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# Brentwood Change: It’s all Greek to this reader
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/brentwood-change-its-all-greek-to-this-reader-editor/
- Published: 2008-01-15T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T17:58:46.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Brentwood, #archive-import

*By Henry Rosenfeld Ocean Park*

All this campaign rhetoric about “change” reminds me of being in Greece in 1981, when they held presidential elections. As journalists at an English-language daily called The Greek Times (we called it “The Times” of course), we learned a few words of Greek to put into our stories, the most popular being one we heard at every political rally: “Alla-yi!"

I’ve mistransliterated it, but the word meant “change.” It was chanted over and over with the accompanying heads-held-high/fists-in-the-air approach, like this: “Allayi! Allayi!”

And the opposition Socialist party called Pasok, headed by Papandreou, won and ruled until 1990.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 15, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/011508.pdf?ref=smdp.com)