Dear friends in Greece,

I know that this message comes late. You will already be voting by the time it circulates but for those who read this before going to vote I hope it can be useful.  This request comes from someone outside of your country and so formally I have no right to say such things, especially on the referendum day, but I will not sleep unless I’ve done it.

The request is for the people of Greece to be brave, go to the polling station and vote NO and reject the final proposal by the three institutions that Greece is negotiating with.

One of the three, the IMF has already conceded that the deal on offer won’t work. They know that austerity policies will need to be in place for another 15 years at least to reduce your national debt to 110% of your GDP and this is with very optimistic figures. They already recommend a debt reduction of 30 billion euros without really thinking too much about it. Why didn’t they think about it before, like, I don’t know, 5 years ago?

The other two “partners” of yours are made up of people like Jean Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, who wasn’t even elected, Angela Merkel of Germany whose country received huge economic preference after the war but refuses to extend the gesture of solidarity, and Jeroen Dijsselbloem who says he won’t talk to your government anymore. Who is he to say who he will or won’t talk to? Greece is a democratic country with a government elected by the people. The institutions have to talk to the elected representatives whether they like it or not and make agreements on the basis of the will of the people.

Let’s be clear here: Human beings are more important than money.

Renowned economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner, and Thomas Picketty the author of the huge bestselling “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” recommend no. Noam Chomsky says that Greece is in the middle of a new class-war being waged against the working class as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The unelected head of the bank decided to terrify the people by closing down for a week. Your finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is correct in his assessment when he accuses the YES campaign of terrorism through the spreading of fear.

The ones urging you to vote YES are the media at the service of the Greek wealthy class, multi-national businesses, bankers and politicians who over the period of five years reduced the Greek economy by 25%, and sent unemployment rocketing with youth unemployment currently at 60%. An estimated 11,000 suicides have happened since 2008, people have difficulties to access medical services and children go to school hungry. The people who put you in this situation are the ones telling you to accept more austerity.

As a citizen of Europe, and a member of the human race, I tell you that the direction proposed by the YES campaign only serves the bankers and their friends.

A vote for NO gives your government the chance to negotiate a better deal. It gives a chance for austerity to be lifted and it gives hope to the rest of Europe that people-driven processes of non-violent social transformation can happen and change the direction of events.

Greece is a proud country that has made an unquantifiable contribution to humanity since ancient times. Now is the time for Greece to once more be a giant and tell the banks “NO” they cannot exploit and kill the people anymore. The human beings are more important.

However the result ends up tomorrow, I send to the people of Greece, Europe and the rest of the world my best wishes of peace, force and joy.