The last “goodbye” to Myrsini Zorba said relatives and friends at a ceremony in Freedom Park.

The political funeral was attended by the president of SYRIZA, Alexis Tsiprasin whose government the Myrsini Zorba he had been Minister of Culture.

At the funeral delivered by Alexis Tsipras, he said of the deceased:

“We say goodbye today, with pain and respect, to a special woman, a modest fighter, a bright personality: Our comrade Myrsini Zorba. Myrsini grew up in Ilioupoli during the difficult years of the post-conflict state.

And from very early on, he chose a side. The difficult side, to walk not with the current but with a compass of her ideals. The side of the oppressed, the side of those who proposed the we from the ego.

Pulled together by the great power of the liberating ideas of the Left, but also with too much personal determination. These were her luggage in 1967 when, aged 18, she joined the ranks of the Panhellenic Anti-dictatorship Front. It was an experience that marked her.

Not only for the experiential identification with the ideas of the regenerative left and the difficult act of daily resistance against a barbaric regime – which arrested and punished her.

But for the great need to connect action – even in the most adverse conditions – with intellectual search, courageous reflection, feedback of the passion for freedom with ideas and references that transform it into a political content.

This unique combination of political practice and intellectual alertness led Myrsini to the publishing venture of Odysseus, the participation in the post-colonial visionary collectives, the translation and publication in Greece of the pioneering thinkers of Marxist thought – with Antonio Gramsci as the main point of reference.

Every time the forces of preservation will attack the radical burden of Postcolonialism, our thoughts will return to the noble physiognomy of Myrsini and her vision of cultural democracy. Not as a narrow theoretical conception, but as a political demand with radical depth.

Against the dominant perception that for decades considered culture a luxury for the elites, Myrsini fought the great battle for a new model: an open and dynamic culture, a culture that will permeate our collective everyday life, a culture that will face people of, in terms of dignity and trust.

A culture policy that has its eyes on the future and not on the constant recycling of tired clichés and the narrow-minded worship of a sterile past. And he made this vision a reality with a unique combination: Inside and outside the institutions.

Participating and starring in positions of responsibility, but at the same time creating alternative networks and initiatives that turned the demand for cultural democracy into daily practice.

But always on the side of the many. Of the oppressed. Of society. That is why today there are so many of us here to say goodbye to her, from different places and with different experiences.

Because Myrsini was a multifaceted personality who won you over from the first moment with her kind smile and penetrating gaze. With her unique sensitivity and rare hard work.

This was the combination that sealed her passage from the National Book Center, from the Network for the Rights of the Child, from the European Parliament, from the small and large initiatives that had at their center the constant demand for social justice and political freedom.

This combination sealed her term in the Ministry of Culture – this long-suffering ministry. A bright moment of promoting new and innovative concepts, clashing with the forces of inertia and opacity, visionary planning for the possibility of our country experiencing a new revolution of artistic and cultural creation.

Finally, Myrsini left us something unique, the moments it left us. A shocking – I can’t find another word – textwhen he was called to face the greatest fear, the one we cannot find the words to describe.

And Myrsini managed to describe him with just one word: “non-existence”. Showing us, however, at the same time, the way to confront the fear of non-existence. Through her example. But mainly through her great existence. Through her life and work.

An existence that was identified with the unquenchable passion of justice, with the commitment to the visions of emancipation, with the contemplative and at the same time militant attitude towards the world that surrounds us. This richness of her existence. This power of ideas – which, as she herself wrote, “doesn’t stop existing” –

He will be our great ally in the big and small battles ahead. And for that we owe her a big thank you in saying goodbye.”