Thank the surly god of emo punks and the porcine great spirit of the five-oh, it went peaceful. The organizers got with the cops and negotiated on the terms of the march. The people with the microphones urged nonviolence. And the cops didn't try to push anyone around, they just stood in in walls around the designated area. Nobody put a bomb in a newspaper box, nobody disguised an uzi as a peace sign. Still, it was tense. I could envision a stoned college kid tripping and falling into the cops, and the batons starting to swing.

Downtown was eerie, with no cars, no newspaper boxes, even the parking meters removed. On the way there, determined kids strode in one direction while folks in suits tried to get home... but it was a challenge. The entire route was lined with police vans and busses, and a line of cops in riot gear two deep. Behind them were the K-9 cops, bike cops, mounted cops, and various large backup crews. Before this, the most police I had ever seen at once was St. Patrick's Day, where there were four at every intersection in town. Yesterday blew that number out of the water.

I was struck by the variety of protesters. While the majority were young white kids, there were people there from unions, public housing groups, anit-war, anti-Bush, communists, the Pink Bloque (pink-clad dancers), LGBT groups, pretty much anything you could think of... there was even a group of old women with canes. We started at the Boeing headquarters and marched to the Tribune plaza. The police marched in two columns alongside of us, but were led by the mounted police, which meant they were tromping in dung the whole time. They were decked in foot-to-knee pads, bulletproof vests, with helmets, face masks, shields, billy clubs, and big loops of those giant zip-strips to use as handcuffs. I even saw some with the tear-gas cannons, like a small firehose for gas, that was scary. The horses were cute in their little kneepads and face masks. The officers seemed stoic, interested in keeping things sane. At one point one of the speakers suggested that, since we were so peaceful, perhaps the cops were there to march with us.

I was impressed with the way they handled it. They allowed it to occur, didn't try to control it, just contained it. They received a lot of criticism for the expense, but as one First Deputy put it, "The cost of protecting freedom of speech ... the cost of protecting the safety of our community, is priceless." There were only two arrests, one guy earlier in the day for messing with the preparations (he looked like a crazy bum) and a guy who "allegedly punched a horse" according to one news source and "tried to grab the reigns of a horse" according to another and "a skittish horse bumped into a protester" according to a third. He was yelling "I'm an animal rights activist, and they're arresting me for attacking a horse?!?!?"

Which raises the question... why was it hyped as such a riot? Was it just an effort to shock the viewer, like all that sniper porn we had to sit through even though eight or so kids a day are shot and killed? Or was it an attempt to keep people away? Afterwards the papers were all about playing it down... the Tribune reported 300 protesters, then 500, then 800, and finally today 1000. If I can get ahold of an aerial shot, it's obvious that there were far more than a thousand people there. I've seen 800 people counted at Critical Mass, and based on that number, I'd say that 2000 is a safe estimate... two thousand protesters, two thousand police. If the media was trying to scare people off, it certainly didn't work, as the route was ringed with crowds behind the wall of police. Most of them seemed to be looky-loos, some hooted their support, but I only saw one guy who didn't like us... an old white businessman, in a suit, standing defiantly, legs spread, middle finger thrust to the sky.