Three boys, 5, 7 and 15 years old, have been calcined on 8 December in Mesoropi, near the city of Kavala, where the oldest has tried to take the two smallest. Three more family members have survived, in a family that together with their grandparents and their parents formed a dozen families. Gas oil heating was suffocated last year by the 40% price of fuel and ignition, which has destroyed the family.

Firewood can be one of the symbols of Greece’s nightmare. The only companies that run a round business are the wood distributors. One of the jokes that launched in the center of Athens the Athenian journalist Zineb Dryef in search of testimony for Rue 89 was: “You see, girl, I have a Porsche Cayenne,” they were the years of easy money; now it is called ‘come, girl, I have fire at home.’”

More than a temperate beach on the shores of the Mediterranean is a cold mountain in winter. Heating is usually electric or gas oil. In addition to rising light, one of the government’s reforms has led to diesel fuel from 95 cents per litre to EUR 1.35 per litre.

The Athens authorities have imposed a new gas oil tax on global warming. Excuse, fraud: having lower taxes on fuel for houses, many drivers speculated with that, one in five cars in Greece was driving with that fuel. Now what you smoke at home has the same price as that of cars, which you don't pay for most.

In small towns and rural areas, the Greeks have adapted more easily to the old economy, to the lower fires and stoves, keeping the forests at their disposal. In cities there are more and more trees poked or ripped from the waist, in parks, street corners or in private orchards.

There has been a proliferation of wood sellers who sometimes bring wood from the forests of northern Greece and who often import wood from those of Bulgaria.Pero today also whistle in cities such as Athens or Thessaloniki, where last year it cost EUR 60-65 per tonne and this year it reaches EUR 150 or 200.

Illegal tree stems have also multiplied. Demonstrating his love for Broma, the Greek Ministry of the Environment has released a new phone number to denounce these crimes... and with the other hand change the law to equate the illegal cutting of wood with small faults. In addition, the number of forest rangers in the Greek mountains in the order of the European Troika has been drastically reduced in the last three years.

The environmentalists and those concerned about the environment in general are angry because Greece, which is already on the way to desertification, can lose the last forests along the way, with all the consequences that this entails. But who will remember ecology when people don't know how to heat their house at Christmas?

Organizing survival

However, in this environment of “losing everything and saving mine” that generalizes the emergency, there are efforts to ensure the survival of all in solidarity. Their noises fall upon us as drops. It is not easy to know the Greeks of their writings, because, in addition to the language they speak, they have a very different writing. To illustrate this with an example, Google does not have indexed the photo that illustrates this chronicle in our letters, you have to ask with the Greek letters through the translation tools. How much information of this kind will never come to us?

Tonia Katerini of the Syriza party explained in the magazine Red Pepper, one of the references of the British left, some of the elements of red solidarity in the chronicle Organising to survive in Greece.

Greece has 25% unemployed, 48% young people, and in some regions where industry existed before the crisis, 80%. The big industry is gone, Coca Cola, Carrefour... 170,000 small businesses have closed in three years, you cannot find funding, all Europe's money for banks.

Most of the unemployed have long been deprived of any allowances. His last support is the network of family and friends, but it has also been exhausted to the limit thanks to the long crisis. Because those who work have been reduced in pay, some by a quarter, many by a half, some by three quarters. At the same time, prices have risen, and Greece, which is within the euro, cannot devalue. The Homless is 20,000 in a country where nobody lived on the street, outside the isolated marginalized.

Katerini is still in the support network of the left-wing party Syriza, which seems to be going to get the majority in the next elections. It makes a list of many solidarity efforts to Red Pepper.

Firstly, to guarantee food for all citizens: potato, oil, flour or lemons networks have increased by half the usual prices from producers to citizens. As many children do not have breakfast at home, the Government is pressured to be offered food in schools, something that did not happen since the 1950s.

As one third of the population remains unable to pay for health services, small clinics have multiplied in neighborhoods, where volunteer doctors serve the population, with several hospitals and pharmacies.

Those who have the worst are those who need expensive medicines, such as anticancer drugs: “There is also a shortage of money in hospitals,” says Katerini, “in the end there is no more than cortisone for these seriously ill people.” This is how suicides have proliferated, especially in the middle classes that have lost everything.

In addition to food and health, solidarity networks are being organised in four other areas: education, culture, legal advice and social economy. Barter trade has been organised in some cities. In the space dedicated to Syriza, which last year had more than 100 initiatives, 2,000 have been organized this year.

Katerin complains that the State only hinders them. On the occasion of the organization of the dining rooms in Auzolan, the Government has requested permits, certifications of health conditions and others: “The answer was that we all came together and organized a communal meal, in which hundreds of people cooked and ate together, to see if they dared to arrest everyone!”

Eliminating people's fear is another goal of the solidarity movement, perhaps the main one: “No one believes that government policies are right, but there are many who are afraid to protest.” The crisis will continue for them a long time. They'll need external help. We are beginning to talk about the need for the international brigades.