different cities and their different cultures of protest (and response)?

sadly it has proved unpopular in New York

Tracer, was that Glasgow in 1994?

There are very few places to protest in Chicago. Grant Park, the site of the '68 protests, is now totally off limits.

yes mark I was in Glasgow. I think relations w/polis in the US are more respectful, partially because of the deep memory of those images from Chicago and elsewhere - protests still have the color of the 60s; they haven't grown modern enough here to scribble over that memory with an opaque enough layer of relevant lived experience (whereas in France for instance I think they have) - nobody wants their skull cracked open - also we are super-sensitive to criticism for acting odd or aggro, "buncha lazy students", so probably over-compensate the other direction i.e. the constant insistence on overwhelming presence of baby-strollers etc, reminiscent of constant "Out" magazine/Will and Grace-style protestations of "we're really oh so normal, honest"—but also because, at least in New York, the FD and PD have been humanized by the WTC attacks and people can see that their jobs are relatively shitty and thankless and that, as has ALWAYS been the case in New York, they have much bigger fish to fry elsewhere instead of wasting time doing the mayor's protest-busting dirty work, and we think we know that they know that

Speaking of unprepared. I guess those canisters of tear gas were going to expire or something.

Dublin doesn't really have much of a tradition of street violence, notwithstanding the aberration of the May Day events last year (a cop riot if ever there was one). demos here have been good natured; before the war they were almost carnival-esque.

even knoxville got 2,000 people. the marchers showed up and frist sent down these two old uptight west knoxville biddies who reused to come over to where the marchers were and told the organizers that they should have called to make an appointment. (they had been calling fruitlessly for weeks)