Young Greeks Take to Streets in Global Climate Protest
Climate Strike Athens in pictures
Photos by Bernard Steffin / FOS PHOTOS
More than 2,000 protested downtown Athens on Friday to demonstrate for World Climate Change Action Day and the Global Climate Strike. The young demonstrators, gathered in Syntagma square, right in front of Greece’s Parliament and took a short walk in the historic triangle of Athens that lasted about an hour. The teenagers were holding homemade signs, and parents were escorting the youngest children chanting “We need systemic change not climate change”. “No one is too small to make a difference” or “The planet is getting hotter than young Leonardo DiCaprio” some banners read. Later in the day environmental organizations have called for a second demonstration.
A comment from our photographer Bernard Steffin:
“Good news from Athens, the crisis-ridden city. Young teenagers join the movement and enter the international scene. The kids of Athens are waking up with the first demo for “Fridays for future,” one year after Greta started her march for climate change. It’s a happy day in Athens with the participation reasonably high!
The Climate Strike movement is not so popular in Greece, a country at the crossroads of East and West, with very little heavy industry, depending on tourism, yet with a heavy oil and ship industry in the hands of a very little selected elite. And now the new trend is coal mining. While the majority of Greek adults have other problems to deal with and thinking of little significant details, such as not using plastic cups with plastic straws for the morning take out iced double espresso coffee, Greek kids prove they are aware of the issue. The kids are needed, they will tomorrow lead and join the road to our European and global future while the ice is melting. Let’s all hope adult arrogance and prejudice melts the same way, hope should never die!”
The demonstration was peaceful, colorful and inclusive.
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