Strike success

 Today, the sun shined down on us as we marched for over 2 hours in the demonstation to support the national general strike.  According to reports, between 60% and 70% of the private sector participated and over 70% of the government sector.  On top of that, more than 85% education workers were on strike today and I am happy to say I was one of them. 

Here are a couple pictures I took from the march today, but many more and better pics are availble on the local newspaper's website here.  As you can see it was packed!  Some people carried flags of the labor unions and some posters that they had made.  My favorite was this one that says 'Jolasa bukatu da' which in Basque means 'The game is over' and the Kings of the deck are represented as bankers, politicians and more. 

The atmosphere was quite jovial.  We managed to do the wave with thousands of people squatting down and then shooting up when it came thier turn.  We did a lot of clapping chants and as we finished we even ran into a drum group who was keeping the striking spirit up!  Last but not least, at the end of the line, we ran into my brother and sister-in law with our little neice!  Her first strike at a whopping 8 months and she was cute as ever!

Since it was a strike day it was a 'no buying' day along with no working, so we had a tasty lunch at home afterwards together.  We will see in the coming days if our efforts made any effect on the government and hopefully our massive strike served for something and our voices were heard!  More to come as updates arrive!

Muxu!
Amanda