Since then the campaign and election between two pro-war candidates seems to have left the anti-war movement somewhat in the shadows, temporarily. Police had to test their new toys on Red Sox fans instead, killing one.

The Bush administration didn’t need demonstrators to make them look bad, though, as revelation after revelation surfaced in the media. Widespread torture in military prisons, shootings of civilians and billion dollar scandals should have caused any thinking person who hadn’t already to see the war as a huge mistake. Still, it needs to be said loudly and clearly.

The demo starts at 1:00 with music from the stage. Already there are a few thousand people, with more flowing in. The weather’s beautiful.

A speaker says that 120,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the start of the war. An Iraq war veteran talks about friends of his who died. Another says, "The anti-Vietnam War movement cut down the tree, but left the roots still functioning." A group from Chelsea holds sings that say, "Chelsea Uniendose Contra de la Guerra, Chelsea Unity Against the War." And "Basta Ya La Guerra Por el Petroleo."

"War is the problem. Only the sick and the ill of mind would think it was a solution," says John Schuschardt, the activist minister from the North Shore. "I see white male faces of the new imperialism that looks a whole lot like the old colonialism…. Don’t bear the shame and don’t die for a lie…. Once again, America is on the wrong side of history.… This is a war against civilians, especially women and children…. It’s time to take the glory out of war. It’s cruel, it’s criminal and it’s cowardly…War is the pre-eminent gender issue of all time…. I tremble for our children and our children’s children. Don’t let the pied pipers of militarism do to your generation what they did to mine…. Our leaders know all about torture and nothing about human dignity."

Howard Zinn: "We’ve been in Iraq two years. What have we brought? Nothing but death and destruction. It’s been four years since we’ve been occupied by Bush. So we’re both occupied…. More and more people have realized they’ve been lied to. Bush lies to the soldiers when he tells them they’re fighting for liberty. Bush and Cheney, Haliburton and Bechtel. That’s not worth dying for. You don’t bring liberty to people with napalm and cluster bombs. You don’t bring democracy by breaking into people’s houses. Bush talks about the war on terrorism. But war is terrorism.

"For every person at the demonstration there are 100 people who [agree with you but] don’t want to demonstrate. Support for Bush in the polls is going down, down, down. In Vietnam, people began defecting, airmen began refusing to fly missions, ROTC chapters closed down. If we don’t give up, the point will eventually be reached when the government will give up their occupation. And then we’ll work on ending the occupation of this country."

This rally, organized by Boston Mobilization, is scheduled to end at 3:00. That’s when the non-permitted march, of anarchists, Green-Rainbows, and others is scheduled to begin. Boston Mobe has made it clear they want nothing to do with this march. Though I wasn’t watching the time closely, it must have been close to 3:00 that a group of about fifty anarchists began marching around the crowd beating drums and chanting, "Out of the rally, Into the streets!"

But the rally drags on until 4:20, during which time the crowd thins considerably. Why did the rally run an extra hour and twenty minutes? Some people involved in the march suspect Mobe purposely extended the rally so that potential marchers would get bored and disperse before the march began.

I run off with a friend for some food, and we come back outside just as hundreds leave the rally and cross the street toward the recruitment center. They stay in the street as a small group of outnumbered cops try to establish a sort of order. They appear to almost be pretending to be controlling the situation. Throughout the confusion, a single lane of traffic is always kept open, though. It was pretty chaotic for a while. At one point a city bus came out of a side street and made a sharp left turn, as demonstrators and cops seemed to run in all directions in front of and beside it.

With no permit to do so, the crowd starts through a downtown street. The intention is to march across the Mass. Ave. bridge and into Cambridge, but police block our right flank, and we turn left toward downtown. Saturday shoppers look on as we pass through Downtown Crossing. Hundreds of us weave through downtown streets, motorcycle cops riding alongside. One cop runs his rear-view mirror into National Lawyer’s Guild legal observer Frank Little from behind as he marches along.

Past Quincy Market the chants, "Exxon, Mobil, BP Shell, Take your war and go to hell…." It’s fun, we all feel a rush. We’re breaking the law en masse and are getting away with it. We feel a bit of power, crowded together making noise, the center of attention. Still, I wonder what it all means, and as always I have no real answers. Up the hill and back to Washington Street, a line of black-clad Boston cops looking meaner and more serious than the others line our left flank. We would have had to turn left to get back to downtown crossing, which they apparently don’t want us to do. After a moment of confusion at the corner, the whole group turns right. A similar thing happens at another corner. I conclude that since the anarchists are so loosely organized, so decentralized, police have trouble blocking us because none of their infiltrators know our route.

As we approach the Common, I wonder what we’ve accomplished. Surely something, but what?

Near the end of the march, I could feel the police becoming meaner and more impatient. I imagine they weren’t happy with our marching at all. Still, I assumed our return to the Common would mean a relaxation of tensions.

Instead, this is when all the trouble began. Some motorcycle cops partially blocked our way back into the Common. Most people walked in front of them, but Jamie Phillips, a young activist who lives in Jamaica Plain, walked in between two motorcycle cops. One of them turned around and saw Phillips behind him.

"He was mad at me because I came too close to his motorcycle," Phillips said after being released from jail later that evening. "He tried to hit me with his bike and he tried to grab me—I just ran." Police followed, and a small crowd followed them. Near Park Street station, the police caught and arrested Phillips, charging him with two counts of assault and battery, one on a police officer, and one on a paramedic. "They said I assaulted a paramedic. I didn’t even see a paramedic," he said later.

More arrests followed, as other demonstrators objected to police officers’ treatment of Phillips. I saw police pushing a man who witnesses described as being seventy years old. A 15-year-old boy then came to the older man’s defense. "The police pushed [the boy] out of the way," a witness told me. "He didn’t move out fast enough, so they jumped him." They all came tumbling in my direction, and I stood just a few feet away and looked down to see five big cops grabbing and wrestling with the boy. I was stunned at how small he appeared, and at the almost absurd size difference between him and any one of the cops—except there were five cops. The boy told me later, after being released from jail, that he stood at 5’ 6" and weighed 125 lbs.

He was charged with disorderly conduct, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The weapon was his shoes. Interestingly, he was wearing canvass sneakers with soft rubber toes, which looked almost like slippers.

Ryan Herlihy, of Stoneham, objecting to the treatment of his 15-year-old friend, was also involved in a scuffle with police, who later thought he had a gun. "He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!" police yelled as they jumped on Herlihy. He didn’t have a gun, and there’s no apparent reason why they would have thought he did. He was released that evening without charges.

Two other demonstrators, Michael Long and Charlie Weinhardt, also from Stoneham, both objecting to the treatment of the others, were also arrested. Long was charged $540 bail and charged with assault and battery on a public employee, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, possession of a dangerous weapon (a knife) and malicious destruction of property. The police said Long broke an officer’s cell phone, which Long claims no knowledge of.

Weinhardt and several witnesses say that he was beaten by police, his mouth bloodied and a tooth knocked loose. Upon his release, Weinhardt was in no mood to talk with reporters. "They just beat me up, that’s what happened," he said before leaving the station. He was not charged with any offense.

All five activists had been released from jail by 9:00 p.m.

Two other persons were arrested in a Cambridge T station after leaving the demonstration. A crowd of about fifty formed, some of whom jeered the police. On the street above the station they were awaited by five police cruisers.

Since last summer’s DNC there’s been, I think, a sort of acknowledgement that, as activists, we are on the defensive from right wing government and media attacks, and that we must respond with a growing sense of solidarity. I suppose I can only speak for myself when I say that since last summer, I’ve met many new people—activists and community members, and have deepened my relationships with many of the people I already knew. Some of this happened through the many courtroom appearances we’ve had to make in support of the people who were arrested last spring and summer in connection with the DNC, cases which are still dragging through the courts.