In front of a rundown building in central Athens, four men and a young woman pull a huge pot and bottle of gas from the trunk of a car and set them up on the pavement.
Oblivious to their crumbling surroundings, they fill the pot with water and bring it to a simmer by the side of a busy road, stirring in pasta to feed those driven to poverty by Greece's debt crisis.
They are stepping in where the politicians have failed, they say, even though they, like one in five Greeks and half of all the nation's young people, are unemployed.
Every day, through an informal group they call "O Allos Anthropos", or The Fellow Man, they feed all comers - mostly immigrants and others without jobs - thanks to donations, whether from a pensioner handing over half a loaf or market vendors stumping up unsold vegetables.
A few blocks away, workers are building a stage to hold campaign rallies for the May 6 elections. The pasta crew shake their heads in scorn.
"Those who are running in the election will just be wasting money to make campaign posters. They should be ashamed of themselves," said Constantinos Polychronopoulos, 47, a jobless marketing man in a black apron, as he added zucchinis and onions to the mix.
"They have never gone hungry in their lives."
Like many of the people they feed, he lost his job in a deep recession, now into its fifth year, that has claimed hundreds of thousands of jobs. Many in this new army of the destitute, angry with the tax hikes and wage cuts that were a condition of the international bailout that saved the country from bankruptcy, are likely to abstain or back small parties opposed to austerity measures.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/27/us-greece-election-soupkitchen-idUSBRE83Q0JF20120427
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