Backstory: In Greece, the culture of protest

But there's a brutal side to these groups, and living amid the constant protest tests the mildest temper. The same week as the student march in my neighborhood, for example, there were also protests by Pakistani immigrants and phone company operators. The city's doctors were on strike. A tax office and three banks were bombed. Anarchists clashed with police, exploding at least 60 Molotov cocktails. And someone sent a rocket-propelled grenade through a window at the US Embassy at 6 a.m., blowing up the ambassador's private bathroom. The group claiming responsibility said the attack was a response to US involvement in Iraq. (Greece ranks no travel warning on the US State Department website, which says "violent civil disorder is rare" here.)

Nicholas Giannetos, a silver-haired tailor who dresses Athens' elite, works out of a shop on Stadiou street, a main protest route. He's philosophical about his countrymen's penchant for taking to the streets. While his neighbors – mostly shops selling diamonds and other luxury goods – quickly shutter their windows when the first chants of a protest can be heard in the distance, he keeps his doors open. Sure, he admits, they drive away business. But so does rain.

"We think it's important for this country to remain democratic," he says, dismissing with a flick of his hand the small number of protests that turn violent. "They're just doing it to make a show."

Mr. Giannetos has been running his shop in central Athens for more than two decades. After only a year here, I'm still green. But I've learned to recognize the sound of a tear-gas canister exploding. I know that marchers wearing gas masks and carrying red flags are looking for trouble. And when the garbage men go on strike in the heat of summer, I know it's best to dump rubbish in a bin as far from your own house as possible.

One day earlier this month, I went into the belly of the beast to ask protestors what drove them to the streets.

"This is a culture of protest," explained Petros Constantinou, a man I met up with at another recent student march. In the aftermath of the country's oppressive 1967-74 military dictatorship, he said, Greeks won't accept any limits on the right to protest. "We will defend it very seriously, with our blood."

Mr. Constantinou wasn't a student; he was, in fact, something of a professional agitator. Officially, he was a spokesman for the Stop War Coalition, but he joined the protests of groups allied with his.

Over the loud speaker, which had been blasting local bands performing bad Greek rap and heavy metal, a man announced that some protestors had been arrested in a scuffle with police. Nearby, the clean white walls of a Hermès store were decorated with giant anarchy symbols, and the ground was littered with fliers pontificating about everything from the death of Saddam Hussein to animal rights.

I asked why so many protests turned violent.

"Most of the time it's not the anarchists that are the problem, it's the police," Constantinou insisted. I wasn't entirely convinced. I'd seen the marchers spoiling for a fight, masked and clutching nasty-looking clubs. In TV footage later, these militant protestors could be seen charging rows of police, who sprayed tear gas and held their ground, seeming remarkably restrained.

Most protestors, like 16-year-old Polydefkis Kyriakakis, a pony-tailed high school student who'd ditched school with friends, had no desire to tussle with the police. They were only there to show solidarity with university students. Her parents, she said, approved. In their day, they'd protested too.

"It's our right to protest," she said, lounging with friends on banners with revolutionary slogans laid out like blankets. The march was over, but no one seemed inclined to move and unblock the street. "The fact that we can close the city center each time there is a protest like this, it makes it so that people have to listen."

Constantinou agreed. Each protest, he said, gives strength to "the movement" – a vague coalition of groups with left-wing causes.

How many protests has he gone to in the past year? He laughed.

"These days I only go to the ones that we're organizing," he said.

And how many times had he been tear gassed? He chuckled.

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