Protests in Riga

Of course it was just my luck that the one day I actually leave Riga the largest protest since independence was held. My host Mom even participated in the protest. How did all these people know there was going to be a protest? Well like in Soviet times when people wanted to announce a protest they published it in the evening newspaper. So key cultural and political figures wrote an open letter to the government. They said that they would participate in a protest the next day in front of the Saiema (the Latvian Parliament). Over 5,000 people answered the call packing the street of old town and making it difficult for the politicians to ignore them because they had to walk through a crowd of chanting people to get from their offices to the parliament building. They were protesting over the firing of the head of corruption bureau. Of course this story was not covered in the Western media but for more info about this please read The Baltic Times.