This falls under the “holy fucking shit” category. Over half of Greece’s prison population (the numbers vary depending on source, but at the beginning of the strike it was more than half of the of 12,315 people imprisoned in Greece and at the end it was still more than 3-4 thousand participants) participated in an 18 day hunger strike that ended with the government capitulating on a large number of their demands.

In short, the prison system in Greece is only intended to hold around 8,000 prisoners total, and has been holding 12,000+. As a direct result of this strike, half of Greek prisoners will be released. I suppose the law-and-order types think this is the worst possible news, but I would guess that most of the world understands that punitive justice systems don’t actually work. What does work, we can now see, is solidarity among people who are told they have no power. These prisoners refused food for 18 days and have fundamentally changed the nature of the Greek justice system.

Hell fucking yeah.