Last year during the Greek Riots, there was a government suggestion to somehow punish people who cover their faces during protests, in effect making it unlawful to protect your anonymity. Back then along with another person, I took a symbolic solidarity action by taking a picture of myself as a hoodie but as time passed and the riots abated, the issue was forgotten.

However it seems that the Government has not forgotten their plans and has now proceeded to decree that anyone caught “vandalizing”, acting violently or simply disrupting the public peace while wearing a hoodie or otherwise covering their face characteristics will be further charged with 2-10 years of punishment. You read that right, if you go out to protest and you are deemed to be disruptive to the public peace (who will judge that? The cops of course) while covering your face (or not, Greek cops have no problem accusing you anyway, and what is easier to accuse than “covering the face characteristics”) then you can go to jail for 2 years at least.

Wonderful.

As a reaction to this announcement, Plagal, who initiated the action the last time, brought up this symbolic move of picturing yourself in a hoodie once more and urges everyone to do something similar. The reaction this time has been much more positive and many more people have done the same (there’s a list in the link above) which could possibly be due to the fact that another blogger proposed the same thing independently, only she went one step further and proposed the great idea to switch all our avatars to Hoodies in solidarity.

So here we go:

I’ve already updated my twitter and facebook avatars and I urge you to do the same in all the places where you commonly hang out. And of course if you’re a blogger upload one in your blog and explain why you did it.

If you live in Greece I furthermore wholeheartedly suggest you start strolling around the city as a Hoodie, just so that you can show your disdain for this new government clampdown of freedom of expression and the right to anonymity.