John Minchillo

GREECE: Streets on Fire

The Greek reputation for strikes and protests is long and storied. Demonstrations are frequent and many pedestrians often pass without notice. In recent years, however, the people’s fervor has escalated violently.

The recession and resultant austerity crisis of 2008 has tested Greek patience with the government. A believed sacrificing of the working class for the benefit of the power elite has resulted in intermittent riots.

Police and protesters play cat-and-mouse games across the city. Injuries and arrests are common. Property damage is unavoidable.

Despite hordes of protestors and riot police who ebb and flow in the sweat and smoke, little improves and the crisis carries on.

A Greek rioter hurls a stone broken from a curb at riot police outside the Polytechnic University in Athens. Universities are protected asylums for students and off-limits to police by law.
   
A immigrant protest masses outside parliament in Athens, Greece. Often the brunt of violence and corruption, immigrants face steeper hurdles than most.
   
Handicapped protesters confront police barricades outside parliament and chant slogans. Anger is often focused at police who claim that they are unwitting middle-men between the people and the government.
     
  
Bystanders wait at a bus-stop as student protestors march through central Athens. Protests routinely shut down the city center resulting in widespread apathy from locals eager for public services to resume.
   
Protestors march towards parliment arm-in-arm in Athens. Flags and signs attached to thick wooden poles double as clubs when the front lines engage the police.
   
Rioters throw stones at police and taunt them from afar in a cat-and-mouse game of charging and retreating. Face-offs can last hours and typically end in an exhausted stalemate.
     
  
Riot police charge with tear gas canisters in hand. Police caught alone in the riots are descended upon, forcing units to group up into easily firebombed targets.
   
Riot police line up outside parliment in anticipation of engaging protestors.
   
Intermittently, a protestor who strays from the larger group during a skirmish will be descended upon by police with nightsticks and riot shields.
     
  
A protestor is caught by police and screams as he is dragged on the street. Despite the typically large size and violence of the protests, only a handful of Greeks will be arrested.
   
Crowds wither under the effects of tear gas. Oftentimes, peaceful protesters share the greatest portion of pain, as the most dangerous rioters don gas masks for the occasion.
   
Protests and demonstrations are a way of life in Greece. Students, union members, anarchists, communists, facists, and everyone in-between regularly take to the streets. The recession and austerity crisis beginning in 2008 has escalated their frequency.
     
  
Riot police retreat from the crowds of protestors as they advance towards parliment in central Athens.
   
Protestors dash through tear gas clouds as police push back on the crowds in central Athens.
   
The opening volley of projectiles from protestors tends to be oranges picked from trees around the city, eventually upgrading to stones hacked from sidewalks and facades.
     
  
A police motorcycle pushes through a cloud of tear gas on Syntagma Square.