Clearing the air of tear gas

Today, my professor took my Ethnography class to see the demonstration/strike in downtown Athens. We went early (around 11), and one of the girls I was with commented that it "felt like a parade in the States". While this was not quite the case (usually USA parades don't have undercurrents of hostility and frustration), there were certain resemblances. The streets were filled with various groups marching, chanting, holding banners, etc and I thought that we would obviously stand out as gawkers, but it turns out that many Greeks come to sit/stand along the sidewalk to watch, and street vendors wheel out their little gyro stands to take advantage of the soon-to-be-hungry masses. After walking against the flow of marchers for about fifteen minutes, we turned around and walked back. I didn't feel threatened or unsafe at any point, and was very glad to have observed the event.

A few hours later, someone posted this on Facebook:

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/athens-strike-horror-as-anti-government-rally-1346149

I can only say that this is a gross overdramatizing of a bloodthirsty media. Later on in the day, these demonstrations do tend towards certain violent clashes between the radical anarchist groups and the police, and there were some molotov cocktails thrown and some tear gas sprayed--but this by no means was indicative of the demonstration as a whole. These groups were only a tiny portion of the people striking, and the violence only a tiny portion of the event.