Overwhelming participation of tens of thousands who witnessed history:49th festival of KNE–Odigitis

As every year, the International City was a special attraction for visitors throughout the three days. Families with young children, students and schoolchildren, workers of all ages, came to the stands of 29 communist and anti-imperialist youth organisations to learn everything they could about the struggles in countries more or less distant.

Dear friends
and comrades,

The journey of the 49 th Festival KNE-‘Odigitis’ culminates today, with this amazing political rally.

And it set sail for the 50 th anniversary of a fascinating journey that we will all celebrate together next year. With the promise that our festival will sail across new waters; it will embrace the concerns of the young generations even more, and it will keep its compass, its youthful urgency and its History steady. All those elements that make it the biggest
political-cultural event in the country!

We are very happy to welcome the delegations of 29 Communist and Anti-imperialist Youth Organizations from all over the world and the president of the World Federation of Democratic Youth to our Festival. Also, trade unionists from France, who proved with their strikes that ‘when the people take to the streets, there can be cities of light everywhere’,
and showed that the so-called ‘labour paradise’ of the EU is a nightmare for the workers, even if it is praised by the right-wing New Democracy, and the social-democratic parties of SYRIZA and PASOK.

We send a strong message of internationalism from the Festival. With our joint struggle, with the peoples from all over the world, we can sweep away the system of exploitation and wars, and build the society of the future — the socialist-communist society.

On behalf of the Central Council, we greet the hundreds of thousands of young people who have given life and enthusiasm to our multifaceted events with their participation, during these past three days, as well as in the previous months all over the country.
We greet our comrades and friends of the KKE and KNE, who worked for the success of the festival and made it a youthful celebration; a celebration of hope and struggle for a better life.

We don’t accept that our lives are drowned in the mud, burnt by wildfires every summer, lost in a collision between two trains in Tempe, brutally thrown into the sea, as it happened in the Piraeus port, stabbed to death by a Nazi with the tolerance of the state, or cruelly abused, as it happened again yesterday, with the violent arrest of a delivery worker
by the coast guard in the town of Chalcis.

All these are not just isolated incidents, but links in the chain of the barbarity of the system that ‘suffocates’ us. This feeling of suffocation, insecurity, a stranglehold that is being tightened on us, is something that thousands of workers and young people share.

That is why the cry of thousands of young voices in this year’s great mobilizations was louder than ever: It is either their profits or our lives. It is not just a slogan. It has become an experience, a promise not to get used to these crimes, not to compromise with a state hostile to the people, with a policy that counts profits and losses by sacrificing rights,
dreams and lives.

That paints the map of the country black with ashes and mud.

That calls modern slavery, the 13-hour working day, the unpaid work of minors, the occupational mobility a ‘free choice’.

That builds impermeable class barriers and obstacles to the right to education, studies, access to culture and sport, the creative use of leisure time, cheap and decent housing, and starting a family for young couples.

That steals rights from the many and gives away ‘opportunities’ to the few, passing bad cheques that supposedly bring growth for all, as in the tourism industry, where hotel owners are swimming in cash and waiters are literally swimming to serve.

Capitalism cannot offer any kind of freedom; rather, it brutally forces us to live only to work, to produce all the wealth only to have it stolen by a handful of parasites.

We don’t deserve this future! We, young men and women, have a choice: To meet in the Trade Unions, the Students Unions, the school students’ community, and the mass organizations and to get some relief through our collective struggle, just like the university students did for the second year in a row with the great victory of the
‘Panspoudastiki KS’.

To turn our dreams and rage into a force for struggle and overthrow. Only in this way will ‘darkness turn into light’!

For what ultimately counts is that we don’t compromise with this situation, and what we are going to do to change it.

This is why we, the members of KNE:
Are choosing to act on the slogan ‘Only the people can save the people’ and organize the struggle and solidarity, just as hundreds of KNE members from Athens, Thessaloniki, and Thessaly are doing by actively helping those affected. This year, the Festival itself has become a great rally of solidarity, and the people’s response to KNE’s call to collect emergency supplies has been touching.

We are choosing a life worthy of the people, not tailored to poverty measures and the ‘capacity’ of their economy.

We are choosing to enjoy real life and fight to make it more beautiful, instead of building a digital cage, a virtual reality in which we lock ourselves up, let alone trying to escape through the nightmare of drugs and addiction.

We are choosing to fight the monster of fascism and the capitalist system that gives rise to it alongside the organized movement. We owe this to Pavlos Fyssas, who was murdered 10 years ago by the criminal Nazi Golden Dawn.

We are choosing to join a revolutionary organization of volunteers aiming to change the world, instead of joining systemic, leader-centred parties, parties of followers and spectators who end up being the subsidiary of American-raised ship-owners, for that is where their whole course is leading them.

Finally, within a negative correlation of forces, we choose to struggle for its overthrow, to strengthen the current that challenges the dominant policy, and to organize the people’s counterattack for the society of true freedom — socialism-communism.

This is the proud and beautiful choice that we call on each and every young person to make in their own life.

Today’s mass participation in the events of the Festival should encourage even more young people to dare take this step. We salute the hundreds of young people who have come to strengthen our ranks these days, with the Organizations of Western Athens and Piraeus being at the forefront.

From this stand, we announce the start of a nationwide friendly competition between the Organizations of KNE to recruit new members and increase the circulation of the ‘Odigitis’ magazine, in view of the central events of the 50 th Festival in 2024.

We can reach out to thousands of young men and women with whom we share common concerns and dreams and talk to them; we can meet them in the struggles and political battles to come.

In the municipal and regional elections on the 8 th of October, the ballot boxes must be filled with the ballot papers of the ‘People’s Rallying’; even more young men and women must dare to ‘change the course’ and elect even more militants in the Regions and the Municipalities.