Even the university fountains are on, and they're working. PSAROLOULOS: Well, at the moment, it's extremely quiet. Can you just tell us what it looks like now? SIEGEL: I know that you're out-of-doors in the university area there. They want better stewardship of the economy. I think that they want more university funding. ![]() I think, increasingly, they are becoming insecure about their prospects in the labor market and in an increasingly competitive globalized labor market. I think that young people are well aware that the quality of the education they are receiving is not what it should be. PSAROLOULOS: I think, in part, it does stem from dissatisfaction with the educational system. SIEGEL: Are you saying that one should look at the scenes of arson and riot in Greek cities and read into it dissatisfaction with the Greek educational system? But what I think really did touch a nerve is when they spoke about the quality of their education in high school and at the tertiary level. Well, it's not as though the police routinely guns down teenagers in Greece. You know, stock sort of excuses, like how dare the police gun us down. ![]() They told me various things which I thought were not in earnest. And, of course, they couldn't take public transport because they had brought everything to a standstill, and cars were meandering around bonfires made out of a rubbish dumpster in the middle of the street.Īnd I asked them precisely this question. And I caught them on the tail end of their protest, as they were trying to catch a cab home to one of the nicest suburbs of Athens, a lot nicer than the one I live in. I spoke to a group of teenage boys, 17, who had been rioting during the day yesterday. Is that right, and if so, how would you describe the sources of this anger that we saw acted out in riots for three days? SIEGEL: It seems that there was a great deal of pent-up grievance among certainly many young people in Greece, a grievance that's exploded after this shooting. We did have massive demonstrations, but not the damage we had yesterday. Today was, I think, the beginning of a sort of downturn. I think, at that point, we had reached the climax. Hundreds of cars destroyed that day and on Sunday. At that point, when we had several multistory apartment buildings go up in flames, we were approaching a point of mass arson. JOHN PSAROLOULOS (Editor, Athens News): Well, I would say that was a fair statement last night, on Monday night. Psaroloulos, there's a headline in the Greek online daily I read today that says, "Athens Riots Spin Totally Out of Control." Is that a fair assessment? John Psaroloulos is editor of the Athens News, a weekly English-language newspaper, and he joins us from Greece. After his funeral today, a large crowd tried to storm the area near parliament in Athens. 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot on Saturday. It was another day of rioting in Greek cities following the funeral of a teenager who was shot by a policeman. I'm Michele Norris.Īnd I'm Robert Siegel. ![]() From NPR News, this is All Things Considered.
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