Anti-racist festival, 2026

The Anti-Racist Festival in Athens takes place in Goudi Park and this year it was on at the beginning of July.  It's a three-day festival and we went on the second day, the Saturday.

I had been looking forward to it all week, and the whole evening was as good as I had anticipated.  

The park is huge, and the festival takes up a substantial part of it. At any one time I could only photograph parts of it. I wish I had thought to go up the small hill which is on the edge of the park, below the mountains, to take a photograph of the whole area, particularly later so that I could show the large crowds that were taking part, but I did not think of it - I was too engrossed in what was going on, and just kept snapping without thinking much about it.

'The world's heart beats in Gaza. With Palestine until freedom'.

We came across the first of the meetings. There were seven meetings organised each evening. The subjects ranged from: Europe facing war; from borders to prisons - the fight against asylum; women's struggle for liberation in Kurdistan; neo-fascism in schools and how to fight it; Palestine and Lebanon - war and struggle; seeking asylum, and a lot more.

We went early, around 7:30, so that we could look at the stalls before it got too busy. First of all, stalls from bookshops and publishers, and I am always interested to see what people of the left in Greece read

Leon Trotsky, Ernest Mandel, May '68. 

More Trotsky, so a 4th International sympathising bookshop

Books on Palestine

An anarchist bookshop - the books on display in English

Gaza's Eyes by Fatma Hassona

The Marxist bookshop

Leon Trotsky, Frederick Engels and Antonio Gransci

Iran: Imperialism and War, Resistance and Revolution; Free Palestine; Lebanon - the Resistance

I have noticed before: Ursula LeGuin is very popular

George Orwell: Can Socialists be Happy? A good question indeed

A large display on Cuba plus a banner saying Hands Off Cuba

Books by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara

Karl Marx - Das Capital

Bookshop Without Borders. I go to Exarheia a lot, but have never seen this one

We walked past the creche

and past this banner urging people to go to a meeting about blocking the cruise ship Crown Iris on the 14th of August. The Crown Iris comes to Greece regularly bringing Israeli tourists and IDF soldiers. There are always huge crowds at the ports (sometimes Pireus, sometimes the islands, particularly in Syros) trying to block the passengers from disembarking. 

The first cruiseship was successfully diverted and had to leave Syros port and go elsewhere, but since then the Greek State has made sure that this does not happen again. I was reading in the paper yesterday how people in Syros are really fed up because every time an Israeli cruise ship is due to arrive the port and the town, become police states. The government have banned demonstrations in Ermoupolis, the main town and port of the island. So, people formed human chains all around the streets last week, determined to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people.

We finished with the bookshops and moved on to the much larger area of political stalls.

Again, really interested - I want to see what kinds of movements are prevalent at the moment and what's changed from previous years

This is the Sunday School for Immigrants stall - they are here every year. On the stall, various leaflets about their activities, badges, T-shirts that say Resist, and lots more

OKDE - Organisation of International Communists of Greece

their papaer, and some books including The Permanent Revolution by Trotsky

Camping Anaireseis - they organise camping for children every year

A stall selling merchandise about Palestine - T-shirts, bags, but there are also leaflets: Free Palestine

KEERFA - United Movement Against Racism and the Fascist Threat

lots of posters

leaflets, their magazine, the Workers' Solidarity paper

EEK - Workers Revolutionary Party, a Trotskyist organisation

various merchandise, including some feminist stuff

Free Palestine stall

Posters: Free Palestine, The Feminist Festival on 3rd October, Isolate Israel

Stall of the Anti-Fascist Education organisation (teachers and parents)

A stall about blocking the Crown Iris Israeli cruiseship

Ergatiki Pali (Workers' Struggle) the paper of the Organisation of International Communists of Greece, a Trotskyist organisation

Solidarity with the people of Iran

EKKE - Greek Marxist-Leninist Organisation: a student organisation who are fed up with    left wing groups. They were very active during the uprising at the Polytechnic which led to the fall of the military dictatorship. They also seemed to adopt some Maoist principles.

No Tech for Genonice - a reference to Palestine

Punk Against Capitalism T-shirts

More T-shirts

Attack - Left Anti-Capitalist movement

Atheist Union of Greece

More on Palestine

An Anarchist stall

T-shirts for Palestine

Palestinian community of Athens - they are very active in Palestine solidarity campaigns

and their merchandise

A feminist stall

Keffiyes

pins and brooches

and T-shirts

This space is so vast, it's impossible to give an idea of its size

BDS poster

We had finished with the political groups' stalls

and moved on to the area where people were selling various merchandise, mainly from Africa: clothes, scarves

jewellery,

bags

We passed naother of the meetings - again, very well attended

and banners everywhere: Against the plans of the genocidists in Gaza and Lebanon

We moved on to the food area, which again, is absolutely vast

There was food from so many countries: Ethiopia, Tunisia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Tonga

The women from Afghanistan were preparing the food in front of us

The rice from Zimbabwe was certainly colourful. We were told the orange was carrot and the green spinach

The food from Tunisia was prepared in front of us as well

As for the Philippines, they had a whole outdoor kitchen going

Souvlaki was the Greek food that was being sold.

We chose our food, I had a dish from the Philippines and Ken from Ethiopia, got us some drinks and looked for a place to sit and eat.

And then, it was time for pudding - again, lots from many countries

We chose some Palestinian sweets

It was getting very busy by then but we found somewhere to sit while we had our pudding

and then we wandered around, re-visiting the stalls we had looked at earlier

as we had predicted, there were too many people around, difficult to look

We did manage to do some shopping though

We listened to this Albanian band for a bit

So many people around...

At around 11:00 we had to go back home. A pity, as things were just starting to heat up, and the proper, rousing music was about to begin

We walked past the huge queue for food tokens

As we reached the entrance/exit, we could see loads of people arriving

Looking back at the queue of people waiting to get in...

It was such a great evening. Looking forward to next year.