demonstration, Giorgos Perros, member of the Executive Secretariat of PAME, focused on the issues related to unemployment, noting that “no unemployed person can be left on his own to deal with poverty and unemployment.” At the same time, he called on the workers to put an end to the theft of our toil and the plundering of the people’s income! To struggle for real increases everywhere, increases in salaries and pensions.

As the speaker stressed: “The demands that the labour-people’s movement should form must be aggressive, aim at recovering the losses of the people and must be based on our contemporary needs. In order for such demands to be realized and consolidated they must in parallel be connected with the struggle against the commitments and policies of the EU, the memoranda, and for the rejection of the debt which we did not create.”

He also underlined that “our duty is to resist the “realism” regarding the limits of the economy’s endurance which is reflected in the proposals of the government and official opposition that adjust our requirements to the needs of capital. They say to us that if bosses do not exist, if profitability does not exist, we will not be able to live, we will be destroyed. However, we say that we can live without bosses and that we produce the wealth and that it must be returned to us.”

The battle for the success of the general strike on the 27^th of November begins with this amazingly large national demonstration as its starting point.

The nationwide rally approved two resolutions in response to the internationalist solidarity that the protesters received from dozens of trade union organizations around the world. The first resolution is a message of class internationalist solidarity with the working class of Turkey on the occasion of the new employers’ crime in a mine in the Karaman region. The second resolution called on the “trade union organizations, the organizations of the people’s movements to condemn the unjust and barbaric imprisonment of the 5 Cuban patriots with resolutions, statements, messages of solidarity and other initiatives as well” and stressed the need to strengthen the movement of solidarity that fights for their release.

Statement of the GS of the KKE

Dimitris Koutsoumpas, General Secretary of the CC of the KKE, made the following statement at the nationwide rally in Syntagma:

“There is only one way forwards in order not to waste time, in order to deal with the deception, the disorientation, the anti-people political line of the government and the various tricks of the two-parties. The magnificent rally of PAME today shows this way forwards, a rally that started at the initiative of PAME throughout the country and was embraced by more than 1000 mass organizations in the private and public sector, in the movement of urban self-employed, the farmers, the youth, the students and the women. This is the path we should follow, this is our solution: resistance, struggle, people’s alliance in order to ensure stable and permanent work for all, the abolition of tax-plundering, and the recovery of the losses that salaries, pensions and social security rights have suffered over the recent years.

We have to continue along this way that was paved by the initiative of PAME. No more illusions about new saviours. We have to turn our back on those who promise allegedly new governmental solutions, the new saviours that will lead us to a new anti-people downward spiral. We will meet again on the 27^th November for the nationwide general strike, in the demonstrations and the rallies that will take place on that day. We organize our struggle, each person at his post, in every workplace, in  every educational institution, in every neighbourhood, so as to pave the way for developments in the interests of the people and the country”.